Food For Thought

So I'm fed up, literally -- and figuratively -- with food. Or, to be more precise, with the majority of the food that is on our shelves, food that is erroneously marketed as healthy, which we eagerly and blindly buy into.

Disclaimer: I am the longest grocery shopper in the country. Between my label reading of every. single. item, and my coupons (and then checking my master list to see if the coupon matches a coupon already loaded on my shopper's card for even more money off), it's a two-to-three hour affair every week.

A lot of times I will find an item that, with my discounts, is free or almost free, only to put it back on the shelf because I can't in good conscience give my family the ingredients in the item. Take cooking spray. Almost every household has cooking spray. I used to have it, too. And then it ran out and I never replaced it. A few months ago, I had a coupon and it was on sale, and I started to put it in the cart, and then I read the ingredients.

Not only was the second ingredient grain alcohol, but it also had a fun little word in it called polysorbate, which is the same ingredient found in a lot of women's cosmetics, as well as in Orajel and in hair growth medicine. That sounds like the perfect thing to consume, doesn't it?

I had a HUGE awakening when I wanted to pick up some yogurt for Reagan (who so far, amazingly, likes plain yogurt mixed with fruit the best). I thought it would be nice to give him some flavored yogurt for a change, and since I had a coupon for Yoplait ... and then I read the ingredients.

Yikes.

In what seems to be an innocuous container of strawberry yogurt, I found that it is colored with carmine, which is produced by boiling (apologies to the squeamish) some scale insects in ammonia, and then adding alum (aluminum) to create the red color.

Yum.

How is this food?

We have done a large disservice to ourselves, and our health, by assuming that if a food is called healthy, it's actually full of healthy things that we want to eat.

For example, if you look at the case of butter in the grocery store, you will find a wide variety of  "fat free!" "no cholesterol!" "good for your heart!" options. Except, these so-called healthy options often include phosphoric acid, which is also used as a rust remover and as a plaque-remover.

Same thing with fat-free whipped topping, i.e: Cool Whip. The first four ingredients in most brands are water, corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oil and high fructose corn syrup. But this is, somehow, supposed to be the 'healthier' version?

Please.

We have somehow assumed that if it's calorie-free and/or fat-free, it has to be healthy, and in so doing, we have begun ingesting chemicals, additives and other ingredients that were never intended to be edible.

There's a TV show and website called Hungry Girl that epitomizes to me everything that is wrong with nutrition in America. It is run by a woman named Lisa Lillien, who I'm sure is a lovely person, but she is spearheading a movement that is creating far more harm than good. Her premise is 'healthy' foods that are low in fat and calories, so therefore, as she calls them, 'guilt-free.' She's appeared on several talk shows, including Dr. Oz, to teach people how to change their diet with her recipes to be healthier. Her cookbooks have become national best-sellers.

But the recipes she teaches takes out edible ingredients and replaces them with chemicals. Case in point -- she recently posted a recipe for a 'healthy' version of Arby's famous Jamocha shake (which, admittedly, is a ridiculously indulgent food). Instead of cream, Lisa suggests using non-fat dairy creamer.

Let's be honest - there is no way a powder is going to taste half as good as the real thing. But, even if I was willing to sacrifice taste for calories (which I'm not), the ingredients in non-fat dairy creamer are:  Corn Syrup Solids, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, and/or Cottonseed Oil, Sugar, Modified Cornstarch, Dipotassium Phosphate, Sodium Caseinate,  Artificial Flavor, Mono And Diglycerides, Polysorbate 60, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Carrageenan, Salt, Betacarotene. Color.

Yeah, that sounds yummy. I'll take two helpings of  Sodium Caseinate, please.

I'd much rather take the calories and fat of whole milk than add all that other garbage to my body.

I'm not sure where we became so disillusioned with the idea that calories and fat are bad. They're not. It's how we get our energy every day. Yes, too many calories and too much fat lead to weight gain. That's a given that everyone understands. But somehow, we've swung the pendulum so far the other way that we idolize thinness above health.

Moderation is a word we use often in our house. We don't ban anything, in moderation, including sweets and the occasional bag of potato chips. But what we do believe is that if we eat it one day, we don't have to eat it every day. We understand that we might order a pizza on Sunday (which we often do), but on Monday we're going to have chicken and a vegetable.

Entire series of books have been written on this topic, and I could go on and on about the risks of what the majority of Americans are feeding their bodies, but I won't. What I will say is that I don't think it's a coincidence that the incidences of cancer have risen as we continue to add chemicals to our food. Nor is it a coincidence that many of the 'cancer diets' that have proven to reduce cancer risk, or in some cases even help in the curing process, focus on whole foods with all natural ingredients.

I understand that people have lost weight using the fat-free, low-calorie options, and if that has helped them in turn become more active, thus healthier, more power to them. But I really believe that, unless something drastic is done to the way we market food in America, we are on a steep slope that will do us far more harm than good.