Arsenic...GMOs...where does it end?

I've been sad this week in a way that I can't seem to shake. Usually, I can turn bad news upside down and find a way to be positive and optimistic about its significance. But this week, news of arsenic in our food coming to me on the heels of an article detailing the results of studies on GMOs and their affect on health, has made me downright depressed.

I'll admit it, I rolled my eyes and pshawed when my mom told me that now arsenic had been found in rice, chalking it up to a sensationalist media trying to scare up news on a slow day. After all, there are entire cultures that include rice as a staple of their diets. People have been eating rice for eons without trouble.

Well, almost. People have been eating rice for eons, but not necessarily the rice we eat now. No, these days it seems that food is one thing you don't want to "buy American." I came to this decision when the latest issue of Consumer Reports landed in my mailbox. Right there on page 22 was an article titled, "Arsenic in your food," with the subheading, "our findings show a real need for federal standards for this toxin."

My heart sank and I began to feel sick. For the past six months or so, my baby has eaten brown rice at least a few times a week, and the little "Cheerios" I give him to snack on are actually made from organic brown rice. Brown rice is perfect for baby casseroles, mixed with little veggies, beans, and cheese. He loves it. And I do, too. The Black Bean Jambalaya recipe I posted last week, along with other favorites from my Louisiana upbringing - red beans and rice, gumbo, you name it - all feature rice prominently, and I have lapped it up like a puppy my entire life. Now I feel like I have been spooning little bites of cancer into my baby's mouth, telling him how he was growing to be such a healthy boy.

But more than that, I just felt violated. I had also recently read this article sent by a friend about the results of studies conducted to determine the long-term effects of GMOs - genetically modified organisms - in our food. 

"Safe" levels of GMOs can cause tumors and multiple organ damage

In short, it isn't good: tumors, organ damage, etc. GMOs are in more than we think, and the latest news from TakePart tells us that regulation for labeling of GMOs is still a long way off, which means we are likely eating them and don't even know it.

Which "natural" food companies are fighting the effort to label GMOs?

And what sickens me even more is that fruits, vegetables, and grains should be safe. Sure, when you buy packaged food you know you're likely getting crap. Even the stuff with the organic label. Preservatives and sugar and preservatives and sugar no matter how brown the package is or how many solemn farmers are on the front of the label. But produce? Even if you don't buy organic - which many people do not either because of cost or lack of access in their community - fruits, vegetables, and grains should be safe. 

Why the Farm Bill failed and what that means for us.

Now, it feels like even that is questionable. 

As I went through my pantry and freezer tossing our rice and the cute little frozen muffins of baby food into the trash, I began to get angry. As I studied the labels of the few processed foods I do buy to look for hidden sources of arsenic rice, I got downright pissed off. 

Of course, the FDA says that there is no need to freak out about any of this and that we should not change our eating habits because of a little bit of poison - an actual poison, I'm not just being dramatic - in our food. 

How freaked out should you be about arsenic in rice?

And of course they do. The food industry is a very powerful and intimidating lobby.

What the hell? Where does this end? At what point will the health and safety of human lives take precedence over profit and business? 

Get out there and get healthy today, working for change in the way our food is grown, regulated, and distributed. It will take a lot of people demanding change - and voting with their forks and wallets - but it can happen. 

We deserve better.

How Food Becomes Candy

I just made a snack for my son: some pineapple, a few strawberries, and a low-fat cheese stick. He gobbled down the strawberries and poked at the pineapple. 

"You know I don't like new fruit, mom."

"Try it. You'll like it. It's super-sweet."

"Like candy?"

"Almost. I think fruit is sweeter than candy. It's like candy from nature."

This exchange reminded me of how quickly food in our world doesn't just taste like candy, it becomes candy. One stroll down the yogurt aisle proves it.

What is yogurt? Cultured milk, right? Yes. But look at the label for 90% of the yogurt in your grocery store and tell me how many are really yogurt. Let's take a look at Chobani's Pineapple Low-fat Yogurt for example. The package promises only natural ingredients, fruit on the bottom, and features that "it-must-be-good-for-me" buzz word for yogurt: "Greek". Flip it over and see what else it has:

Evaporated Cane Juice, Pineapple, Pectin, Pineapple Juice Concentrate, Locust Bean Gum, Natural Flavor, Turmeric (for Color).

First ingredient: sugar. Oops! This just became candy!

Let's try another one. Stoneyfield Farms Organic YoBaby Drinkable Yogurt for toddlers. It's organic, so it must be good, right? Well let's see. It starts out as yogurt with its first ingredient: cultured whole milk. Then it adds organic sugar. Woah! It just became candy! See how fast that happened? And I used to give that to my son. Yes it is organic but it doesn't matter anymore because this is not food. It's candy. And we don't eat candy because candy isn't food.

I made this at home. It was super yummy and had that oh-so-magical Greek yogurt, all-natural ingredients, and fruit on the bottom. And the top and middle, too. But it didn't have any sugar. It was not candy. It was food!  My little baby eats fruit and yogurt all the time, but not YoBaby. I make him Greek yogurt with some pureed mango mixed in. Sometimes blueberries. But no sugar. Babies don't eat candy, silly! 

Both Chobani and Stoneyfield Farms have some excellent products that actually are food. They are the ones where the list of ingredients begins and ends with, "cultured milk." I buy and eat them all the time and they're great! I add my own fruit and nuts to make them into a delicious snack that tastes like candy...but isn't.

I saw this at my local grocery store and knew that a lot of people would pick it up thinking it would be a healthy snack. Its fresh fruit and yogurt! Doesn't Gillian Michaels eat that? But wait...take a look at the ingredients list. I see cultured milk....and then a whole bunch of other stuff including sugar, artificial sweetener, corn starch, and down at the very bottom, fruit. This is not food. This is candy. Put it back and go get food.

The yogurt aisle is just one place where candy is pretending to be food. Check out the bread aisle, and OMG just the cereal aisle alone is practically like trick-or-treating. How do you not buy candy? Easy. Read the ingredients and put back anything that has sugar as one of the first five ingredients. Oh, and beware of anything with more than five ingredients. :) Hint: You might want to buy a bread maker and start eating oatmeal.

Candy is not forbidden in my house. We trick or treat and we have candy canes at Christmas and jelly beans at Easter just like everyone else. But, we don't let candy pretend it is food. The next time you head to the grocery store, plan to spend a little extra time reading labels and make sure you're buying actual food. 

Get out there and get healthy today, even if it means not letting your kids eat candy and call it food.

HH

Not Buying It: Messages to Junk Food Marketers

Super thanks to my friend Kim for sending me the link to the Prevention Institute's "Not Buying It" petition to protest the marketing of junk food to kids. We all know that marketers will say whatever they need to say to sell their message. I know it because I've worked as marketer for years and I know how many hours I've spent trying to come up with the catchy message that is going to convince my audience to buy what I've got. There are good causes and bad, and marketers who work for all of them. It's our job as parents and adults to figure out which ones are telling us the truth.

We can all remember sitting in front of the television on Saturday mornings watching commercials for toys, ThunderCats, and nutritious breakfast cereal!

What we likely don't remember is how fast our brains were aborbing those messages about the role of food in our lives. I know I personally considered myself to be abused and neglected by my mean, uncaring mother because she never bought Lucky Charms or Froot Loops, instead forcing my sister and me to to eat Cheerios or Rice Chex. Of course, I later went on to eat a dinner of Cocoa Puffs for an entire semester in college just out of spite.  I'm pretty sure I was not the winner of that little battle.

Anyway, marketing junk food to kids is nothing new, it's just become a bigger problem. Our rapidly rising obesity rate alone makes the issue more urgent, and the huge increase in marketing channels makes monitoring the different ways that kids are advertised to an overwhelming task for parents. Junk food companies sponsor school programs, pose as non-profit organizations, and develop video games based on the characters that they created to market their product. And, they make their packages very, very tricky to decipher.

Luckily, there are more and more resources out there to help. The Prevention Institute's website offers tips, tools, and information for parents who want to make their Saturday mornings (and the other ones too) healthier for their families. Check out their informative online publications, and study up on the opposition: the companies that have your kid in their marketing crossfire.

Companies have every right to market their products, but we also have the right to reject them. The Prevention Institute wants the government to have stricter regulations on what companies can do and say to send their messages. I've signed the petition and support their cause, but it doesn't look that that will happen anytime soon, so I encourage you not to wait. Start making change happen now by NOT BUYING IT.

Get out there and get healthy by getting SMART about food and what those colorful boxes placed at kid-eye level are really saying!  
  

The Business of Food

The USDA Plate vs. the Harvard Healthy Eating Plate.
Chocolate milk as an after-workout recovery drink.
Sugar is sugar: high fructose corn syrup is perfectly fine to eat!
And today's message: how sugar is more additive than cocaine.

These messages and more clog the airways every week with some new breaking news about what we should really be eating. For real this time. No, seriously, this is the real truth. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

They all have an element of truth, and we all believe at least a little bit of them. Navigating food has become a high-contact sport and relying on "research" to justify our nutrition choices makes it easier to decide which fork in the road to take: is dairy really bad? Is natural organic sugar really better? I don't know, I just want a sandwich! Is that okay anymore?

Honestly, I'm not a scientist or a nutritionist so I can't tell you anything more than my opinion based on my experience, which is this:

1. I used to get caught in the web of confusing food rules (and sometimes still do) and it all got a lot easier for me when I tuned it out and started eating primarily fruit, vegetables, lean protein, and whole grains in moderation.  I was happier, healthier, wealthier, and much less stressed out.

2. When I ate 99.999% "perfect" and did two hours of insane workouts every day I had a kick-ass body and was in excellent, excellent shape.  It was awesome. When I started eating dessert once in a while and drinking a glass or two of wine on the weekends, I gained a little back but was nicer to the people around me. That was awesome too. You just have to choose the kind of awesome that is right for you.

3. Food is a business, and most people's minds are for sale. When I dig around behind the scenes of articles like the ones above, I usually find the motive - a food lobbying group that funds research to prop up whatever idea they want to convince us of. That's not to say the research is faulty or that every funding group is up to no good. It's just a reminder that it's there. Most research has a motive, and it is not always in your best interest.

If you're lost in the web today, there are some quick ways to get out. First, ask yourself whether you are eating in a way that is sustainable for the long haul. Can you live without an entire food group for your entire life? Can you eat in restaurants with your friends on occassion without feeling like you need to "splurge"? If those answers are "no," then you are not sustainable. Second, assess whether you are being true to yourself. Are you walking one way and talking another? If you're eating one way in public and another way at home, check yourself before you wreck yourself. And third, are you happy with how you feel? You're the only one who lives in your body 24/7, so be honest: does the food you put into that machine make you run like a race car or a clunker? How does that feel at the end of the day?

Research, marketing, fad diets, and promises made on late-night television cannot erase how you feel when you eat. Dump the hype and do what you know is truly, really, honestly healthy: eating clean, from the earth, healthy food that doesn't necessarily come with a marketing budget.

Get out there and get healthy!

Don't Eat That...'til you read this

Okay, my last word for the week on food marketing and what you need to know about it - this piece from Men's Health and their notorius "Eat This, Not That," model for pointing out what we already know: the longer the list of ingredients, the worse it is for our bodies.

Before you pull your car up to the drive through, and please before you feed fast food to your children, read this article on what's really in your "food."  It's eye-opening and sobering.

But, there is a silver lining in all of this bad news.  I know, sometimes it seems like we're surrounded by things we can't eat, and it's overwhelming to try and change our ways.  But, it only seems that way because we've been convinced that our options are simply what's sold to us on television.  There is a whole world of cleaner, healthier eating out there and guess what? It's waaaaay easier than reading lists of ingredients and trying to figure out what to eat.

Here's how: eat real food. Apples and oranges and pears and berries.  Carrots, broccoli, spinach, squash. Eggs. Chicken. Fish.  Sweet potatoes and brown rice and whole grains and nuts. You don't need a degree in nutrition to eat healthy, just ignore the marketing, skip the aisles, and head to the produce section.  I absolutely promise you will find everything you need there, and if you get tripped up, call me and I'll walk you through it.

Education isn't always power.  It's a good start, but only action is power. Take this new knowledge and put it into action this weekend!  Start eating cleaner and stop worrying about what's in your food.

Be healthy, and be happy!

Shopping Cart Ambush

As I was doing my usual speed shopping last week, trying to set the land speed record for time in and out of the grocery store, I screetched my buggy to a halt in front of a display of Crystal Light Pure.  I've been meaning to take a peek at the ingredient list because it is advertised as having no artificial sweeteners.  As I suspected, it is sweetened with Truvia and Stevia, which are natural sweetners although I still don't care for them because I am opposed to sweeteners in general and prefer to eat food the way it actually tastes.  But that's beside the point.

  



I flipped the box over and looked at the list of ingredients.  Numero uno was our unfriend sugar. Not a surprise, although look at the picture on the front.  Does this girl look like she drinks a lot of sugar?  Don't be fooled - Crystal Light Pure may not have artificial sweetners, but it is still sugar so if you drink it, just be aware!

As I put it back on the shelf, I noticed that it was stocked right next to a supply of Kool Aid. How ironic!  I flipped that package around as well and looked at the ingredients.

Pop Quiz: Do you see anything similar about the first ingredient in each of these items? (hint: they're the same)



Crystal Light Pure Ingredients

 

Cherry Kool Aid Ingredients

Now, as an adult, would you make yourself a pitcher of Kool Aid and carry it around with you all day thinking you're doing the healthy thing?  Of course not!  Please, if you buy and drink sugar, do so in measured moderation.  I like tasty things too...I just don't want you to sacrifice your health to have them.  Put a wedge of lemon in your water if you want some extra flavor!  I do it every day and live to tell the story.

But if you buy this...we need to talk because that is just wrong!

  

Be healthy! :)