I was in Publix last night shopping for last minute ingredients for our cookbookette recipes, when I found myself casually perusing the aisles. I wasn't hungry or looking for anything to buy as my dorm is stocked with snacks. However, I soon came to realize the daunting amounts of "nutrient-rich" foods I was surrounded by. There was certified Whole Grain cereal beside Kashi "All-Natural" ingredient cereal bars not far from "fat-free" rice cakes and "protein-rich" BearNaked granola. This is when I realized the horror that science has forced upon our foods. I realize that science has done many great things, but food is something not to mess with. This is the fuel for our bodies and comfort for the soul and cannot be substituted for by anything produced in a lab. There is a reason these nutrients are deemed "simulated," because if they were real they would in-fact be the nutrients themselves. It is a pity to see sweet marmalade outlined as "sugar-free" and "fiber-full." These two characteristics are emphasized more than the good itself by larger, darker print.
My biggest question is this: How in the world do you just take the fat out of something? And how can you simply take the lactose out of creamer? There can't be anything good going on in these labs to do this. I am not saying scientists are evil people out to take over the world, but really how healthy can fake food be for our bodies? The human body is a mystery, a complicated, complex mystery that cannot simply be toyed around with without compensation of an individual's well-being. The less ingredients the better is something I have learned. When I went to purchase the ingredients for all of my group's recipes, I realized that these foods don't take much to make. There aren't a list of forty ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies. So why are there forty ingredients in sugar-free instant hot cocoa? Can't anything be made with simple ingredients anymore? (i.e. milk, cocoa, and sugar??) Isn't that how grandma made it?
Here is an interesting article on the subject:
ReplyDeletehttp://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100247679
One of the main problems it seems with processed foods is not what is taken out but what is added in, mainly more sugar, corn syrup and refined carbs. Another aspect is that corn syrup is a lot cheaper than imported sugar. As long as people keep purchasing refined food products with corn syrup, companies have no reason to stop making them.
Thought I really need to go on a diet to lose my weight, I never take sugar-free foods or drinks. These foods always use aspartame instead of sugar to make the food sweet and low-calories at the same. But some researchs show that taking aspartame can cause brain tumor, lymphoma, and some other diseases. Horrible!
ReplyDeleteMost of the time when they have fat-free or sugar-free products, they don't actually take the ingredient out of the product. Usually, they make the food with a substitute instead.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best examples of this is sugar. There are several natural-occurring sugars including fructose and glucose, but there are also dozens of artificial sweeteners on the market. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages, but companies can just put a sugar-free label on something and include an artificial sweetener instead.
To people like me who read that and assume it's healthy, it's awfully misleading. Unless you do research on a topic such as this and learn to read labels down to the most detailed little parts, you often won't know exactly what you're consuming. What may seem to be healthy is often misleading, and I honestly don't know what is and what isn't truely good for me.
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