(NewsTarget) Digestion is a key aspect of ongoing health: the mucous membrane from the inside of your mouth all the way down to the rectum, is where humans "interface" with the external environment. Our guts evolve slowly, and in the past 50 years we have been subjected to an unprecedented access to junk food and fast food, mostly horrendous chemical concoctions passing as nutrition.
Besides choosing foods carefully, ideally grown locally and in season, ideally very similar to the condition in which it was harvested, gathered or hunted, we can greatly improve the bio-availability of the nutrition from our food by improving the mechanics of digestion. First, and I know you've heard this before, but it is so important that it bears repeating: chew, chew, chew. This means both slowly and thoroughly.
To be totally graphic about it, you want anything you swallow to be a soupy consistency. Especially meat.
For starters, digestion starts in the mouth. There are thousands of tiny neuro-receptors in the mouth that send messages to the brain about what is about to come down the pike. These messages "prep" the entire digestive system to gear up for the meal or snack that's on the way. Fatty foods will trigger the liver to produce extra bile, and cause the gallbladder to contract. The gallbladder is a handy little sack that hangs just under the liver, collecting an extra repository of bile in case you have a Mac-attack.
Bile is extremely potent stuff (so precious to the body that 95% is recycled -- the other 5% is responsible for the wonderful deep brown color of a healthy poop. Excuse me, I mean bowel movement). Bile is the main agent for digesting fat. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Back to the mouth.
Unlike cows, birds and certain lizards, we mere humans do not have small sharp objects in our stomachs to help pulverize food into smaller morsels. We have those small sharp objects in our mouths. You got it -- they are called teeth. Please use your teeth to grind and pulverize every mouthful of food. Then, you mix the thoroughly pulverized food with as much saliva as you can muster without drooling.
Drooling is a waste of saliva, so please recognize that most circumstances don't call for drooling. You want that saliva, which is loaded with amylase, the starch-digesting enzyme, to head down the esophagus and into the stomach where phase 2 of good digestion occurs.
Second, try to avoid antacids, and this includes Tums, Rolaids, the little purple pill and countless other varieties thereof. You absolutely and desperately need your stomach acid. There's a handy book on the subject by Jonathan Wright MD (You Need Your Stomach Acid). Stomach acid serves three critical functions. It sterilizes food, it breaks down protein into amino acids which can then be absorbed into the blood stream, and it provokes the pancreas to dump "neutralizing" bicarbonate of soda into the upper small intestine to allow the absorption of nutrients into the blood stream.
Stomach acid is very caustic -- a pH of about 2, optimally, which kicks in right after swallowing. The stomach is designed to handle this level of acid. If you suffer from heartburn, you need to repair the sphincter between the end of the esophagus and the stomach. If you have gastric ulcers, you need to heal the lining of the stomach so that it can again accommodate the acid levels required for proper digestion.
Folks chronically popping antacids eventually impair their digestion, which leads to poor nutrient absorption, which ultimately leads to malnutrition including protein, mineral and vitamin deficiencies -- despite plenty of calories.
Third, please don't drink while eating. This goes along with rule # 2, above. Fluids will dilute your stomach acid and all the digestive enzymes (amylase for starch in the saliva, proteases for protein from the pancreas and lipase for fats in the bile).
The best time to drink, and pure water is definitely the best drink available, is first thing in the morning, during or around work-outs, and between meals. Sure, you can have a sip or two with meals to lubricate your swallowing. But keep the fluids with food down to a minimum.
Fourth, try to eat sitting down and in a relaxed environment. Please don't watch the news or have a heavy conversation during mealtime.
Try to establish a "mealtime" pattern for yourself. Try not to eat within 2 hours of going to bed (4 is better). Make sure to "fast" for 12 hours daily. Give your digestive system a rest. It is enormously "expensive" to digest food, especially protein. That's why people usually lose weight on high protein diets. It takes almost all the calories in the meat to digest that meat. Extra digestion, over a lifetime, will wear you out sooner. To date, the only proven method of life extension remains calorie restriction.
This doesn't mean Draconian self-denial. But it does mean no pigging out, and, as a general rule, stopping before you feel "full." If you feel peckish between meals, try drinking water before reaching for a snack. If you are hypoglycemic, ignore that advice. Some people truly need to eat smaller, more frequent meals. You will need to determine for yourself whether "grazing" works better than a mealtime scheme.
Either way, keep in mind that digestion is a parasympathetic function. You need to be calm and relaxed for the digestive juices to kick in optimally.
Fifth, strive to poop at least once a day. Excuse me; evacuate a large, easy-to-pass, dark brown, slightly fluffy, bowel movement -- optimally three times daily but most of us can't find the time for that kind of enjoyment! By fluffy I mean somewhat floating. If you have a "sinker" -- just hits the bottom of the porcelain pronto -- then it (the poop) has been in there too long, compacting and getting altogether too dense. My favorite poop fluffers include freshly ground flax seeds (1-3 tablespoons of the stuff in water or juice in the AM), or celery, or the good old apple a day. If you prefer to have sticky, foul-smelling bowel movements, then make sure to include plenty of refined carbohydrates (including candy bars) into your diet.
About the author... Dr Emily Kane is a practising naturopathic physician and licensed acupuncturist.
Sunday, 18 November 2007
5 Tips for Improving Digestion
(NewsTarget) Digestion is a key aspect of ongoing health: the mucous membrane from the inside of your mouth all the way down to the rectum, is where humans "interface" with the external environment. Our guts evolve slowly, and in the past 50 years we have been subjected to an unprecedented access to junk food and fast food, mostly horrendous chemical concoctions passing as nutrition.
Besides choosing foods carefully, ideally grown locally and in season, ideally very similar to the condition in which it was harvested, gathered or hunted, we can greatly improve the bio-availability of the nutrition from our food by improving the mechanics of digestion. First, and I know you've heard this before, but it is so important that it bears repeating: chew, chew, chew. This means both slowly and thoroughly.
To be totally graphic about it, you want anything you swallow to be a soupy consistency. Especially meat.
For starters, digestion starts in the mouth. There are thousands of tiny neuro-receptors in the mouth that send messages to the brain about what is about to come down the pike. These messages "prep" the entire digestive system to gear up for the meal or snack that's on the way. Fatty foods will trigger the liver to produce extra bile, and cause the gallbladder to contract. The gallbladder is a handy little sack that hangs just under the liver, collecting an extra repository of bile in case you have a Mac-attack.
Bile is extremely potent stuff (so precious to the body that 95% is recycled -- the other 5% is responsible for the wonderful deep brown color of a healthy poop. Excuse me, I mean bowel movement). Bile is the main agent for digesting fat. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Back to the mouth.
Unlike cows, birds and certain lizards, we mere humans do not have small sharp objects in our stomachs to help pulverize food into smaller morsels. We have those small sharp objects in our mouths. You got it -- they are called teeth. Please use your teeth to grind and pulverize every mouthful of food. Then, you mix the thoroughly pulverized food with as much saliva as you can muster without drooling.
Drooling is a waste of saliva, so please recognize that most circumstances don't call for drooling. You want that saliva, which is loaded with amylase, the starch-digesting enzyme, to head down the esophagus and into the stomach where phase 2 of good digestion occurs.
Second, try to avoid antacids, and this includes Tums, Rolaids, the little purple pill and countless other varieties thereof. You absolutely and desperately need your stomach acid. There's a handy book on the subject by Jonathan Wright MD (You Need Your Stomach Acid). Stomach acid serves three critical functions. It sterilizes food, it breaks down protein into amino acids which can then be absorbed into the blood stream, and it provokes the pancreas to dump "neutralizing" bicarbonate of soda into the upper small intestine to allow the absorption of nutrients into the blood stream.
Stomach acid is very caustic -- a pH of about 2, optimally, which kicks in right after swallowing. The stomach is designed to handle this level of acid. If you suffer from heartburn, you need to repair the sphincter between the end of the esophagus and the stomach. If you have gastric ulcers, you need to heal the lining of the stomach so that it can again accommodate the acid levels required for proper digestion.
Folks chronically popping antacids eventually impair their digestion, which leads to poor nutrient absorption, which ultimately leads to malnutrition including protein, mineral and vitamin deficiencies -- despite plenty of calories.
Third, please don't drink while eating. This goes along with rule # 2, above. Fluids will dilute your stomach acid and all the digestive enzymes (amylase for starch in the saliva, proteases for protein from the pancreas and lipase for fats in the bile).
The best time to drink, and pure water is definitely the best drink available, is first thing in the morning, during or around work-outs, and between meals. Sure, you can have a sip or two with meals to lubricate your swallowing. But keep the fluids with food down to a minimum.
Fourth, try to eat sitting down and in a relaxed environment. Please don't watch the news or have a heavy conversation during mealtime.
Try to establish a "mealtime" pattern for yourself. Try not to eat within 2 hours of going to bed (4 is better). Make sure to "fast" for 12 hours daily. Give your digestive system a rest. It is enormously "expensive" to digest food, especially protein. That's why people usually lose weight on high protein diets. It takes almost all the calories in the meat to digest that meat. Extra digestion, over a lifetime, will wear you out sooner. To date, the only proven method of life extension remains calorie restriction.
This doesn't mean Draconian self-denial. But it does mean no pigging out, and, as a general rule, stopping before you feel "full." If you feel peckish between meals, try drinking water before reaching for a snack. If you are hypoglycemic, ignore that advice. Some people truly need to eat smaller, more frequent meals. You will need to determine for yourself whether "grazing" works better than a mealtime scheme.
Either way, keep in mind that digestion is a parasympathetic function. You need to be calm and relaxed for the digestive juices to kick in optimally.
Fifth, strive to poop at least once a day. Excuse me; evacuate a large, easy-to-pass, dark brown, slightly fluffy, bowel movement -- optimally three times daily but most of us can't find the time for that kind of enjoyment! By fluffy I mean somewhat floating. If you have a "sinker" -- just hits the bottom of the porcelain pronto -- then it (the poop) has been in there too long, compacting and getting altogether too dense. My favorite poop fluffers include freshly ground flax seeds (1-3 tablespoons of the stuff in water or juice in the AM), or celery, or the good old apple a day. If you prefer to have sticky, foul-smelling bowel movements, then make sure to include plenty of refined carbohydrates (including candy bars) into your diet.
About the author... Dr Emily Kane is a practising naturopathic physician and licensed acupuncturist.
Besides choosing foods carefully, ideally grown locally and in season, ideally very similar to the condition in which it was harvested, gathered or hunted, we can greatly improve the bio-availability of the nutrition from our food by improving the mechanics of digestion. First, and I know you've heard this before, but it is so important that it bears repeating: chew, chew, chew. This means both slowly and thoroughly.
To be totally graphic about it, you want anything you swallow to be a soupy consistency. Especially meat.
For starters, digestion starts in the mouth. There are thousands of tiny neuro-receptors in the mouth that send messages to the brain about what is about to come down the pike. These messages "prep" the entire digestive system to gear up for the meal or snack that's on the way. Fatty foods will trigger the liver to produce extra bile, and cause the gallbladder to contract. The gallbladder is a handy little sack that hangs just under the liver, collecting an extra repository of bile in case you have a Mac-attack.
Bile is extremely potent stuff (so precious to the body that 95% is recycled -- the other 5% is responsible for the wonderful deep brown color of a healthy poop. Excuse me, I mean bowel movement). Bile is the main agent for digesting fat. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Back to the mouth.
Unlike cows, birds and certain lizards, we mere humans do not have small sharp objects in our stomachs to help pulverize food into smaller morsels. We have those small sharp objects in our mouths. You got it -- they are called teeth. Please use your teeth to grind and pulverize every mouthful of food. Then, you mix the thoroughly pulverized food with as much saliva as you can muster without drooling.
Drooling is a waste of saliva, so please recognize that most circumstances don't call for drooling. You want that saliva, which is loaded with amylase, the starch-digesting enzyme, to head down the esophagus and into the stomach where phase 2 of good digestion occurs.
Second, try to avoid antacids, and this includes Tums, Rolaids, the little purple pill and countless other varieties thereof. You absolutely and desperately need your stomach acid. There's a handy book on the subject by Jonathan Wright MD (You Need Your Stomach Acid). Stomach acid serves three critical functions. It sterilizes food, it breaks down protein into amino acids which can then be absorbed into the blood stream, and it provokes the pancreas to dump "neutralizing" bicarbonate of soda into the upper small intestine to allow the absorption of nutrients into the blood stream.
Stomach acid is very caustic -- a pH of about 2, optimally, which kicks in right after swallowing. The stomach is designed to handle this level of acid. If you suffer from heartburn, you need to repair the sphincter between the end of the esophagus and the stomach. If you have gastric ulcers, you need to heal the lining of the stomach so that it can again accommodate the acid levels required for proper digestion.
Folks chronically popping antacids eventually impair their digestion, which leads to poor nutrient absorption, which ultimately leads to malnutrition including protein, mineral and vitamin deficiencies -- despite plenty of calories.
Third, please don't drink while eating. This goes along with rule # 2, above. Fluids will dilute your stomach acid and all the digestive enzymes (amylase for starch in the saliva, proteases for protein from the pancreas and lipase for fats in the bile).
The best time to drink, and pure water is definitely the best drink available, is first thing in the morning, during or around work-outs, and between meals. Sure, you can have a sip or two with meals to lubricate your swallowing. But keep the fluids with food down to a minimum.
Fourth, try to eat sitting down and in a relaxed environment. Please don't watch the news or have a heavy conversation during mealtime.
Try to establish a "mealtime" pattern for yourself. Try not to eat within 2 hours of going to bed (4 is better). Make sure to "fast" for 12 hours daily. Give your digestive system a rest. It is enormously "expensive" to digest food, especially protein. That's why people usually lose weight on high protein diets. It takes almost all the calories in the meat to digest that meat. Extra digestion, over a lifetime, will wear you out sooner. To date, the only proven method of life extension remains calorie restriction.
This doesn't mean Draconian self-denial. But it does mean no pigging out, and, as a general rule, stopping before you feel "full." If you feel peckish between meals, try drinking water before reaching for a snack. If you are hypoglycemic, ignore that advice. Some people truly need to eat smaller, more frequent meals. You will need to determine for yourself whether "grazing" works better than a mealtime scheme.
Either way, keep in mind that digestion is a parasympathetic function. You need to be calm and relaxed for the digestive juices to kick in optimally.
Fifth, strive to poop at least once a day. Excuse me; evacuate a large, easy-to-pass, dark brown, slightly fluffy, bowel movement -- optimally three times daily but most of us can't find the time for that kind of enjoyment! By fluffy I mean somewhat floating. If you have a "sinker" -- just hits the bottom of the porcelain pronto -- then it (the poop) has been in there too long, compacting and getting altogether too dense. My favorite poop fluffers include freshly ground flax seeds (1-3 tablespoons of the stuff in water or juice in the AM), or celery, or the good old apple a day. If you prefer to have sticky, foul-smelling bowel movements, then make sure to include plenty of refined carbohydrates (including candy bars) into your diet.
About the author... Dr Emily Kane is a practising naturopathic physician and licensed acupuncturist.
Friday, 9 November 2007
A Delicious Sandwich
Take Ezekiel Sesame sprouted grain bread
smear eggless egg salad on both slices
on one slice, place a couple spinach, romaine, and swiss chard leaves
add three slices roma tomatoes
a handful of broccoli sprouts
a couple slices of avocado
sprinkle with
red pepper flakes, hemp seeds, and dulse
~ENJOY~
mmmmmmmmmmm...
A Delicious Sandwich
Take Ezekiel Sesame sprouted grain bread
smear eggless egg salad on both slices
on one slice, place a couple spinach, romaine, and swiss chard leaves
add three slices roma tomatoes
a handful of broccoli sprouts
a couple slices of avocado
sprinkle with
red pepper flakes, hemp seeds, and dulse
~ENJOY~
mmmmmmmmmmm...
Thursday, 8 November 2007
Braun Citromatic!
This rawks my world!
I was in a thrift store the other day and found a small, retro citrus juicer for $5.
MINE!
I'd had my eye out for one. What a relief to put that sucker back in! :)
Simple 3 piece unit that plugs in:
Pushing the lemon down onto it is what makes the motor go and the cone turn:
This is the best part. It catches all the seeds! No more pickin' those nasty little shits out of my juice!!!
Then the top bowl removes and pours out the juice effortlessly:
SO many raw food recipes call for the juice of a lemon or half a lemon, or a tablespoon of lemon, etc that this is a real good tool! It's not just for lazy girls either, this thing PUTS OUT! Yep, more juice than hand squeezing! I'm sure there are all kinds of brands, but I'll point you in the Braun direction, since their old model works so well, I can only imagine what the bells n' whistles model is like!
UPDATE: Well blow me, Braun! They've discontinued it! Sorry! Well, here's another from Black & Decker:
I was in a thrift store the other day and found a small, retro citrus juicer for $5.
MINE!
I'd had my eye out for one. What a relief to put that sucker back in! :)
Simple 3 piece unit that plugs in:
Pushing the lemon down onto it is what makes the motor go and the cone turn:
This is the best part. It catches all the seeds! No more pickin' those nasty little shits out of my juice!!!
Then the top bowl removes and pours out the juice effortlessly:
SO many raw food recipes call for the juice of a lemon or half a lemon, or a tablespoon of lemon, etc that this is a real good tool! It's not just for lazy girls either, this thing PUTS OUT! Yep, more juice than hand squeezing! I'm sure there are all kinds of brands, but I'll point you in the Braun direction, since their old model works so well, I can only imagine what the bells n' whistles model is like!
UPDATE: Well blow me, Braun! They've discontinued it! Sorry! Well, here's another from Black & Decker:
Braun Citromatic!
This rawks my world!
I was in a thrift store the other day and found a small, retro citrus juicer for $5.
MINE!
I'd had my eye out for one. What a relief to put that sucker back in! :)
Simple 3 piece unit that plugs in:
Pushing the lemon down onto it is what makes the motor go and the cone turn:
This is the best part. It catches all the seeds! No more pickin' those nasty little shits out of my juice!!!
Then the top bowl removes and pours out the juice effortlessly:
SO many raw food recipes call for the juice of a lemon or half a lemon, or a tablespoon of lemon, etc that this is a real good tool! It's not just for lazy girls either, this thing PUTS OUT! Yep, more juice than hand squeezing! I'm sure there are all kinds of brands, but I'll point you in the Braun direction, since their old model works so well, I can only imagine what the bells n' whistles model is like!
UPDATE: Well blow me, Braun! They've discontinued it! Sorry! Well, here's another from Black & Decker:
I was in a thrift store the other day and found a small, retro citrus juicer for $5.
MINE!
I'd had my eye out for one. What a relief to put that sucker back in! :)
Simple 3 piece unit that plugs in:
Pushing the lemon down onto it is what makes the motor go and the cone turn:
This is the best part. It catches all the seeds! No more pickin' those nasty little shits out of my juice!!!
Then the top bowl removes and pours out the juice effortlessly:
SO many raw food recipes call for the juice of a lemon or half a lemon, or a tablespoon of lemon, etc that this is a real good tool! It's not just for lazy girls either, this thing PUTS OUT! Yep, more juice than hand squeezing! I'm sure there are all kinds of brands, but I'll point you in the Braun direction, since their old model works so well, I can only imagine what the bells n' whistles model is like!
UPDATE: Well blow me, Braun! They've discontinued it! Sorry! Well, here's another from Black & Decker:
Monday, 5 November 2007
Sunday, 4 November 2007
Detox Ain't fer Sissies
It seems that these days, I'm always runnin' up to Steve saying, 'Hey, can you take a look at this...?'
It's usually some rash, some weird zit that lost its way to my face and set up camp on another part of me.
He'll roll his eyes and say, 'It's a ZIT!' and I'll say...'Yeah, but...THERE?'
It's really in my face lately that I NEED to learn to trust this process and trust my body's wisdom.
Growing up in a world that medicates and band-aids everything, from burps to thoughts--has taken its toll on me. I've always been a sensitive soul with a big imagination, and my loving mama was all too happy to cuddle me when I needed it. To me, that adds up to falling right into the 'Hey would you take a look at this?' syndrome.
With eating raw, I've healed such a host of health issues that I gained a lot of confidence, and with detox, I've felt some of that confidence unravel. Not on an intellectual level, because I KNOW that detox is great, and means deep-cleaning, and means feeling discomfort instead of ultimately disease that would have taken hold if I'd kept on the path I was...pretty fab trade-off. So I know all that but where it hits me is on an emotional level. You know, the place where we're all still 4 years old...?
But I'm comin' along. The fact that for most of October I was in some form of detox or another, really made me work at receiving it gently, without freakin' out...not always easy for me...because well, this post should just be titled BIG BABY!
I've been reading a lot about natural hygiene, the art of letting your body do the work it needs to do to be optimally healthy, without any interference whatsoever. That really speaks to who I aim at being. And I'm gettin' there. Going through this is teaching me.
So what is this detox I refer to? Well, you know that pretty much up until now, I've been on a raw 'high' ...feeling the best ever in my life...? Well, that's still there, but not as amplified, because this past month, I've been feeling 'low-grade' and zitty and rashy, even a headache or two, some big-ass fatigue, and just not my glowing healthy self.
Nothin' major... just feelin' sucky. This, too, shall pass... and when it does, I'll be insufferably vibrant again!
It's usually some rash, some weird zit that lost its way to my face and set up camp on another part of me.
He'll roll his eyes and say, 'It's a ZIT!' and I'll say...'Yeah, but...THERE?'
It's really in my face lately that I NEED to learn to trust this process and trust my body's wisdom.
Growing up in a world that medicates and band-aids everything, from burps to thoughts--has taken its toll on me. I've always been a sensitive soul with a big imagination, and my loving mama was all too happy to cuddle me when I needed it. To me, that adds up to falling right into the 'Hey would you take a look at this?' syndrome.
With eating raw, I've healed such a host of health issues that I gained a lot of confidence, and with detox, I've felt some of that confidence unravel. Not on an intellectual level, because I KNOW that detox is great, and means deep-cleaning, and means feeling discomfort instead of ultimately disease that would have taken hold if I'd kept on the path I was...pretty fab trade-off. So I know all that but where it hits me is on an emotional level. You know, the place where we're all still 4 years old...?
But I'm comin' along. The fact that for most of October I was in some form of detox or another, really made me work at receiving it gently, without freakin' out...not always easy for me...because well, this post should just be titled BIG BABY!
I've been reading a lot about natural hygiene, the art of letting your body do the work it needs to do to be optimally healthy, without any interference whatsoever. That really speaks to who I aim at being. And I'm gettin' there. Going through this is teaching me.
So what is this detox I refer to? Well, you know that pretty much up until now, I've been on a raw 'high' ...feeling the best ever in my life...? Well, that's still there, but not as amplified, because this past month, I've been feeling 'low-grade' and zitty and rashy, even a headache or two, some big-ass fatigue, and just not my glowing healthy self.
Nothin' major... just feelin' sucky. This, too, shall pass... and when it does, I'll be insufferably vibrant again!
Detox Ain't fer Sissies
It seems that these days, I'm always runnin' up to Steve saying, 'Hey, can you take a look at this...?'
It's usually some rash, some weird zit that lost its way to my face and set up camp on another part of me.
He'll roll his eyes and say, 'It's a ZIT!' and I'll say...'Yeah, but...THERE?'
It's really in my face lately that I NEED to learn to trust this process and trust my body's wisdom.
Growing up in a world that medicates and band-aids everything, from burps to thoughts--has taken its toll on me. I've always been a sensitive soul with a big imagination, and my loving mama was all too happy to cuddle me when I needed it. To me, that adds up to falling right into the 'Hey would you take a look at this?' syndrome.
With eating raw, I've healed such a host of health issues that I gained a lot of confidence, and with detox, I've felt some of that confidence unravel. Not on an intellectual level, because I KNOW that detox is great, and means deep-cleaning, and means feeling discomfort instead of ultimately disease that would have taken hold if I'd kept on the path I was...pretty fab trade-off. So I know all that but where it hits me is on an emotional level. You know, the place where we're all still 4 years old...?
But I'm comin' along. The fact that for most of October I was in some form of detox or another, really made me work at receiving it gently, without freakin' out...not always easy for me...because well, this post should just be titled BIG BABY!
I've been reading a lot about natural hygiene, the art of letting your body do the work it needs to do to be optimally healthy, without any interference whatsoever. That really speaks to who I aim at being. And I'm gettin' there. Going through this is teaching me.
So what is this detox I refer to? Well, you know that pretty much up until now, I've been on a raw 'high' ...feeling the best ever in my life...? Well, that's still there, but not as amplified, because this past month, I've been feeling 'low-grade' and zitty and rashy, even a headache or two, some big-ass fatigue, and just not my glowing healthy self.
Nothin' major... just feelin' sucky. This, too, shall pass... and when it does, I'll be insufferably vibrant again!
It's usually some rash, some weird zit that lost its way to my face and set up camp on another part of me.
He'll roll his eyes and say, 'It's a ZIT!' and I'll say...'Yeah, but...THERE?'
It's really in my face lately that I NEED to learn to trust this process and trust my body's wisdom.
Growing up in a world that medicates and band-aids everything, from burps to thoughts--has taken its toll on me. I've always been a sensitive soul with a big imagination, and my loving mama was all too happy to cuddle me when I needed it. To me, that adds up to falling right into the 'Hey would you take a look at this?' syndrome.
With eating raw, I've healed such a host of health issues that I gained a lot of confidence, and with detox, I've felt some of that confidence unravel. Not on an intellectual level, because I KNOW that detox is great, and means deep-cleaning, and means feeling discomfort instead of ultimately disease that would have taken hold if I'd kept on the path I was...pretty fab trade-off. So I know all that but where it hits me is on an emotional level. You know, the place where we're all still 4 years old...?
But I'm comin' along. The fact that for most of October I was in some form of detox or another, really made me work at receiving it gently, without freakin' out...not always easy for me...because well, this post should just be titled BIG BABY!
I've been reading a lot about natural hygiene, the art of letting your body do the work it needs to do to be optimally healthy, without any interference whatsoever. That really speaks to who I aim at being. And I'm gettin' there. Going through this is teaching me.
So what is this detox I refer to? Well, you know that pretty much up until now, I've been on a raw 'high' ...feeling the best ever in my life...? Well, that's still there, but not as amplified, because this past month, I've been feeling 'low-grade' and zitty and rashy, even a headache or two, some big-ass fatigue, and just not my glowing healthy self.
Nothin' major... just feelin' sucky. This, too, shall pass... and when it does, I'll be insufferably vibrant again!
Thursday, 1 November 2007
Outsmarting Food Labels
How Food Fanufacturers Trick Consumers with Deceptive Ingredients Lists
Written by Mike Adams, 'The Health Ranger'
The myth:
Ingredients lists on food products are designed to inform consumers about what's contained in the product. The reality: ingredients lists are used by food manufacturers to deceive consumers and trick them into thinking products are healthier (or better quality) than they really are. This article explores the most common deceptions used by food manufacturers to trick consumers with food ingredients lists. It also contains useful tips for helping consumers read such labels with the proper skepticism.
Deceiving Consumers
Tricks of the food trade:
The myth:
Ingredients lists on food products are designed to inform consumers about what's contained in the product. The reality: ingredients lists are used by food manufacturers to deceive consumers and trick them into thinking products are healthier (or better quality) than they really are. This article explores the most common deceptions used by food manufacturers to trick consumers with food ingredients lists. It also contains useful tips for helping consumers read such labels with the proper skepticism.
Deceiving Consumers
Tricks of the food trade:
If the Nutrition Facts section on food packaging list all the substances that go into a food product, how can they deceive consumers? Here are a few of the most common ways:
One of the most common tricks is to distribute sugars among many ingredients so that sugars don't appear in the top three.
For example, a manufacturer may use a combination of sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup solids, brown sugar, dextrose and other sugar ingredients to make sure none of them are present in large enough quantities to attain a top position on the ingredients list (remember, the ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the food, with the most common ingredients listed first).
This fools consumers into thinking the food product isn't really made mostly of sugar while, in reality, the majority ingredients could all be different forms of sugar. It's a way to artificially shift sugar farther down the ingredients list and thereby misinform consumers about the sugar content of the whole product.
Another trick is to pad the list with miniscule amounts of great-sounding ingredients. You see this in personal care products and shampoo, too, where companies claim to offer "herbal" shampoos that have practically no detectable levels of real herbs in them.
In foods, companies pad the ingredients lists with healthy-sounding berries, herbs or superfoods that are often only present in miniscule amounts. Having "spirulina" appear at the end of the ingredients list is practically meaningless. There's not enough spirulina in the food to have any real effect on your health. This trick is called "label padding" and it's commonly used by junk food manufacturers who want to jump on the health food bandwagon without actually producing healthy foods.
Hiding dangerous ingredients:
A third trick involves hiding dangerous ingredients behind innocent-sounding names that fool consumers into thinking they're safe. The highly carcinogenic ingredient sodium nitrite, for example, sounds perfectly innocent, but it is well documented to cause brain tumors, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer and many other cancers (just search Google Scholar for sodium nitrite to see a long list of supporting research).
Carmine sounds like an innocent food coloring, but it's actually made from the smashed bodies of red cochineal beetles. Of course, nobody would eat strawberry yogurt if the ingredients listed, "Insect-based red food coloring" on the label, so instead, they just call it "carmine." Similarly, yeast extract sounds like a perfect safe food ingredient, too, but it's actually a trick used to hide monosodium glutamate (MSG, a chemical taste enhancer used to excite the flavors of overly-processed foods) without having to list MSG on the label. Lots of ingredients contain hidden MSG, and I've written extensively about them on my site. Virtually all hydrolyzed or autolyzed ingredients contain some amount of hidden MSG.
Don't be fooled by the name of the product:
Did you know that the name of the food product has nothing to do with what's in it? Brand-name food companies make products like "Guacamole Dip" that contains no avocado! Instead, they're made with hydrogenated soybean oil and artificial green coloring chemicals. But gullible consumers keep on buying these products, thinking they're getting avocado dip when, in reality, they're buying green-colored, yummy-tasting dietary poison.
Food names can include words that describe ingredients not found in the food at all. A "cheese" cracker, for example, doesn't have to contain any cheese. A "creamy" something doesn't have to contain cream. A "fruit" product need not contain even a single molecule of fruit. Don't be fooled by product names printed on the packaging. These names are designed to sell products, not to accurately describe the ingredients contained in the package.
Ingredients lists don't include contaminants:
There is no requirement for food ingredients lists to include the names of chemical contaminants, heavy metals, bisphenol-A, PCBs, perchlorate or other toxic substances found in the food. As a result, ingredients lists don't really list what's actually in the food, they only list what the manufacturer wants you to believe is in the food. This is by design, of course. Requirements for listing food ingredients were created by a joint effort between the government and private industry (food corporations.)
For example, a manufacturer may use a combination of sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup solids, brown sugar, dextrose and other sugar ingredients to make sure none of them are present in large enough quantities to attain a top position on the ingredients list (remember, the ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the food, with the most common ingredients listed first).
This fools consumers into thinking the food product isn't really made mostly of sugar while, in reality, the majority ingredients could all be different forms of sugar. It's a way to artificially shift sugar farther down the ingredients list and thereby misinform consumers about the sugar content of the whole product.
Another trick is to pad the list with miniscule amounts of great-sounding ingredients. You see this in personal care products and shampoo, too, where companies claim to offer "herbal" shampoos that have practically no detectable levels of real herbs in them.
In foods, companies pad the ingredients lists with healthy-sounding berries, herbs or superfoods that are often only present in miniscule amounts. Having "spirulina" appear at the end of the ingredients list is practically meaningless. There's not enough spirulina in the food to have any real effect on your health. This trick is called "label padding" and it's commonly used by junk food manufacturers who want to jump on the health food bandwagon without actually producing healthy foods.
Hiding dangerous ingredients:
A third trick involves hiding dangerous ingredients behind innocent-sounding names that fool consumers into thinking they're safe. The highly carcinogenic ingredient sodium nitrite, for example, sounds perfectly innocent, but it is well documented to cause brain tumors, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer and many other cancers (just search Google Scholar for sodium nitrite to see a long list of supporting research).
Carmine sounds like an innocent food coloring, but it's actually made from the smashed bodies of red cochineal beetles. Of course, nobody would eat strawberry yogurt if the ingredients listed, "Insect-based red food coloring" on the label, so instead, they just call it "carmine." Similarly, yeast extract sounds like a perfect safe food ingredient, too, but it's actually a trick used to hide monosodium glutamate (MSG, a chemical taste enhancer used to excite the flavors of overly-processed foods) without having to list MSG on the label. Lots of ingredients contain hidden MSG, and I've written extensively about them on my site. Virtually all hydrolyzed or autolyzed ingredients contain some amount of hidden MSG.
Don't be fooled by the name of the product:
Did you know that the name of the food product has nothing to do with what's in it? Brand-name food companies make products like "Guacamole Dip" that contains no avocado! Instead, they're made with hydrogenated soybean oil and artificial green coloring chemicals. But gullible consumers keep on buying these products, thinking they're getting avocado dip when, in reality, they're buying green-colored, yummy-tasting dietary poison.
Food names can include words that describe ingredients not found in the food at all. A "cheese" cracker, for example, doesn't have to contain any cheese. A "creamy" something doesn't have to contain cream. A "fruit" product need not contain even a single molecule of fruit. Don't be fooled by product names printed on the packaging. These names are designed to sell products, not to accurately describe the ingredients contained in the package.
Ingredients lists don't include contaminants:
There is no requirement for food ingredients lists to include the names of chemical contaminants, heavy metals, bisphenol-A, PCBs, perchlorate or other toxic substances found in the food. As a result, ingredients lists don't really list what's actually in the food, they only list what the manufacturer wants you to believe is in the food. This is by design, of course. Requirements for listing food ingredients were created by a joint effort between the government and private industry (food corporations.)
In the beginning, food corporations didn't want to be required to list any ingredients at all. They claimed the ingredients were "proprietary knowledge" and that listing them would destroy their business by disclosing their secret manufacturing recipes. It's all nonsense, of course, since food companies primarily want to keep consumers ignorant of what's really in their products. That's why there is still no requirement to list various chemical contaminants, pesticides, heavy metals and other substances that have a direct and substantial impact on the health of consumers. (For years, food companies fought hard against the listing of trans fatty acids, too, and it was only after a massive public health outcry by consumer health groups that the FDA finally forced food companies to include trans fats on the label.)
Manipulating serving sizes:
Food companies have also figured out how to manipulate the serving size of foods in order to make it appear that their products are devoid of harmful ingredients like trans fatty acids. The FDA, you see, created a loophole for reporting trans fatty acids on the label: Any food containing 0.5 grams or less of trans fatty acids per serving is allowed to claim ZERO trans fats on the label. That's FDA logic for you, where 0.5 = 0. But fuzzy math isn't the only game played by the FDA to protect the commercial interests of the industry is claims to regulate.
Manipulating serving sizes:
Food companies have also figured out how to manipulate the serving size of foods in order to make it appear that their products are devoid of harmful ingredients like trans fatty acids. The FDA, you see, created a loophole for reporting trans fatty acids on the label: Any food containing 0.5 grams or less of trans fatty acids per serving is allowed to claim ZERO trans fats on the label. That's FDA logic for you, where 0.5 = 0. But fuzzy math isn't the only game played by the FDA to protect the commercial interests of the industry is claims to regulate.
Exploiting this 0.5 gram loophole, companies arbitrarily reduce the serving sizes of their foods to ridiculous levels -- just enough to bring the trans fats down to 0.5 grams per serving. Then they loudly proclaim on the front of the box, "ZERO Trans Fats!" In reality, the product may be loaded with trans fats (found in hydrogenated oils), but the serving size has been reduced to a weight that might only be appropriate for feeding a ground squirrel, not a human being.
The next time you pick up a grocery product, checking out the "No. of servings" line in the Nutrition Facts box. You'll likely find some ridiculously high number there that has nothing to do with reality. A cookie manufacturer, for example, might claim that one cookie is an entire "serving" of cookies. But do you know anyone who actually eats just one cookie? If one cookie contains 0.5 grams of trans fatty acids, the manufacturer can claim the entire package of cookies is "Trans Fat FREE!"
In reality, however, the package might contain 30 cookies, each with 0.5 grams of trans fats, which comes out to 15 grams total in the package (but that assumes people can actually do math, which is of course made all the more difficult by the fact that hydrogenated oils actually harm the brain. But trust me: 30 cookies x 0.5 grams per cookie really does come out to 15 grams total).This is how you get a package of cookies containing 15 grams of trans fats (which is a huge dose of dietary poison) while claiming to contain ZERO grams. Again, it's just another example of how food companies use Nutrition Facts and ingredients lists to deceive, not inform, consumers.
Here are some additional tips for successfully decoding ingredients list labels:
Tips for reading ingredients labels
1. Remember that ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the product. This means the first 3 ingredients matter far more than anything else. The top 3 ingredients are what you're primarily eating.
2. If the ingredients list contains long, chemical-sounding words that you can't pronounce, avoid that item. It likely does contain various toxi chemicals. Why would you want to eat them? Stick with ingredients you recognize.
3. Don't be fooled by fancy-sounding herbs or other ingredients that appear very far down the list. Some food manufacturer that includes "goji berries" towards the end of the list is probably just using it as a marketing gimmick on the label. The actual amount of goji berries in the product is likely miniscule.
4. Remember that ingredients lists don't have to list chemical contaminants. Foods can be contaminated with pesticides, solvents, acrylamides, PFOA, perchlorate (rocket fuel) and other toxic chemicals without needing to list them at all. The best way to minimize your ingestion of toxic chemicals is to buy organic, or go with fresh, minimally-processed foods.
5. Look for words like "sprouted" or "raw" to indicate higher-quality natural foods. Sprouted grains and seeds are far healthier than non-sprouted. Raw ingredients are generally healthier than processed or cooked. Whole grains are healthier than "enriched" grains.
6. Don't be fooled by the word "wheat" when it comes to flour. All flour derived from wheat can be called "wheat flour," even if it is processed, bleached and stripped of its nutrition. Only "whole grain wheat flour" is a healthful form of wheat flour. (Many consumers mistakenly believe that "wheat flour" products are whole grain products. In fact, this is not true. Food manufacturers fool consumers with this trick.)
7. Don't be fooled into thinking that brown products are healthier than white products. Brown sugar is a gimmick -- it's just white sugar with brown coloring and flavoring added. Brown eggs are no different than white eggs (except for the fact that their shells appear brown). Brown bread may be no healthier than white bread, either, unless it's made with whole grains. Don't be tricked by "brown" foods. These are just gimmicks used by food giants to fool consumers into paying more for manufactured food products.
8. Watch out for deceptively small serving sizes. Food manufacturers use this trick to reduce the number of calories, grams of sugar or grams of fat believed to be in the food by consumers. Many serving sizes are arbitrary and have no basis in reality.
The next time you pick up a grocery product, checking out the "No. of servings" line in the Nutrition Facts box. You'll likely find some ridiculously high number there that has nothing to do with reality. A cookie manufacturer, for example, might claim that one cookie is an entire "serving" of cookies. But do you know anyone who actually eats just one cookie? If one cookie contains 0.5 grams of trans fatty acids, the manufacturer can claim the entire package of cookies is "Trans Fat FREE!"
In reality, however, the package might contain 30 cookies, each with 0.5 grams of trans fats, which comes out to 15 grams total in the package (but that assumes people can actually do math, which is of course made all the more difficult by the fact that hydrogenated oils actually harm the brain. But trust me: 30 cookies x 0.5 grams per cookie really does come out to 15 grams total).This is how you get a package of cookies containing 15 grams of trans fats (which is a huge dose of dietary poison) while claiming to contain ZERO grams. Again, it's just another example of how food companies use Nutrition Facts and ingredients lists to deceive, not inform, consumers.
Here are some additional tips for successfully decoding ingredients list labels:
Tips for reading ingredients labels
1. Remember that ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the product. This means the first 3 ingredients matter far more than anything else. The top 3 ingredients are what you're primarily eating.
2. If the ingredients list contains long, chemical-sounding words that you can't pronounce, avoid that item. It likely does contain various toxi chemicals. Why would you want to eat them? Stick with ingredients you recognize.
3. Don't be fooled by fancy-sounding herbs or other ingredients that appear very far down the list. Some food manufacturer that includes "goji berries" towards the end of the list is probably just using it as a marketing gimmick on the label. The actual amount of goji berries in the product is likely miniscule.
4. Remember that ingredients lists don't have to list chemical contaminants. Foods can be contaminated with pesticides, solvents, acrylamides, PFOA, perchlorate (rocket fuel) and other toxic chemicals without needing to list them at all. The best way to minimize your ingestion of toxic chemicals is to buy organic, or go with fresh, minimally-processed foods.
5. Look for words like "sprouted" or "raw" to indicate higher-quality natural foods. Sprouted grains and seeds are far healthier than non-sprouted. Raw ingredients are generally healthier than processed or cooked. Whole grains are healthier than "enriched" grains.
6. Don't be fooled by the word "wheat" when it comes to flour. All flour derived from wheat can be called "wheat flour," even if it is processed, bleached and stripped of its nutrition. Only "whole grain wheat flour" is a healthful form of wheat flour. (Many consumers mistakenly believe that "wheat flour" products are whole grain products. In fact, this is not true. Food manufacturers fool consumers with this trick.)
7. Don't be fooled into thinking that brown products are healthier than white products. Brown sugar is a gimmick -- it's just white sugar with brown coloring and flavoring added. Brown eggs are no different than white eggs (except for the fact that their shells appear brown). Brown bread may be no healthier than white bread, either, unless it's made with whole grains. Don't be tricked by "brown" foods. These are just gimmicks used by food giants to fool consumers into paying more for manufactured food products.
8. Watch out for deceptively small serving sizes. Food manufacturers use this trick to reduce the number of calories, grams of sugar or grams of fat believed to be in the food by consumers. Many serving sizes are arbitrary and have no basis in reality.
9. Want to know how to really shop for foods? Download our free Honest Food Guide, the honest reference to foods that has now been downloaded by over 800,000 people. It's a replacement for the USDA's highly corrupt and manipulated Food Guide Pyramid, which is little more than a marketing document for the dairy industry and big food corporations. The Honest Food Guide is an independent, nutritionally-sound reference document that reveals exactly what to eat (and what to avoid) to maximize your health.
Outsmarting Food Labels
How Food Fanufacturers Trick Consumers with Deceptive Ingredients Lists
Written by Mike Adams, 'The Health Ranger'
The myth:
Ingredients lists on food products are designed to inform consumers about what's contained in the product. The reality: ingredients lists are used by food manufacturers to deceive consumers and trick them into thinking products are healthier (or better quality) than they really are. This article explores the most common deceptions used by food manufacturers to trick consumers with food ingredients lists. It also contains useful tips for helping consumers read such labels with the proper skepticism.
Deceiving Consumers
Tricks of the food trade:
The myth:
Ingredients lists on food products are designed to inform consumers about what's contained in the product. The reality: ingredients lists are used by food manufacturers to deceive consumers and trick them into thinking products are healthier (or better quality) than they really are. This article explores the most common deceptions used by food manufacturers to trick consumers with food ingredients lists. It also contains useful tips for helping consumers read such labels with the proper skepticism.
Deceiving Consumers
Tricks of the food trade:
If the Nutrition Facts section on food packaging list all the substances that go into a food product, how can they deceive consumers? Here are a few of the most common ways:
One of the most common tricks is to distribute sugars among many ingredients so that sugars don't appear in the top three.
For example, a manufacturer may use a combination of sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup solids, brown sugar, dextrose and other sugar ingredients to make sure none of them are present in large enough quantities to attain a top position on the ingredients list (remember, the ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the food, with the most common ingredients listed first).
This fools consumers into thinking the food product isn't really made mostly of sugar while, in reality, the majority ingredients could all be different forms of sugar. It's a way to artificially shift sugar farther down the ingredients list and thereby misinform consumers about the sugar content of the whole product.
Another trick is to pad the list with miniscule amounts of great-sounding ingredients. You see this in personal care products and shampoo, too, where companies claim to offer "herbal" shampoos that have practically no detectable levels of real herbs in them.
In foods, companies pad the ingredients lists with healthy-sounding berries, herbs or superfoods that are often only present in miniscule amounts. Having "spirulina" appear at the end of the ingredients list is practically meaningless. There's not enough spirulina in the food to have any real effect on your health. This trick is called "label padding" and it's commonly used by junk food manufacturers who want to jump on the health food bandwagon without actually producing healthy foods.
Hiding dangerous ingredients:
A third trick involves hiding dangerous ingredients behind innocent-sounding names that fool consumers into thinking they're safe. The highly carcinogenic ingredient sodium nitrite, for example, sounds perfectly innocent, but it is well documented to cause brain tumors, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer and many other cancers (just search Google Scholar for sodium nitrite to see a long list of supporting research).
Carmine sounds like an innocent food coloring, but it's actually made from the smashed bodies of red cochineal beetles. Of course, nobody would eat strawberry yogurt if the ingredients listed, "Insect-based red food coloring" on the label, so instead, they just call it "carmine." Similarly, yeast extract sounds like a perfect safe food ingredient, too, but it's actually a trick used to hide monosodium glutamate (MSG, a chemical taste enhancer used to excite the flavors of overly-processed foods) without having to list MSG on the label. Lots of ingredients contain hidden MSG, and I've written extensively about them on my site. Virtually all hydrolyzed or autolyzed ingredients contain some amount of hidden MSG.
Don't be fooled by the name of the product:
Did you know that the name of the food product has nothing to do with what's in it? Brand-name food companies make products like "Guacamole Dip" that contains no avocado! Instead, they're made with hydrogenated soybean oil and artificial green coloring chemicals. But gullible consumers keep on buying these products, thinking they're getting avocado dip when, in reality, they're buying green-colored, yummy-tasting dietary poison.
Food names can include words that describe ingredients not found in the food at all. A "cheese" cracker, for example, doesn't have to contain any cheese. A "creamy" something doesn't have to contain cream. A "fruit" product need not contain even a single molecule of fruit. Don't be fooled by product names printed on the packaging. These names are designed to sell products, not to accurately describe the ingredients contained in the package.
Ingredients lists don't include contaminants:
There is no requirement for food ingredients lists to include the names of chemical contaminants, heavy metals, bisphenol-A, PCBs, perchlorate or other toxic substances found in the food. As a result, ingredients lists don't really list what's actually in the food, they only list what the manufacturer wants you to believe is in the food. This is by design, of course. Requirements for listing food ingredients were created by a joint effort between the government and private industry (food corporations.)
For example, a manufacturer may use a combination of sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup solids, brown sugar, dextrose and other sugar ingredients to make sure none of them are present in large enough quantities to attain a top position on the ingredients list (remember, the ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the food, with the most common ingredients listed first).
This fools consumers into thinking the food product isn't really made mostly of sugar while, in reality, the majority ingredients could all be different forms of sugar. It's a way to artificially shift sugar farther down the ingredients list and thereby misinform consumers about the sugar content of the whole product.
Another trick is to pad the list with miniscule amounts of great-sounding ingredients. You see this in personal care products and shampoo, too, where companies claim to offer "herbal" shampoos that have practically no detectable levels of real herbs in them.
In foods, companies pad the ingredients lists with healthy-sounding berries, herbs or superfoods that are often only present in miniscule amounts. Having "spirulina" appear at the end of the ingredients list is practically meaningless. There's not enough spirulina in the food to have any real effect on your health. This trick is called "label padding" and it's commonly used by junk food manufacturers who want to jump on the health food bandwagon without actually producing healthy foods.
Hiding dangerous ingredients:
A third trick involves hiding dangerous ingredients behind innocent-sounding names that fool consumers into thinking they're safe. The highly carcinogenic ingredient sodium nitrite, for example, sounds perfectly innocent, but it is well documented to cause brain tumors, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer and many other cancers (just search Google Scholar for sodium nitrite to see a long list of supporting research).
Carmine sounds like an innocent food coloring, but it's actually made from the smashed bodies of red cochineal beetles. Of course, nobody would eat strawberry yogurt if the ingredients listed, "Insect-based red food coloring" on the label, so instead, they just call it "carmine." Similarly, yeast extract sounds like a perfect safe food ingredient, too, but it's actually a trick used to hide monosodium glutamate (MSG, a chemical taste enhancer used to excite the flavors of overly-processed foods) without having to list MSG on the label. Lots of ingredients contain hidden MSG, and I've written extensively about them on my site. Virtually all hydrolyzed or autolyzed ingredients contain some amount of hidden MSG.
Don't be fooled by the name of the product:
Did you know that the name of the food product has nothing to do with what's in it? Brand-name food companies make products like "Guacamole Dip" that contains no avocado! Instead, they're made with hydrogenated soybean oil and artificial green coloring chemicals. But gullible consumers keep on buying these products, thinking they're getting avocado dip when, in reality, they're buying green-colored, yummy-tasting dietary poison.
Food names can include words that describe ingredients not found in the food at all. A "cheese" cracker, for example, doesn't have to contain any cheese. A "creamy" something doesn't have to contain cream. A "fruit" product need not contain even a single molecule of fruit. Don't be fooled by product names printed on the packaging. These names are designed to sell products, not to accurately describe the ingredients contained in the package.
Ingredients lists don't include contaminants:
There is no requirement for food ingredients lists to include the names of chemical contaminants, heavy metals, bisphenol-A, PCBs, perchlorate or other toxic substances found in the food. As a result, ingredients lists don't really list what's actually in the food, they only list what the manufacturer wants you to believe is in the food. This is by design, of course. Requirements for listing food ingredients were created by a joint effort between the government and private industry (food corporations.)
In the beginning, food corporations didn't want to be required to list any ingredients at all. They claimed the ingredients were "proprietary knowledge" and that listing them would destroy their business by disclosing their secret manufacturing recipes. It's all nonsense, of course, since food companies primarily want to keep consumers ignorant of what's really in their products. That's why there is still no requirement to list various chemical contaminants, pesticides, heavy metals and other substances that have a direct and substantial impact on the health of consumers. (For years, food companies fought hard against the listing of trans fatty acids, too, and it was only after a massive public health outcry by consumer health groups that the FDA finally forced food companies to include trans fats on the label.)
Manipulating serving sizes:
Food companies have also figured out how to manipulate the serving size of foods in order to make it appear that their products are devoid of harmful ingredients like trans fatty acids. The FDA, you see, created a loophole for reporting trans fatty acids on the label: Any food containing 0.5 grams or less of trans fatty acids per serving is allowed to claim ZERO trans fats on the label. That's FDA logic for you, where 0.5 = 0. But fuzzy math isn't the only game played by the FDA to protect the commercial interests of the industry is claims to regulate.
Manipulating serving sizes:
Food companies have also figured out how to manipulate the serving size of foods in order to make it appear that their products are devoid of harmful ingredients like trans fatty acids. The FDA, you see, created a loophole for reporting trans fatty acids on the label: Any food containing 0.5 grams or less of trans fatty acids per serving is allowed to claim ZERO trans fats on the label. That's FDA logic for you, where 0.5 = 0. But fuzzy math isn't the only game played by the FDA to protect the commercial interests of the industry is claims to regulate.
Exploiting this 0.5 gram loophole, companies arbitrarily reduce the serving sizes of their foods to ridiculous levels -- just enough to bring the trans fats down to 0.5 grams per serving. Then they loudly proclaim on the front of the box, "ZERO Trans Fats!" In reality, the product may be loaded with trans fats (found in hydrogenated oils), but the serving size has been reduced to a weight that might only be appropriate for feeding a ground squirrel, not a human being.
The next time you pick up a grocery product, checking out the "No. of servings" line in the Nutrition Facts box. You'll likely find some ridiculously high number there that has nothing to do with reality. A cookie manufacturer, for example, might claim that one cookie is an entire "serving" of cookies. But do you know anyone who actually eats just one cookie? If one cookie contains 0.5 grams of trans fatty acids, the manufacturer can claim the entire package of cookies is "Trans Fat FREE!"
In reality, however, the package might contain 30 cookies, each with 0.5 grams of trans fats, which comes out to 15 grams total in the package (but that assumes people can actually do math, which is of course made all the more difficult by the fact that hydrogenated oils actually harm the brain. But trust me: 30 cookies x 0.5 grams per cookie really does come out to 15 grams total).This is how you get a package of cookies containing 15 grams of trans fats (which is a huge dose of dietary poison) while claiming to contain ZERO grams. Again, it's just another example of how food companies use Nutrition Facts and ingredients lists to deceive, not inform, consumers.
Here are some additional tips for successfully decoding ingredients list labels:
Tips for reading ingredients labels
1. Remember that ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the product. This means the first 3 ingredients matter far more than anything else. The top 3 ingredients are what you're primarily eating.
2. If the ingredients list contains long, chemical-sounding words that you can't pronounce, avoid that item. It likely does contain various toxi chemicals. Why would you want to eat them? Stick with ingredients you recognize.
3. Don't be fooled by fancy-sounding herbs or other ingredients that appear very far down the list. Some food manufacturer that includes "goji berries" towards the end of the list is probably just using it as a marketing gimmick on the label. The actual amount of goji berries in the product is likely miniscule.
4. Remember that ingredients lists don't have to list chemical contaminants. Foods can be contaminated with pesticides, solvents, acrylamides, PFOA, perchlorate (rocket fuel) and other toxic chemicals without needing to list them at all. The best way to minimize your ingestion of toxic chemicals is to buy organic, or go with fresh, minimally-processed foods.
5. Look for words like "sprouted" or "raw" to indicate higher-quality natural foods. Sprouted grains and seeds are far healthier than non-sprouted. Raw ingredients are generally healthier than processed or cooked. Whole grains are healthier than "enriched" grains.
6. Don't be fooled by the word "wheat" when it comes to flour. All flour derived from wheat can be called "wheat flour," even if it is processed, bleached and stripped of its nutrition. Only "whole grain wheat flour" is a healthful form of wheat flour. (Many consumers mistakenly believe that "wheat flour" products are whole grain products. In fact, this is not true. Food manufacturers fool consumers with this trick.)
7. Don't be fooled into thinking that brown products are healthier than white products. Brown sugar is a gimmick -- it's just white sugar with brown coloring and flavoring added. Brown eggs are no different than white eggs (except for the fact that their shells appear brown). Brown bread may be no healthier than white bread, either, unless it's made with whole grains. Don't be tricked by "brown" foods. These are just gimmicks used by food giants to fool consumers into paying more for manufactured food products.
8. Watch out for deceptively small serving sizes. Food manufacturers use this trick to reduce the number of calories, grams of sugar or grams of fat believed to be in the food by consumers. Many serving sizes are arbitrary and have no basis in reality.
The next time you pick up a grocery product, checking out the "No. of servings" line in the Nutrition Facts box. You'll likely find some ridiculously high number there that has nothing to do with reality. A cookie manufacturer, for example, might claim that one cookie is an entire "serving" of cookies. But do you know anyone who actually eats just one cookie? If one cookie contains 0.5 grams of trans fatty acids, the manufacturer can claim the entire package of cookies is "Trans Fat FREE!"
In reality, however, the package might contain 30 cookies, each with 0.5 grams of trans fats, which comes out to 15 grams total in the package (but that assumes people can actually do math, which is of course made all the more difficult by the fact that hydrogenated oils actually harm the brain. But trust me: 30 cookies x 0.5 grams per cookie really does come out to 15 grams total).This is how you get a package of cookies containing 15 grams of trans fats (which is a huge dose of dietary poison) while claiming to contain ZERO grams. Again, it's just another example of how food companies use Nutrition Facts and ingredients lists to deceive, not inform, consumers.
Here are some additional tips for successfully decoding ingredients list labels:
Tips for reading ingredients labels
1. Remember that ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the product. This means the first 3 ingredients matter far more than anything else. The top 3 ingredients are what you're primarily eating.
2. If the ingredients list contains long, chemical-sounding words that you can't pronounce, avoid that item. It likely does contain various toxi chemicals. Why would you want to eat them? Stick with ingredients you recognize.
3. Don't be fooled by fancy-sounding herbs or other ingredients that appear very far down the list. Some food manufacturer that includes "goji berries" towards the end of the list is probably just using it as a marketing gimmick on the label. The actual amount of goji berries in the product is likely miniscule.
4. Remember that ingredients lists don't have to list chemical contaminants. Foods can be contaminated with pesticides, solvents, acrylamides, PFOA, perchlorate (rocket fuel) and other toxic chemicals without needing to list them at all. The best way to minimize your ingestion of toxic chemicals is to buy organic, or go with fresh, minimally-processed foods.
5. Look for words like "sprouted" or "raw" to indicate higher-quality natural foods. Sprouted grains and seeds are far healthier than non-sprouted. Raw ingredients are generally healthier than processed or cooked. Whole grains are healthier than "enriched" grains.
6. Don't be fooled by the word "wheat" when it comes to flour. All flour derived from wheat can be called "wheat flour," even if it is processed, bleached and stripped of its nutrition. Only "whole grain wheat flour" is a healthful form of wheat flour. (Many consumers mistakenly believe that "wheat flour" products are whole grain products. In fact, this is not true. Food manufacturers fool consumers with this trick.)
7. Don't be fooled into thinking that brown products are healthier than white products. Brown sugar is a gimmick -- it's just white sugar with brown coloring and flavoring added. Brown eggs are no different than white eggs (except for the fact that their shells appear brown). Brown bread may be no healthier than white bread, either, unless it's made with whole grains. Don't be tricked by "brown" foods. These are just gimmicks used by food giants to fool consumers into paying more for manufactured food products.
8. Watch out for deceptively small serving sizes. Food manufacturers use this trick to reduce the number of calories, grams of sugar or grams of fat believed to be in the food by consumers. Many serving sizes are arbitrary and have no basis in reality.
9. Want to know how to really shop for foods? Download our free Honest Food Guide, the honest reference to foods that has now been downloaded by over 800,000 people. It's a replacement for the USDA's highly corrupt and manipulated Food Guide Pyramid, which is little more than a marketing document for the dairy industry and big food corporations. The Honest Food Guide is an independent, nutritionally-sound reference document that reveals exactly what to eat (and what to avoid) to maximize your health.
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