They Don’t Care if You Die as Long as You Eat Their “Food”

Don’t for a moment believe that the brightly colored packages and boxes lining the supermarket shelves are filled with healthy, nutritious food that is good for you and your family.  They’re not.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The advertising gymnastics that the big factory food giants perform daily are amazing to me.  It begins in the morning with ads about “fiber.”  This fiber you can stir in water and it will disappear, and, therefore, you don’t have to worry about actually eating or chewing something that will be good for you.  This way, you don’t have to be bothered with using your teeth to eat, say, an *apple* that will take care of what ails you.  They apparently want you to believe that their concoctions are better than Nature. And it gets worse.

A quick perusal of just about any label on just about any package will present you with a laundry list of ingredients that you would never put into your own recipes if you were preparing the food at home.

For instance, let’s take a simple protein bar.  You can make them at home with whey, nut butter, egg (yolks and/or whites), nuts and seeds, natural sweeteners, and oats. Natural, delicious ingredients that won’t hurt your body.  It may take a little time, but a quick trip to the natural foods store will supply the ingredients.

On the other hand, Slim-Fast Protein Bars contain the following:

High Fructose Corn Syrup, Maltitol Syrup, Milk Chocolate Flavored Coating (see product details for ingredients list), Soy Protein Isolate, Casein, Gelatin, Nonfat Milk, Calcium Caseinate, Marshmallow Pieces (see product details for ingredients list), Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Palm Oil, Fructooligosaccharides, Unsweetened Chocolate, Tapioca Starch, Cream, Glycerine, Maltodextrin, Salt, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Butter (Cream, Salt), Soy Lecithin, Caramel Color, Sodium Phosphate and Carrageenan, Vitamins & Minerals: Calcium Phosphate, Potassium Phosphate, Magnesium Oxide, Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin E, Vitamin E Acetate, Niacinamide, Ferric Orthophosphate, Calcium Pantothenate, Zinc Oxide, Thiamin Palmitate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Thiamin Mononitrate, Biotin, Folic Acid, Chromium Chloride, Potassium Iodide, Sodium Molybdate, Sodium Selenite, Phytonadione (vitamin K1), Cholecalciferol (Vitamin D3) and Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) Milk Chocolate Flavored Coating (from ingredient list): Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Sugar, Milk Protein Isolate, Cocoa, Cocoa (processed with Alkali), Nonfat Milk, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavor Marshmallow Pieces (from ingredient list): Sugar, Corn Syrup, Modified Corn Starch, Gelatin, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Gelatin, Sodium Hexaphosphate, Blue 1.

The first ingredient alone is scary.

Naturally, there is a High Fructose Corn Syrup council - HFCSFacts.com, run by the Corn Refiners Association - which widely proclaims the safety and wonderfulness of HFCS.  Unfortunately for them, they are about the only ones who see it that way.  Sources as widely divergent as The Weston A. Price Foundation, Wikipedia, the Mayo Clinic, Dr. George Bray of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, WebMD, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Post are waving red flags of caution against its use. They are warning people for a variety of different reasons, not the least of which its apparent contribution to the obesity and diabetes epidemics.  The Corn Refiners’ sing-song, feel-good proclamations on their website sound suspiciously like the same types of pat-the-beast-on-the-head excuses given by tobacco companies extolling the safety of cigarettes decades ago.

This is worse because this is in our food.  We can go without smoking. We cannot go without eating.  And they - and the other food factory monoliths - are poisoning us for the sake of higher profits.

As I said in an earlier post, cereal is not supposed to be neon-colored, marshmallow enhanced, frosted, puffy bits of mystery wheat.  Cereal is supposed to beige, brown, and plain.  Soda has no nutritional value whatsoever.  And we’re killing our children - and ourselves - by giving them such garbage.  If you speak with your pocketbook, you may see great improvements.

Unfortunately, the big companies often wrap such improvements in some sort of deceptive disguise.  It’s what they do.

This is an ongoing rant, and there will be more.

Related articles:

• What’s Inside: PowerBar Protein Plus (Laxatives, of Course)
• Buying Health Drinks is Not Always That Healthy, Especially When Choosing an Alkaline Food Diet
• What’s Inside: Don’t Let the Algae Sour You on Hostess’s Lemon Pie
• Isabel Cowles: Local Food: Scandal and Slander
• Food producers ask ‘what’s natural?’
• San Francisco’s Mayor Proposes Fee on Sales of Sugary Soft Drinks
• High Fructose Corn Syrup Producers on a Roll

Sphere: Related Content