dawnmh22
Cathlete
I just received "Eat This not that" and read some interesting things I wanted to share......
Eat This Not That......Whats the real story.....The food we consume today is simply different from that Americans ate 20 or 30 years ago and the reasons are as simple as they are sneaky.
We've added extra calories to traditional food-
In the early 1970's food manufacturers,looking for a cheaper ingredient to replace sugar,came up with a substance called High Fructose Corn Syrup.This new invention made perfect sense: corn was cheap and adundant -thanks to heavy government subsidies -and Americans had an ever-escalating desire for sweet foods. Today,HFCS is in an unbelieveable array of foods-everything from breakfast cereals to bread,from ketchup to pasta sauce,from juice boxes to iced tea. While most current research concludes that the body metabolizes HFCS in the same way it does ordinary sugar, this synthetic sweetner has a few sneaky"Advantages"Its cheaper to produce,it has a longer shelf life,and its liquid form makes it easy to incorporate into the types of products that never received the sugar treatments before(read whole grain bread). So Grandmas pasta sauce now comes in a jar,and its loaded with stuff just perfect for adding meat to your bones and flab on your belly.
We've been trained to super size it.
Its seems like Economics 101:If you can get a lot more just for a few cents more,then it makes all the sense in the world to upgrade to the"Value Meal" And since this trick has worked so well for fast-food marketers,your average product in the supermarket has become Hulkifiedas well. The problem is the way we look at food we should be looking at cutting down on our calories,not adding to them.
We've laced our food with time bombs
. A generation ago, it was hard for food manufactures to create baked goods that would last on stores shelves. Most baked goods require oils,and oil leaks at room temperature. But since the 1960's, manufacturers have been baking with -- and restaurateurs have been frying with something called "Trans Fats" Trans fats are cheaper and effective. It makes potatoes chips crispier and cookies tastier, and it lets fry cooks make pound after pound of fries without smoking up their kitchens. The downside: Trans Fats increases your bad cholesterol,lowers your good cholesterol, and greatly increases of heart disease.
Our fruits and vegetables are not healthy as they once were.
Researchers in a study in the journal of the American College of Nutrition tested 43 different garden crops for nutritional content and discovered that 6 out of 13 nutrients showed major declines between1950 and 1999: protein,calcium,phosphorus,iron,riboflavin,and ascorbic acid(vitamin C). Researchers say the declines are probably due to farmers efforts to achieve higher yields and plants that grow faster and can be picked earlier. As a result,the plants are not able to make or take in nutrients at the same rate.
Even the animals we eat are different today.
Heres'a terrifying statistic: The average piece of chicken has 266% more fat than it did 1971,while its protein content has dropped by a third,according to researchers. Because we no longer eat chickens that roam the farm eating bugs and grasses--today they are kept in cages andfed antibiotic -laced soy and corn and other unnatural food--todays chicken is actually higher in fat than it is in protein.(If that is what modern food management is doing to chickens,imagine what its doing to us!)
We're drinking more Calories than ever.
A study from a University found that we consume 450 calories a day from beverages,nearly twice as many as 30 years ago. This Increase amounts to an extra 23 pounds a year that were forced to work off-or carry around with us. Many of the calories come from HFCS in our drinks-especially ,when it comes to kids ,in our fruit drinks that are often nothing more than water,food coloring,and sweetner. In fact,anything you have for your kids to drink in your fridge right now-unless its water,milk,or diet soda-probably has HFCS in it, Go ahead read the label.
We don't even know whats in our foods
more and more,marketers are adding new types of preservatives,fats,sugars,and other food substances to our daily meals.Indeed,there are now more than 3,000 ingredients on the FDA's list of"safe" additives,and any one of them could end up on your plate. But often, they go unexplained(what is xanthan gum,anyway?)or ,in the case of restaurant food,unmentioned. Unless were eating it right off the tree,its hard to know what,exactly is in that fruity dish.
"The Little Bonus Ingredients the FDA allows in your food"
Canned Pineapple - 20% Moldy Fruit
Canned Tomatoes - 5 fly eggs or 2 maggots per 500 grams
Frozen Broccoli - 60 mites per 100 grams
Ground Cinnamon - 400 insect fragments or 11 rodent hairs per 50 grams
Peanut Butter - 30 insect fragments or 1 rodent hair per 100 grams
Popcorn - 1 rodent pellet in one sample or 2 rodent hairs per pound
Potatoe Chips- 6% rotten potatoes
Eat This Not That......Whats the real story.....The food we consume today is simply different from that Americans ate 20 or 30 years ago and the reasons are as simple as they are sneaky.
We've added extra calories to traditional food-
In the early 1970's food manufacturers,looking for a cheaper ingredient to replace sugar,came up with a substance called High Fructose Corn Syrup.This new invention made perfect sense: corn was cheap and adundant -thanks to heavy government subsidies -and Americans had an ever-escalating desire for sweet foods. Today,HFCS is in an unbelieveable array of foods-everything from breakfast cereals to bread,from ketchup to pasta sauce,from juice boxes to iced tea. While most current research concludes that the body metabolizes HFCS in the same way it does ordinary sugar, this synthetic sweetner has a few sneaky"Advantages"Its cheaper to produce,it has a longer shelf life,and its liquid form makes it easy to incorporate into the types of products that never received the sugar treatments before(read whole grain bread). So Grandmas pasta sauce now comes in a jar,and its loaded with stuff just perfect for adding meat to your bones and flab on your belly.
We've been trained to super size it.
Its seems like Economics 101:If you can get a lot more just for a few cents more,then it makes all the sense in the world to upgrade to the"Value Meal" And since this trick has worked so well for fast-food marketers,your average product in the supermarket has become Hulkifiedas well. The problem is the way we look at food we should be looking at cutting down on our calories,not adding to them.
We've laced our food with time bombs
. A generation ago, it was hard for food manufactures to create baked goods that would last on stores shelves. Most baked goods require oils,and oil leaks at room temperature. But since the 1960's, manufacturers have been baking with -- and restaurateurs have been frying with something called "Trans Fats" Trans fats are cheaper and effective. It makes potatoes chips crispier and cookies tastier, and it lets fry cooks make pound after pound of fries without smoking up their kitchens. The downside: Trans Fats increases your bad cholesterol,lowers your good cholesterol, and greatly increases of heart disease.
Our fruits and vegetables are not healthy as they once were.
Researchers in a study in the journal of the American College of Nutrition tested 43 different garden crops for nutritional content and discovered that 6 out of 13 nutrients showed major declines between1950 and 1999: protein,calcium,phosphorus,iron,riboflavin,and ascorbic acid(vitamin C). Researchers say the declines are probably due to farmers efforts to achieve higher yields and plants that grow faster and can be picked earlier. As a result,the plants are not able to make or take in nutrients at the same rate.
Even the animals we eat are different today.
Heres'a terrifying statistic: The average piece of chicken has 266% more fat than it did 1971,while its protein content has dropped by a third,according to researchers. Because we no longer eat chickens that roam the farm eating bugs and grasses--today they are kept in cages andfed antibiotic -laced soy and corn and other unnatural food--todays chicken is actually higher in fat than it is in protein.(If that is what modern food management is doing to chickens,imagine what its doing to us!)
We're drinking more Calories than ever.
A study from a University found that we consume 450 calories a day from beverages,nearly twice as many as 30 years ago. This Increase amounts to an extra 23 pounds a year that were forced to work off-or carry around with us. Many of the calories come from HFCS in our drinks-especially ,when it comes to kids ,in our fruit drinks that are often nothing more than water,food coloring,and sweetner. In fact,anything you have for your kids to drink in your fridge right now-unless its water,milk,or diet soda-probably has HFCS in it, Go ahead read the label.
We don't even know whats in our foods
more and more,marketers are adding new types of preservatives,fats,sugars,and other food substances to our daily meals.Indeed,there are now more than 3,000 ingredients on the FDA's list of"safe" additives,and any one of them could end up on your plate. But often, they go unexplained(what is xanthan gum,anyway?)or ,in the case of restaurant food,unmentioned. Unless were eating it right off the tree,its hard to know what,exactly is in that fruity dish.
"The Little Bonus Ingredients the FDA allows in your food"
Canned Pineapple - 20% Moldy Fruit
Canned Tomatoes - 5 fly eggs or 2 maggots per 500 grams
Frozen Broccoli - 60 mites per 100 grams
Ground Cinnamon - 400 insect fragments or 11 rodent hairs per 50 grams
Peanut Butter - 30 insect fragments or 1 rodent hair per 100 grams
Popcorn - 1 rodent pellet in one sample or 2 rodent hairs per pound
Potatoe Chips- 6% rotten potatoes
