"Healthy Snacks" Are Not So Healthy :shock:

[tex]

Hi All,

According to this article in Newsweek, we might as well be eating "junk" food.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/177096

Tex

[Courtney]

Hmm...have to say I disagree with the article, Tex, bc it seems to rely only on fat and calorie counts. Sure, Terra Chips might have as many of those as Doritos, but have they looked at the other ingredients? Seems like most of these snacks are still pretty healthy, in moderation. Who's going to eat a pound of grapes at a time, anyway? I think this is just another example of our unhealthy focus on just fat and calories.

[tex]

Hi Courtney,

You know, when I scanned that article before posting the link, I didn't like the theme of it at all, but I seem to be developing such a negative attitude toward the medical establishment, and the food industry, in general, that I thought maybe it was just me, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and let it slide. Good for you, for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. You're quite correct, of course.

This just goes to show how out of touch the "food police" have become in their viewpoints of what constitutes "healthy" food, and what does not. We have been bombarded with "official" propaganda about the perceived importance of "proper" nutritional balances for so long, that it's easy to fail to recognize the superior wholesomeness of natural, whole foods. We have been conditioned to believe that the politically-correct "synthetic" nutrient balance of processed foods, is somehow better than what nature provides. It never is, of course, because our digestive systems evolved on whole foods, not "synthetic" nutrients. Probably the biggest mistake made by those who promote so-called "healthy" low-fat diets, is failing to recognize that an adequate amount of natural fat is an essential part of a healthy diet.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Tex

[Courtney]

Tex,

I'm right there with you with the negative attitude toward the food industry and the medical establishment. Would it be paranoid of me to suspect they might be in cahoots?

I'm always suspicious of food evaluations that only rely on fat and calorie counts (both of which we need, of course), bc they seem to imply that the only reason for watching what we eat is to lose weight, and not to achieve optimal health by choosing whole foods over processed ones. I have to admit that there were a few years when I was completely taken in by all the attempts to remove all fat and calories (and frankly, food) from food. I ate fake everything (butter, fat, sugar), and I wonder if that didn't contribute in some way to all the problems I'm having now. Of course, we were told that this would make us healthier, but I've come to believe that that's just a flat-out lie. In fact, as far as I'm aware, many of the health problems so prevalent in twentieth/twenty-first century developed nations stem not from eating these natural foods (butter, sugar, fat, salt, etc...) but from eating entirely too much of them. Illnesses of abundance and greed, IOW. It's symptomatic of the "I want it all and I want it now and the more of it the better" attitude that is, IMO, so prevalent in our society. Why eat one real baked potato when for the same amount of fat and calories, you could eat three fake ones? (I read somewhere that Pringles are only 40% potato.)

I read Michael Pollan's /The Omnivore's Dilemma/ over the summer and, while it had its weak points, really enjoyed what he had to say about where our food comes from. He has a follow-up called /In Defense of Food/, which I haven't read. The premise seems to be that food needs defending from the corporate food industry and government nutrition scientists, neither of which seems willing to give food a chance.
Seems like an interesting read.

Courtney

[tex]

Courtney,

I'm not at all sure that "paranoid" would be considered to be an inappropriate attitude for that issue. The medical community, and the movers and shakers in the food industry, certainly seem to promote the same agendas. They just change some of the details now and then, to reflect the current food fads, that they feel should be in vogue, at the time.

I suppose that for most of the time during our evolution, up until about 40 or 50 years ago, the normally-prevailing status for most humanoids on this planet, as far as the food supply was concerned, was either deficiency, or sufficiency, (but rarely surplus), so over hundreds of thousands of years of barely getting by, once we found ourselves in a situation where we could afford all the food that we wanted, (and then some), it was only human nature for us to tend to eat more than necessary. The discovery of hybridization in corn, and other grain crops, in the late 1950s, and early 1960s, made a huge change in the availability of food, and suddenly we had endless surpluses, and relatively speaking, food was historically cheap.

The paleo people, for example, almost surely "pigged out" when they found food in abundance, because they knew from experience, that the surplus was only temporary, and soon enough, they would be worrying about starvation, again. Since that state of mind was necessary for survival, for hundreds of thousands of years, it has to be indelibly etched in our residual "instincts", that have carried over from earlier times.

Sooooooooo, if we are "programmed" to eat more, when more is available, then rather than fighting our "instincts", many of us find it easier to try to compensate by eating lower quality food, (i.e., less protein, and less fat, but more fiber. In order to rationalize eating lower quality food, the food "experts" tell us that less protein and fat, and more fiber, is much healthier for us. Is it? History doesn't bear that out. The healthiest communities, and the healthiest individuals throughout history, appear to have been those who ate the higher protein, higher fat diets. A diet too heavy in grain, (and too low in protein and animal fat), has led to the demise of more than one advanced civilization, in the past. The Mayas are a case in point. Hmmmmmmmm. I seem to be getting sidetracked here. LOL.

The point that I was trying to make is that your remark about "Why eat one real baked potato . . .", is right on target. A couple of years or so ago, we had several members who discovered, (after a little encouragement, and prompting), that the source of their persistent D, was the aspartame in their diet drinks. The FDA says that aspartame is safe for human consumption, and yet, they also say that methanol "is considered a cumulative poison due to the low rate of excretion once it is absorbed. In the body, methanol is oxidized to formaldehyde and formic acid; both of these metabolites are toxic." The recommended limit of consumption is 7.8 mg/day. A one-liter aspartame-sweetened beverage contains about 56 mg of methanol. Since the diet drinks that these members were using were so "healthy", (due to the lack of calories), they were drinking two to three liters a day - roughly 13 to 20 times more than the EPA recommended limit.

I hope that Pollen's follow-up corrects some of the problems with the first book, in which he seems to pretty much blame all of the problems with food, on the producers of food, as if they intentionally try to produce food that is as harmful as possible. IMO, that's a rather warped view, since food producers, (now I'm talking about the producers of the basic commodities here, not the processors), eat this stuff themselves, and they have no reason to poison themselves or their families, nor to try to kill that cash cow, by inducing morbidity and mortality through their products. Agricultural producers grow what the marketplace will buy, (and only what the marketplace will buy), and they do it by the safest, most economical, most technologically-advanced methods, available to them. Farmers don't split genes, and they don't produce pesticides - Monsanto does. If Monsanto's technological innovations allow producers to make higher yields, or cut costs, farmers will adopt them, because consumers demand cheap food, and any producer who cannot produce it for what the marketplace is willing to pay, goes broke. Food production is an expensive business to be in these days, and it's always vulnerable to the whims of nature, government, and just plain bad luck.

Sorry to get sidetracked again, but my point here is that if food were produced in a manner to satisfy Pollens apparent criteria in his book, we would all be starving, because there is no way to produce the volume of food that it takes to feed the world's population, unless we use modern production methods, including just about every yield-enhancing trick available. It brings to mind the bumper sticker that appeared on a lot of farm trucks back in the 80s - "Don't complain about farmers with your mouth full".

That's certainly not to say that there is not a lot of good information in his book, because there is. Unfortunately, agricultural production is like most other jobs in the real world - there are a lot of things that you/we might not like about it, and we might rather be utilizing other means, (such as less chemicals), but we don't have much choice but to do what we have to do, with what we have available, to meet production goals, cost allowances, deadlines, etc. I'm sure you encounter similar situations in your own work.

Anyway, I agree with Pollen that it's the guys in the white lab coats who are doing most of the damage on the food production end. The rest of us, farmers, ranchers, and consumers alike, are merely pawns in their carefully orchestrated game. I often wonder what the final outcome will be, when the game is over.

Thanks for your interesting insight.

Tex

[Courtney]

Hi Tex,

I can certainly see your points about Pollan's treatment of food producers. Here in central Illinois, I am surrounded by corn-farming communities, (many of my students are from them) and I often hear firsthand just how difficult it is to make a living, grow a quality product, and deal with govt. "help". That doesn't mean I don't get really nervous when the pesticide planes fly over, though.

One of my issues with Pollan's book, was that it had a pointed bias against those involved in food production (in all of the trails he followed--industrial, industrial organic, and local organic). He did try to address that bias, but in my view, he didn't do an adequate job. I think the bias was "on purpose", and probably had a lot to do with his audience, the food-interested consumer--any blame he applied to that audience was very gentle ("It's not your fault, it's the big bad food producers who have made you dependent on this system.")

I do think, though, that many of the systemic problems he pointed out are valid. He did acknowledge that an "ideal" food production system in which farmers and consumers of their food know and care for one another would require a serious and improbable societal shift. For me, the most valuable aspect of his work is his advocacy of real food that is made of food and not of chemicals or nutritional enhancements, like so many of the processed foods on grocery shelves. And he did point out that the processors are the ones making the money. Perhaps because I suspect such ingredients of making me sick. But, producers in white lab coats or otherwise tend to produce what people will buy.

Thanks for your thoughts and perspective.

Courtney