A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss » What Are You Eating?

Organic …Pesticides?

Erika Nicole Kendall — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:56:39 +0000

Hm… imagine that.

It may seem counterintuitive, but foods that are grown to organic standards can contain commercially manufactured pesticides.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture survey of produce that found nearly 20 percent of organic lettuce tested positive for pesticide residues piqued our interest. Lots of the lettuce contained quite a bit of spinosad, a pesticide marketed by Dow Chemical under the brand name Entrust.

So we called Jeff Gillman, a professor of nursery management at the University of Minnesota, who has written about organic practices for lay readers. Right off the bat he told us:

When people are buying organic food, they often make the incorrect assumption that there are no pesticides. It’s true that organic production often uses fewer dangerous chemicals, but certain pesticides are allowed.

It turns out that a key factor in chemicals being cleared for use on organic crops is whether they occur naturally. Spinosad, for example, comes from the soil bacterium Saccharopolyspora spinosa. It can fatally scramble the nervous systems of insects. It’s also poisonous to mollusks.

The USDA maintains an official list of substances that can and can’t be used for organic farming. Other potent natural extracts that have been approved for use as pesticides include pyrethrin, derived from chrysanthemums, and azadirachtin, from the Asian neem tree, which was also detected on some samples of organic lettuce.

All three of these substances are considered slightly toxic by the EPA.

Synthetic compounds can also make it onto the list as pesticides, if they are relatively nontoxic combinations that include minerals or natural elements, such as copper or sulfur. But some naturally occuring substances, such as nicotine and arsenic are off limits.

Are naturally derived pesticides less toxic than synthetic ones? The answer depends a lot on the dosage, says Gillman. “To control fire blight on the same acre of land,” he explains, “I could use a tiny amount of a potent synthetic that has proved safe over the last 50 years, or a much larger amount of an organic pesticide.” He demurs on saying which is better, saying, “I want people to know that there are definitely tradeoffs.”

In the USDA tests, there was ten times as much spinosad on organic lettuce than was found on conventionally cultivated fruits and vegetables.

Gillman wasn’t alarmed by the spinosad finding:

It’s a relatively new chemistry, relatively safe, and extremely effective against some pests. Now, if I heard about high levels of copper being detected, I’d be more scared than for this stuff.

Copper compounds are used to fight fungal and bacterial diseases in plants. Copper isn’t very toxic to humans, he says, but it can accumulate in the soil and eventually become poisonous to plants and even worms at high concentrations.

The seeming contradiction between organic labeling and potentially harmful pesticide practices may lie in the relative leniency of the USDA organic guidelines, Gillman says. Various organic certification agencies, such as the Oregon Tilth, have tighter rules. (Check out this roundup of acceptable and forbidden pesticides.)

Gillman says just because an organic farmer used some authorized chemicals is no reason to shun the food. But it’s important for consumers to know what’s going on. For him, the answer to the ambiguity around organic labeling is to go local. “I go to the farmers market and talk to the growers to see who is serious about reducing pesticide use,” he says. “I’d rather buy food from someone who used Roundup once than someone who uses organic pesticides all the time.” [source]

I wanted to write about this because, well, it’s a bit confusing. The pesticide grows naturally and occurs in nature… but does that “natural” element have to be altered in order to get that pesticide out? If the goal is to have your food as minimally “messed with” as possible, this is definitely better than full fledged conventional pesticides… but by how much? And is it always being used in that amount? Either way, it’s something to think about when we consider what “organic” truly means to us individually.

For me, the last paragraph is what’s most important. Lots of small, local farmers don’t make enough to cover their expenses as well as the additional financial burden of being licensed to use the “organic” label. (I’m specifically thinking of the two guys and a girl I saw at a farmer’s market selling their the fruits of their engineering labor to pay for their summer classes.) They may not have the organic label, but if they can look me in the eye and tell me that “No, they don’t use pesticides,” “[This] is how I protect my plants from bugs” and “[this] is what you get when you purchase what I’ve grown and picked from my fields” then I have no problem handing them my money.

It’s all about balance, and we all draw the line in different places. Do YOU worry about pesticides? How do you handle them?

b!g(g)2*w@l#

Organic …Pesticides? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Pesticides: When Organic Matters (Or Doesn’t)

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Post tags: organic, pesticids

The Problem With Processed Foods, Part IV: The Conclusion

Erika Nicole Kendall — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:56:38 +0000

I get lots of questions about why I’m such a huge stickler for chemical-free foods and why it matters… and instead of writing 3,500 words every time I’m asked, I wrote one 3,500-word blog post.

Surprise, surprise, no one was reading all that.

That’s okay. I’m breaking it up into a few parts that everyone will be able to digest slowly and properly (pun intended), and hopefully we can explore why healthier, cleaner, more chemical-free food choices are so important. It is critical that any person embarking on a clean eating journey have an understanding of why the journey is so vital to their success in losing weight.

Consider this the conclusion of the series.

Taking that one step further for those of us who DO indulge anyway, what about the fact that the average processed food contains more calories than it’s “real” counterpart? Remember my ranch dressing recipe that I shared? My recipe was 300 calories a cup. Kraft’s ranch dressing was easily 1400 calories. Let me tell you a secret I learned from working in restaurants. Foods that have to be reheated to be cooked are pumped with extra fat, because it helps maintain the flavor through the reheating process. Chemicals – like monosodium glutamate, found in processed foods with rich, thick, almost meaty tastes – help reheatables that have to be pumped with extra fat taste more pleasing to you. The convenience that the food offers may be a welcome benefit, but it comes at the cost of a massive excess in calories and unnecessary additives and preservatives.

So here we are, living in the new millennium. For breakfast, we’re eating cereal. For lunch, we give our kids lunchables. For dinner, we heat up a pot pie. (If you want a laugh, look at the ingredients list on the back of any of those.) For a drink, we have a capri sun or a coke. Instead of nutrient-filled calorie-light whole foods, we’re now indulging in calorie-heavy nutrient-light foods that’ve been mainly cooked FOR us. When we take in foods, our bodies are expecting a certain amount of nutrients and vitamins. If our body doesn’t get what it’s looking for fast enough, what happens? It compels you to eat more! Yes! Have you ever inhaled half a bag of wafers, only to be hungry again moments later? All that work your body put in to digest this vitamin-free food, only to find that there are no vitamins in it? Yes, it’s going to tell you to try again and eat something else.

The problem for many of us, is that because it’s so much easier and quicker to grab another processed food item instead of cooking.. we try to fix the problem with something that’d only make it worse. All the while scarfing down the calories, forgetting all the nutrients, and packing on the pounds while we’re at it. The convenience, the fact that very few of us know how some foods are cooked, let alone what the foods SHOULD consist of, has allowed us to eat much more with much less effort. Is that a bad thing? If you know how to moderate yourself, of course not. Many of us, apparently, don’t.

We have to scale back in a major way if we want to be healthy. If we truly seek to better our health and change our bodies for the better, we have to take control of the different elements that affect that, and that consists of both food and activity. You can burn what you eat, but if you aren’t eating the stuff that leaves you most vulnerable to overeating and malnutrition, then you don’t have to worry about burning it off. At all.

That being said …perhaps we should go back into history, during this February… and talk about what food used to look like for Black folks before processed food took hold?

b!g(g)2*w@l#

The Problem With Processed Foods, Part IV: The Conclusion is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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The Problem With Processed Foods, Part III: Nutritional Deficiencies

Erika Nicole Kendall — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:43:37 +0000

Surprise, surprise, no one was reading all that.

Consider this part III of the series.

So, if the foods aren’t nutritionally deficient, why is this a problem?

Well, how much credit do you give food science? The rule is simply that the foods cannot be deficient in nutrients that science recognizes as valuable. What about what science hasn’t spotted yet? What about all these hyphenated chemicals that science hasn’t identified (or is prevented from identifying) as harmful to our health?

And before you call me a conspiracy theorist, consider this: it took science decades to recognize that trans-fats – once a massive part of margarine and other major foods – were hazardous to our health. Believe it or not, the government still allows trans-fats in foods, and actually allows food manufacturers to lie about how much trans-fats are in their foods. (More on that later.)

What else, in these foods, is doing us in? Science doesn’t know yet. And really, since most of our food science studies are funded by the very industry they affect… do you genuinely expect science to find out? I’m not telling you that they’d intentionally fudge numbers to present favorable results – trying to remain unbiased, here – but I am telling you it’s easy to divert funds elsewhere… as in, another study. Maybe even… a study attempting to debunk something claiming their products are harmful.

That’s not the conspiracy theorist in me. That’s just smart business on their part… regardless of what it does to the consumer. Keep the consumer far enough away from the research, and they’ll never know the downfall of buying my product. It just happens that way.

So since this is all cyclical, let’s go back to that availability of food thing. Now, all this food (food, mind you, that seeks to NOT be nutritionally deficient although it admits that it is) is available to our families. We, knowing what it’s like to have to worry about food not being available, begin to indulge. Factories – and factory jobs – are springing up because industries are blossoming. Longer work hours, both adults in the household are now working, and all this super convenient food at hand. We’re eating what we can, when we can, and eating a lot of it… since we’re enjoying the ability to eat at our discretion, not at the discretion of a ration.

Keep in mind, also, at this time… a new generation of children are being born under this new understanding of food. Family tradition might lend to certain dishes being made a certain way, but lots of dishes are being replaced by the magic elixir in the box. Some of us have that Grandma who insists on cooking everything from scratch. We tend to write her off as crazy or paranoid because “Times have changed” and “No one has time for all that cooking,” or maybe because “This is the [insert decade]s, Nana, we don’t live in the kitchen the way you used to!” Things that are all true, but come with consequences.

I asked you, dear reader, to keep in mind the point I made earlier about hyphenated chemical ingredients in our food, right? I hope you did. The interesting loophole in the FDA’s policy about imitation foods is that there’s very little limit to what can now be put INTO food. That’s an important point.

You know how, if you leave food sitting out, it will attract flies? Why? Because flies and rodents are attracted to the same things that our bodies are attracted to in food – nutrients. Ever notice that with ALL the food in a supermarket, there’s rarely any ants or bugs in the aisles, but you have to swat them away from the tomatoes or kiwi in the produce area? That’s not because every area in the grocery store – except the produce – is sprayed down. I can only offer theory as to why that is. For starters, the processed foods have to be processed to maintain shelf life. They have to be able to handle being transported to the facility. They have to be able to withstand sitting on a shelf until purchased. They have to be able to withstand sitting in your cabinets until you cook them.

Can you do that with your home made cooking? I doubt it.

Here’s another question: What do you think they’re putting in these processed foods to ward off insects and rodents?

Last question: Do you think it’s a good idea to ingest the same chemicals that are put in food… food that flies don’t even want? The same chemicals that prevent flies from desiring our food, are the same chemicals we’re ingesting when we eat this stuff anyway. How healthy can that be? Nothing in the world can debunk what feels like logic to me.

Stay tuned for the conclusion of “The Problem With Processed Food!”

b!g(g)2*w@l#

The Problem With Processed Foods, Part III: Nutritional Deficiencies is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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The Problem With Processed Foods, Part II: The Change In Food Manufacturing

Erika Nicole Kendall — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:33:06 +0000

Surprise, surprise, no one was reading all that.

Consider this part II of the series.

I’m a small business owner, so while I could interject right here about what it does to our local communities to not be able to buy our food locally and keep our money in our communities… I won’t. Just know that I could.

As I said, the larger food manufacturing grew, the more we were distanced from it’s production, and the less oversight we were granted to it’s creation and ingredients. Because (in my opinion) the government wanted to simply do what it could to ensure that the US had a consistent food supply, lots of leeway was given to big food factories to help ease them along their way in supplying our supermarkets with food – glorious food! Want an example? The food industry was able to get the FDA to change the law – imitation foods that weren’t nutritionally deficient in comparison to their whole counterparts didn’t have to be clearly marked as “imitation.” (You can skip the below quote if you like because I’ve quoted it before, but it’s valuable enough to read twice.)

The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act imposed strict rules requiring that the word “imitation” appear on any food product that was, well, an imitation … [And] the food industry [argued over the word], strenuously for decades, and in 1973 it finally succeeded in getting the imitation rule tossed out, a little-notice but momentous step that helped speed America down the path of nutritionism.

… The American Heart Association, eager to get Americans off saturated fats and onto vegetable oils (including hydrogenated vegetable oils), was actively encouraging the food industry to “modify” various foods to get the saturated fats and cholesterol out of them, and in the early seventies the association urged that “any existing and regulatory barriers to the marketing of such foods be removed.”

And so they were when, in 1973, the FDA (not, note, the Congress that wrote the law) simply repealed the 1938 rule concerning imitation foods. … The revised imitation rule held that as long as an imitation product was not “nutritionally inferior” to the natural food it sought to impersonate—as long as it had the same quantities of recongized nutrients—the imitation could be marketed without using the dreaded “i” word. — In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Families who survived the rationing and the famine were happy about this! No more struggling, breaking their backs to stretch food. They could eat like the rich folks! They could also gain weight like ‘em, too. Alas, the way men and women were employed in this era, they weren’t granted the same amount of time for leisurely activity like the rich. In other words, we were eating “like the rich,” but not burning the weight off like ‘em. This part of the story, can be evidenced by Katharine Flegel’s study of weight gain from the sixties to the present. This New Yorker article summarizes it briefly:

In the early nineteen-nineties, a researcher at the C.D.C. named Katherine Flegal was reviewing the results of the survey then under way when she came across figures that seemed incredible. According to the first National Health study, which was done in the early nineteen-sixties, 24.3 per cent of American adults were overweight—roughly defined as having a body-mass index greater than twenty-seven. (The metrics are slightly different for men and women; by the study’s definition, a woman who is five feet tall would count as overweight if she was more than a hundred and forty pounds, and a man who is six feet tall if he weighed more than two hundred and four pounds.) By the time of the second survey, conducted in the early nineteen-seventies, the proportion of overweight adults had increased by three-quarters of a per cent, to twenty-five per cent, and, by the third survey, in the late seventies, it had edged up to 25.4 per cent. The results that Flegal found so surprising came from the fourth survey. During the nineteen-eighties, the American gut, instead of expanding very gradually, had ballooned: 33.3 per cent of adults now qualified as overweight. Flegal began asking around at professional meetings. Had other researchers noticed a change in Americans’ waistlines? They had not. This left her feeling even more perplexed. She knew that errors could have sneaked into the data in a variety of ways, so she and her colleagues checked and rechecked the figures. There was no problem that they could identify. Finally, in 1994, they published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In just ten years, they showed, Americans had collectively gained more than a billion pounds. “If this was about tuberculosis, it would be called an epidemic,” another researcher wrote in an editorial accompanying the report.

Food was becoming way more accessible to us. I do want to go back to the point about the FDA’s law about imitation substances, though. It does a lot more to the food industry than you think it does. Take a loaf of bread, for example. Bread has maybe five ingredients in it – flour, water, sugar, salt, and yeast – but if you look on the label for the bread in your house right now? You see what – hyphenated chemicals. The food industry now has the ability to put anything in your food, so long as it is not deficient in the nutrients that science recognizes are valuable… in comparison to the food it imitates. Remember this part. No, really – remember this part.

Stay tuned for part III, on the nutritional deficiencies of processed food!

b!g(g)2*w@l#

The Problem With Processed Foods, Part II: The Change In Food Manufacturing is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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The Problem With Processed Foods, Part I: What Is Processed Food?

Erika Nicole Kendall — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:02:10 +0000

Surprise, surprise, no one was reading all that.

Consider this part I of the series.

What are processed foods? Allow me to shed some light.

A “processed food,” in general, is something that has had to endure a process to make it what it is before it is turned over to you. Almost everything that comes in a box… is processed. Almost everything that comes in a zip-sealed bag… is processed. Almost everything that comes from a big giant brand or huge corporation or massive factory plant somewhere… is processed. Almost everything that you purchase from a grocery store… is processed.

I mean, that includes a lot – that’s all the aisles in the grocery store! You’d have to scale the perimeter of the store to avoid that, right?

Let’s look at the history of food in this country over the past one hundred or so years.

Once upon a time, before food was big industry (meaning: before processed foods) and we were dealing with the fear of famine, people were much smaller. Being overweight was a rich person’s dilemma. Why? Because you have to ingest an AWFUL LOT of whole foods (as in, not processed) on a regular basis to develop and maintain an overweight physique in that day. So being overweight simply didn’t make financial sense. Things like bread, pies, cookies, cakes… they were rare – couldn’t always buy them at the store, so you had to make them at home. Highly unlikely that you could or would be able to bake sweets every single day for your pleasure.

Because they were concerned about famine, portions were rationed carefully. They didn’t want to be caught out there not being about to get food, and having little at the house. Sometimes, you’ll hear our elders talk about when whole grains were once rationed out to the masses because not only did they need to make sure they had it for the soldiers, they needed to make sure the supply could cover everyone in the event of emergency.

To sum it up, food wasn’t presumed to be plentiful, and it caused people to skimp, penny pinch, and exercise portion control.

Now, in comes the push toward larger food distributors – less focus on local, more focus on “getting big.” “Get big or get out,” I believe was the actual line. The US Gov’t honestly feared that they wouldn’t be able to feed everyone without food production going factory, and took every effort they could to try to get it there. With food production being taken to the factories, we were separated more from how our food was made. The further the process was taken from us, the less oversight we had in regards to what was in it. We used to have the milkman, right? You made arrangements with a local farm to have your milk delivered to your door, right? Now, if you drink milk, you’re buying a gallon that comes from a farm that you have no knowledge of. You’re buying from a brand.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment, about the growth of manufacturing and adulteration of our food!

b!g(g)2*w@l#

The Problem With Processed Foods, Part I: What Is Processed Food? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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Presenting: The 7 Day Clean Eating Challenge

Erika Nicole Kendall — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:06:33 +0000

That’s right. Beginning April 25th and ending May 2nd, we will begin the 7 Day Clean Eating Challenge. But before I dive into the details, let’s talk a little bit about what clean eating is and how it benefits us.

What is Clean Eating?

Clean eating is eating as close to the source as possible. What is the source, you ask? The source is Mother Earth, of course. Sure, it sounds like hippie stuff, but think about it – look in your pantry or cabinets, then look in your refridgerator. If the vast majority of the foods you own reside outside of your refridgerator, and you consider yourself overweight? Chances are, that pantry or those cabinets are why.

Basically, living a life of clean eating is living a life of simplicity. You’re probably not going to overindulge on the breads – or eat much bread at all -while eating clean. No refined white rice. No deep fried goods. No processed foods. I mean, don’t get me wrong — I can acknowledge and appreciate the fact that our little friends in the box or plastic wrapper have allowed us to do a lot in a short amount of time (I can get scalloped potatoes with only a little milk and a microwave? I’m in there like swimwear!), but it is certainly not clean eating. If you’re going to embrace the challenge then the boxed goods, canned goods and plastic shrink wrapped packages… have got to go.

Clean eating, with all the “Mother Earth” talk, might sound like hippie speak (I am a self-proclaimed hippie and all), but it isn’t. It’s making sure that we use and respect the Earth for what it is supposed to give to us while, in turn, giving it what it needs. I don’t have to tell anyone that after we’ve enjoyed our boxed and plastic-wrapped goods, that that trash has to go somewhere…and it’s usually buried in a forest…er…landfill somewhere. Clean eating, because you’re using items that rarely come with wrappers, are less harmful to the environment.

Okay, no more hippie moments. For now.

What are the basic tenets of clean eating?

Avoid processed foods. Outside of my usual spiel about why you should avoid foods laden with chemicals we don’t understand, there is actually a multi-layer reason for why this is important.

For starters, processed foods usually come with an excessive amount of sugar. I mean, let’s face it – sugar tastes good. The companies who make our favorite foods know that sugar makes their food so irresistible, so they’re good for putting it in, well, everything. Avoiding unnecessary and unnatural sugars is a key part of clean eating, and you can’t do that in a lifestyle that includes processed foods.

Should you insist on indulging in foods that come wrapped in a package, check the ingredient label – if it contains an ingredient that you wouldn’t keep in your own kitchen (monosodium glutamate? what? – (changed for clarity)) then try to find something a little more chemical-free, or pass on the item altogether.

If you avoid processed foods, you’ll also be avoiding unnatural fats (like trans fats) and unnecessary carbs. All carbs aren’t bad, but the processed foods that tend to contain the highest amount of carbs and fats usually have the least nutritional value… and that gets in your way when it comes to achieving the next target of clean eating.

Get the most out of your food choices. Usually, this means going for the fruits and veggies over the chips and dip. And remember, we’re eating as close to the source as possible… so get the regular peach and skip the fruit cups.

When you choose to eat something, aside from “make sure it tastes great” and “make sure there’s no [insert food allergy] in it,” add “make sure that it’s chock full of vitamins and minerals” and “make sure this is the most nutrient-filled choice I can make” to your list. So no, the white bread isn’t going to give you as much as the whole grain bread might. And if you don’t know whether or not your favorite sub spot offers whole grain bread? Call ahead of time and ask.

Practice portion control. I’ve written on this before, but this is one part nutrition, one part eco-friendly. There’s no reason to take more than you need. Your body will only suffer through trying to churn through all this extra food, and it’s excess and unnecessary calories to burn. And you all know I love counting a calorie or two…hundred.

Drink at least 8 cups of water per day. That’s right.. I said 8. That should keep you sooo busy, that you can’t drink your pepsis or your coca colas or your hawaiian punches or your capri suns. Outside of the fact that water has the ability to help you feel full (more on that later this week) and flush your body of impurities, it has zero calories.

Say it with me. Zero. Calories.

Those are the basics, but we’ll be counting down to the start of the challenge by digging deeper into the principles of clean eating. This week will have one post each day about clean eating – everything from drinking (and enjoying) water to eco-friendly organic living to shopping lists to preparation for a healthy lifestyle (check out “Fitting Clean Eating Into A Busy Lifestyle“)… and topping it all off with a Q&A Wednesday centered all around the challenge (posted here).

You now have… 6 days. Tomorrow comes the sample shopping list (said sample shopping list is now posted here). Get your questions in this week, so you’re prepared for the next. Tell your Mama, tell your friends, tell everybody… build your support system and we all can connect and do this together!

Who’s with me?

b!g(g)2*w@l#

Presenting: The 7 Day Clean Eating Challenge is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 44 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, ecofriendly, overeating, processed foods

Do YOUR Grocery Store’s Vegetables Look Like This?

Erika Nicole Kendall — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:26:58 +0000

In keeping with my understanding of food availability, I can’t help but wonder if, inside the stores that we do go to for groceries, the fresh stuff is, actually… well, fresh. If we want everyone to know that “fresh produce” is ideal, don’t we also have to wonder about whether or not we all have access to it?

Christine from Steen’s Cookies – yes, yes, I know – sent in these photos and, well… my face instantly frowned up. If this was what I had available to me at my nearest store, could I say that I’d buy that?

Ladies and gentlemen, we do have mold.

Considering the fact that veggies are usually wrapped in saran wrap and styrofoam to prevent the buyer from being able to inspect it for wear and withering… exactly how long were these sitting there?

Side note: Viva la farmer’s market, seriously.

Are there places near your home that sell veggies that look like this? What’s going on out there?

b!g(g)2*w@l#

Do YOUR Grocery Store’s Vegetables Look Like This? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

Food 101: The Problem With Processed Foods

Erika Nicole Kendall — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:29:43 +0000

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while, now, but you know how sometimes… you just don’t know where to begin? Something is so screwed up from all sides, that there’s no possible way to make sense of it from it’s head or it’s heels?

Yeah, that’s kind of this processed food thing. And I know, in advance, that this is long. Frustratingly long, even. I’m breaking it up into bits, though, so don’t worry if you can’t take it all in at once.

What are processed foods? Allow me to shed some light.

I mean, that includes a lot – that’s all the aisles in the grocery store! You’d have to scale the perimeter of the store to avoid that, right?

Let’s look at the history of food in this country over the past one hundred or so years.

To sum it up, food wasn’t presumed to be plentiful, and it caused people to skimp, penny pinch, and exercise portion control.

The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act imposed strict rules requiring that the word “imitation” appear on any food product that was, well, an imitation … [And] the food industry [argued over the word], strenuously for decades, and in 1973 it finally succeeded in getting the imitation rule tossed out, a little-notice but momentous step that helped speed America down the path of nutritionism.

… The American Heart Association, eager to get Americans off saturated fats and onto vegetable oils (including hydrogenated vegetable oils), was actively encouraging the food industry to “modify” various foods to get the saturated fats and cholesterol out of them, and in the early seventies the association urged that “any existing and regulatory barriers to the marketing of such foods be removed.”

And so they were when, in 1973, the FDA (not, note, the Congress that wrote the law) simply repealed the 1938 rule concerning imitation foods. … The revised imitation rule held that as long as an imitation product was not “nutritionally inferior” to the natural food it sought to impersonate—as long as it had the same quantities of recongized nutrients—the imitation could be marketed without using the dreaded “i” word. — In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

In the early nineteen-nineties, a researcher at the C.D.C. named Katherine Flegal was reviewing the results of the survey then under way when she came across figures that seemed incredible. According to the first National Health study, which was done in the early nineteen-sixties, 24.3 per cent of American adults were overweight—roughly defined as having a body-mass index greater than twenty-seven. (The metrics are slightly different for men and women; by the study’s definition, a woman who is five feet tall would count as overweight if she was more than a hundred and forty pounds, and a man who is six feet tall if he weighed more than two hundred and four pounds.) By the time of the second survey, conducted in the early nineteen-seventies, the proportion of overweight adults had increased by three-quarters of a per cent, to twenty-five per cent, and, by the third survey, in the late seventies, it had edged up to 25.4 per cent. The results that Flegal found so surprising came from the fourth survey. During the nineteen-eighties, the American gut, instead of expanding very gradually, had ballooned: 33.3 per cent of adults now qualified as overweight. Flegal began asking around at professional meetings. Had other researchers noticed a change in Americans’ waistlines? They had not. This left her feeling even more perplexed. She knew that errors could have sneaked into the data in a variety of ways, so she and her colleagues checked and rechecked the figures. There was no problem that they could identify. Finally, in 1994, they published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In just ten years, they showed, Americans had collectively gained more than a billion pounds. “If this was about tuberculosis, it would be called an epidemic,” another researcher wrote in an editorial accompanying the report.

So, if the foods aren’t nutritionally deficient, why is this a problem?

Can you do that with your home made cooking? I doubt it.

Here’s another question: What do you think they’re putting in these processed foods to ward off insects and rodents?

Having said all that (2600 words, and STILL not a record for me), I have to say this. I know we all lead busy lives. If you managed to read all of this in one sitting, I give you kudos – I couldn’t even write it all in one sitting. We have to scale back in a major way if we want to be healthy. In writing this, I’ve decided to break this up into a series, continuing it on with how I managed to wean my family off of processed foods and what it’s taught me about how my body interacts with food, and how it wants to interact with food. Big difference between the two.

So, keep your eyes peeled for the breakdown of this topic, and the continuation… that I’m opting to call Food 101. I look forward to your thoughts below!

b!g(g)2*w@l#

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Post tags: black girls guide to weight loss, calorie counting, mentality, overeating, processed foods, saving money

The Pizza Gallery: Who Says You Can’t Have Pizza?

Erika Nicole Kendall — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:05:25 +0000

I know, I know… people are constantly swearing off entire kinds of foods all in the name of weight loss, but I’ve got to wonder – if you put “pizza” on your list, was it because you were eating some greasy chain’s pizza, or some re-heatable box pizza? I’m almost certain you weren’t swearing off your own homemade pizza, right?

Right?

Well, while I gave up everyone else’s pizza, I certainly didn’t swear off my own. But why are my own pizzas so much better than anything else I might find at the store?

1) My pizzas have less salt. I don’t need much more than a pinch of a pinch worth of salt across my entire pizza because it has more than enough flavor. It doesn’t need the salt to give me a reason to keep eating it.

2) My pizzas have less grease. Whereas many other pizza chains insist on dousing their dough in grease to the point where the crust is fried while cooking, I don’t need all that. My dough is flavorful and so are my toppings. I don’t need to cling to fat to give me that “Mmmmmm!” feeling. I’m over that.

3) My pizzas have real ingredients. Do YOU know why there’s trans-fats in Pizza Hut’s pizza dough? Trans fats, the same artery-hardening stuff that killed countless people when the tried to sell that garbage to us as margarine? You DON’T know why that’s in there? Funny. Me neither.

4) My pizzas don’t rely on goo gobs of sweet tomato sauce to make them enjoyable. In fact, the moment I realized that I had a tendency to lean toward making my tomato sauces a little on the sweeter side, I backed off of them completely.

That being said… here are the fruits of my labor, aaaaaaand a reader who shared with me her own pizza-making adventure!

Phyllo Parmesan Pizza

Spinach, chicken, tomato, oregano and parmesan pizza

White pepper pizza, with black pepper, red peppers, golden peppers, green peppers and zucchini hiding down under white chipotle cheddar.

Onion, tomato, cilantro, black pepper, mozzarella, and spinach.

Parsley, spinach, red onion, green onion, mushroom, moscarpone, basil and balsamic vinegar reduction. It was... heavenly.

And Nishay’s pizza started off like this:

And yes, that is HER giving the thumbs up!

and finished like this!

Yum!

If you’re looking to make one of the pizzas above, you’ll need a good dough. While I can’t recommend any pre-made doughs, I can share my recipe for regular dough. If you must go for pre-made dough, look for one with as few chemicals as possible in the ingredients list, and as little salt as you can get!

What’s your favorite kind of pizza? Shoot, give me some ideas!

b!g(g)2*w@l#

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What’s Going On With Your Orange Juice? Round II

Erika Nicole Kendall — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:28:18 +0000

So… this is really happening:

FDA officials said they aren’t concerned about the safety of the juice but will increase testing to make sure the contamination isn’t a problem.

In a letter to the juice industry Monday, the agency said that an unnamed juice company contacted FDA in late December and said it had detected low levels of the fungicide carbendazim in the company’s own orange juice and also in its competitors’ juice.

Fungicides are used to control fungi or fungal spores in agriculture.

Carbendazim is not currently approved for use on citrus in the United States, but is used in Brazil, which exports orange juice to the United States.

An FDA spokeswoman said the company’s testing found levels up to 35 parts per billion of the fungicide, far below the European Union’s maximum residue level of 200 parts per billion.

The United States has not established a maximum residue level for carbendazim in oranges. In the letter to the Juice Products Association, FDA official Nega Beru said the agency will begin testing shipments of orange juice at the border and will detain any that contain traces of the chemical.

Because it is not approved for use in the United States, any amount found in food is illegal.

Beru said that because the FDA doesn’t believe the levels of residue are harmful, the agency won’t remove any juice currently on store shelves.

But he asked the industry to ensure that suppliers in Brazil and elsewhere stop using the fungicide.

“If the agency identifies orange juice with carbendazim at levels that present a public health risk, it will alert the public and take the necessary action to ensure that the product is removed from the market,” he said.

So…do I have this right? The government doesn’t have standards for the fungicide, doesn’t test for it, has it (by definition) considered illegal for use in our supply, and are currently requesting that the industry ensure that Brazilian suppliers cease using it… and none of this is reason enough to pull it off the shelves? I guess that’s too much of an inconvenience to the manufacturers, eh?

Yeah, and the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence… or something. Yeesh.

b!g(g)2*w@l#

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Pepsi Says Mountain Dew Can Dissolve Mouse Carcasses

Erika Nicole Kendall — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:41:06 +0000

Dude… dude:

Pepsi Co., facing a lawsuit from a man who claims to have found a mouse in his Mountain Dew can, has an especially creative, if disgusting, defense: their soda would have dissolved a dead mouse before the man could have found it. An Illinois man sued Pepsi in 2009 after he claims he “spat out the soda to reveal a dead mouse,” the Madison County Record reports. He claims he sent the mouse to Pepsi, which then “destroyed” the remains after he allowed them to test it, according to his complaint. Most shudder-worthy, however, is that Pepsi’s lawyers also found experts to testify, based on the state of the remains sent to them, that “the mouse would have dissolved in the soda had it been in the can from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff drank it,” according to the Record. (It would have become a “jelly-like substance,” according to Pepsi, adds LegalNewsline.) This seems like a winning-the-battle-while-surrendering-the-war kind of strategy that hinges on the argument that Pepsi’s product is essentially a can of bright green/yellow battery acid. The lawyers still appear to be lawyering behind the scenes but we cannot wait for this to come to trial (though we think a trial is about as likely as the chances of us “Doing the Dew” ever again). [source]

Grist comes in with the snark:

The idea that soft drinks can dissolve, say, a tooth or a penny is frequently trotted out by anti-soda folks (even though they won’t, or at least not quickly). But this isn’t the PTA trying to get Pepsi machines out of schools. This is Pepsi Co. itself saying that its product will dissolve a rodent corpse over the shelf life of a can. This might win them the lawsuit, but as a marketing strategy, “Mountain Dew: If it has vermin in it, you’ll never know” could use a little work.

Now, we can chat about pH balances and acidic content, and that’s cool. I’m still far more critical of a substance with absolutely no nutritional value that does more harm than good than I am, say, orange juice. (Or maybe not. Let’s not use orange juice for an example… let’s say, apple juice? No? Oh. Carrot juice? Yes? Ok.) There are a thousand more reasons to not drink pop, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Ick Factor on this is pretty darn high.

b!g(g)2*w@l#

Pepsi Says Mountain Dew Can Dissolve Mouse Carcasses is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Open Thread: View and Discuss The Super Bowl Pepsi Max Commercial

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What’s Going On With Your Orange Juice?

Erika Nicole Kendall — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:10:19 +0000

So, while this technically shouldn’t be news to us, ABC’s report is still pretty interesting:

For the last 30 years, the citrus industry has used flavor packs to process what the Food and Drug Administration identifies as “pasteurized” orange juice. That includes top brands such as Tropicana, Minute Maid, Simply Orange and Florida Natural, among others.

Murakhver said the addition of the flavor packs long after orange juice is stored actually makes those premium juices more like a concentrate, and consumers need to know that.

Experts estimate two-thirds of all Americans drink Florida orange juice for breakfast, and companies spend millions on their marketing campaigns touting its health benefits.

The “not from concentrate” brands appeared on store shelves sometime in the 1980s to differentiate them from frozen juice and other bottled concentrates. Despite its high price tag — now up to $4 a carton — sales of the premium brands have soared.

But those juices don’t just jump from the grove to the breakfast table.

After oranges are picked, they are shipped off to be processed. They are squeezed and pasteurized and, if they are not bound for frozen concentrate, are kept in aseptic storage, which involves stripping the juice of oxygen in a process called “deaeration,” and kept in million-gallon tanks for up to a year.

Before packaging and shipping, the juice is then jazzed up with an added flavor pack, gleaned from orange byproducts such as the peel and pulp, to compensate for the loss of taste and aroma during the heating process.

Different brands use different flavor packs to give their product its unique and always consistent taste. Minute Maid, for example, has a distinctive candy-sweet flavor.

Kristen Gunter, executive director of the Florida Citrus Processors Association, confirmed that juices are blended and stored and that flavor packs are added to pasteurized juice before shipping to stores.

Flavor packs are created from the volatile compounds that escape from the orange during the pasteurization step.

But, she said, “It’s not made in a lab or made in a chemical process, but comes through the physical process of boiling and capturing the [orange essence].”

The pasteurization process not only makes the food safe, but stabilizes the juice, which in its fresh state separates. Adding the flavor packs ensures a consistent flavor.

The Food and Drug Administration does not require adding flavor packs to the labeling of pasteurized juice (which includes the from-concentrate as well as the not-from-concentrate versions), because, “it is the orange,” said Gunter.

Non-pasteurized juice must be labeled as such, with warnings about potential pathogens. These regulations have been in place since 1963, she said.

As for the New York City mothers, Gunter said, “I don’t think there has been a large outcry.”

“If consumers have the false impression that pasteurized orange juice is not heated or treated because they have a picture of an orange on the carton, then they are not informed,” said Gunter.

“There’s a lot of literature and movies taking the food manufacturers to task on food preparation,” she said. “We have left the farms and it’s just not possible to feed everybody. I love the raw-food crowd, but we cannot get that many oranges out to that many people before they go bad in refrigeration.”

But Alissa Hamilton, a former food and policy fellow at the Institute of Agriculture and Trade, said that modern technology is so “sophisticated” that these flavor pack mixtures “don’t exist in nature.”

“They break it down into individual chemicals,” she said. “The flavor of orange is one of the most complex and is made up of thousands of chemicals.”

“They are fine-tuned so each company has its trademark flavor,” said Hamilton, who is author of the 2009 book, “Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice.”.”

One that is used in a variety of foods, including alcoholic beverages, chewing gum and as a solvent in perfumes, is ethyl butyrate.

According to Doug Kara, a spokesman for the FDA’s food safety division, the chemical is “generally recognized as safe as a food additive for flavoring.”

I’m going to reiterate, here, because I’m sure that people are going to look for reasons why this is “okay,” what’s so annoying about this.

First, she says “If consumers have the false impression that pasteurized orange juice is not heated or treated because they have a picture of an orange on the carton, then they are not informed.” If that’s the case, then why isn’t the picture on the carton a picture of a vat of orange juice being pasteurized? Don’t insult my intelligence by telling me that I shouldn’t believe what you tell me. Because if that’s the case, then…

Secondly, why should I believe that the only thing in the “flavor pack” is “the orange?” We took a look at the inside of a lab that makes these “flavor chemicals.” We know damn well how easy it is to create a flavor like orange juice. I’m not supposed to believe you when you tell me your orange juice is “fresh,” but I’m supposed to believe you when you tell me what’s in the flavor pack? I’m, also, supposed to believe that the representative for the Florida Citrus Processors Association is going to tell us anything that might harm the organizations she represents?

Thirdly, if the reheating takes out “everything that makes an orange an orange,” what is that doing to the nutritive quality of the oranges involved? I know that whenever I’m feeling under the weather, I eat a few oranges or grapefruit to feel better… not drink orange juice. Now I know why my hunch was correct.

In the ABC article, you find this post from Civil Eats. I’m going to extract the important parts (sort of like the orange juice processors – extracting the important parts…zing! Anybody? Nobody? Okay.):

The leading orange juice companies such as Tropicana (owned by PepsiCo), Minute Maid and Simply Orange (owned by Coca-Cola), and Florida’s Natural tell us many stories about orange juice: it’s natural, it’s pure and simple, it’s squeezed from oranges grown on pristine looking trees in Florida. But they leave out the details about how most commercial orange juice is produced and processed. Considering roughly two thirds of US households buy orange juice, Americans have a right to the whole story. As Tropicana launches its $35 million marketing campaign “Squeeze, it’s a natural,” it’s time for a reality check. Tropicana orange juice is not “relatively straightforward,” as reported in a New York Times article about PepsiCo’s recent decision to calculate the carbon footprint of its Tropicana brand of juice.

In the 1980s Tropicana coined the phrase “not from concentrate” to distinguish its pasteurized orange juice from the cheaper reconstituted “from concentrate” juice that began appearing alongside it in the refrigerator section of supermarkets. The idea was to convince consumers that pasteurized orange juice is a fresher, overall better product and therefore worth the higher price. It worked. Over the next five years sales of Tropicana’s pasteurized juice doubled and profits almost tripled.

In fact, “not from concentrate,” a.k.a pasteurized orange juice, is not more expensive than “from concentrate” because it is closer to fresh squeezed. Rather, it is because storing full strength pasteurized orange juice is more costly and elaborate than storing the space saving concentrate from which “from concentrate” is made. The technology of choice at the moment is aseptic storage, which involves stripping the juice of oxygen, a process known as “deaeration,” so it doesn’t oxidize in the million gallon tanks in which it can be kept for upwards of a year.

When the juice is stripped of oxygen it is also stripped of flavor providing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh. Flavor packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature. The packs added to juice earmarked for the North American market tend to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, a chemical in the fragrance of fresh squeezed orange juice that, juice companies have discovered, Americans favor. Mexicans and Brazilians have a different palate. Flavor packs fabricated for juice geared to these markets therefore highlight different chemicals, the decanals say, or terpene compounds such as valencine.

The formulas vary to give a brand’s trademark taste. If you’re discerning you may have noticed Minute Maid has a candy like orange flavor. That’s largely due to the flavor pack Coca-Cola has chosen for it. Some companies have even been known to request a flavor pack that mimics the taste of a popular competitor, creating a “hall of mirrors” of flavor packs. Despite the multiple interpretations of a freshly squeezed orange on the market, most flavor packs have a shared source of inspiration: a Florida Valencia orange in spring.

If you like orange juice and want to buy American, now is the time. Only during this time of year can you pick up a carton that contains Florida Valencia juice that has not spent months in storage. The rest of the year, whether you buy Minute Maid’s “from concentrate,” or Tropicana’s “not from concentrate,” you’re drinking a mixture of Florida juice, some or all of which has been stored from previous seasons, and juice shipped from Brazil, which conveniently grows oranges when Florida doesn’t. Even the Florida based company Florida’s Natural, which is owned by a cooperative of Florida growers, imports Brazilian concentrate for its “from concentrate” juice line.

Or maybe you want to try something new for breakfast: a whole Florida Valencia orange. It’s higher in vitamin C than a glass of processed juice and the flavor is incomparable.

Thoughts?

b!g(g)2*w@l#

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The Case Against Soft Drinks

Erika Nicole Kendall — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:07:52 +0000

As I’ve said before, I’m not a pop drinker. (I’m Midwestern-raised. It’s pop, dang it.)

I can remember the days when I used to drink a two-liter a day, though. I mean, it was so cheap and easy. Whenever I was thirsty, I’d just go ahead and grab another giant glass of pop. I still have the glass I used to use to drink my pop – a big white thermal 20oz cup.

I think about the calories I wasted drinking soda, and I cringe.

Let’s start off with a little basic math. One serving of pop is 8oz, or 1 cup. If there are 8oz in a measured cup, then 20 oz is the equivalent of two and a half cups of soda in one sitting. If each 1 cup serving of pop is 97 calories, then two and a half cups of pop is 242 calories. If I did that three times a day, that’s 728 calories alone that I’m drinking. Each day.

728 calories a day in soft drinks multiplied by 365 days a year that I was drinking it gives me a total of 265,720 calories. Divide that by 3500 (the number of calories in a pound), and that’s 75lbs in a year that I contended with… all over a salty sugary drink.

Let’s take a look at the nutritional value of the soft drink.

There is none.

No, really. Carbonated water. High fructose corn syrup. Caramel color. Phosphoric acid. “Natural flavors.” Caffeine.

Not nary an item in that list offers any nutritional value. Sure, there’s “corn” in there, but it’s been so thoroughly processed that the only thing remaining from the corn itself it its sweetness… and trust me, there’s a ton of it in there.

Check out that phosphoric acid, though. This is the same stuff that’s an ingredient in your rust removal products. Yes, it’ll clean your hammer, your nails and any other rusty tools. It also gives your favorite soft drink its tangy bite, so drink up.

Do you know how much sugar (read: high fructose corn syrup, because that is the source of sugar in a soft drink, nowadays) is in a soft drink? Approximately 30g per serving. So, since we’re multiplying everything by 2.5 (since, if you drink a big bottle of coke a day, you’re drinking 20oz which is 2.5 servings), you’re getting 75 grams of sugar in each bottle.

Look at it like this: since each teaspoon of sugar is 4.2 grams, you’re getting a little under 18 teaspoons of sugar in each bottle. I was doing this three times a day. If my math is correct, that’s a little more than one cup worth of sugar each day. Yummy.

What do we know about sugar? Well, let’s address the digestive aspects, first:

Sugars are digested in one step. An enzyme in the lining of the small intestine digests sucrose, also known as table sugar, into glucose and fructose, which are absorbed through the intestine into the blood. – [source: NIDDK]

Taken from my own high fructose corn syrup rant, comparing table sugar to high fructose corn syrup:

You and I BOTH know that it doesn’t require an MD to be able to study and understand a pros and cons list. If I show you a list that says “fattening,” and another list that says “leaves you prone to diabetes, inflates your appetite, and apparently can be linked to high blood pressure,” you’re going to be able to easily identify which one is going to leave you worse off, right?

Do you need to explain to someone that High Fructose Corn Syrup fiddles with leptin, a hormone in the human body that aids in regulating the appetite, in a way that prevents you from being able to control your hunger? Do you need to be able to explain to someone that HFCS screws with your body’s ability to process insulin? (Just in case you’re wondering, that works like this: since HFCS is metabolized as fat quicker than regular sugar once it hits your liver, this process triggers something called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This process leads to insulin resistance and type II diabetes.) It isn’t enough that you know something makes you uncomfortable and you don’t want to partake in it. You have to be a doctor now to speak ill of it?

Because the excessive amount of sugar in a single 20oz bottle of soda is converted directly into fat into the system, and because the forceful impact of sugar to your system affects your body’s ability to properly gauge its hunger levels (as evidenced above), soft drinks directly contribute to your risk of becoming overweight.

And as I’ve written before, Princeton said:

Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides.

[...]

“When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.” – [source]

As any clean eater knows, soft drinks break two cardinal rules of clean eating: no highly processed foods, and always get the most out of your food choices. Take advantage of the nutritional values of the foods you love and if something you love offers you nothing in return naturally, then it’s time to let it go.

A drink with absolutely no nutritional value, that can clean the rust off your shower head, that aids your body in losing the ability to control its appetite, that aids your body in losing its sensitivity to sugar and developing insulin resistance…?

Just drink some water, already. Jeez. (Oh, and you diet drinkers? I’ve got somethin’ for y’all, too.)

b!g(g)2*w@l#

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Post tags: hfcs, high fructose corn syrup, overeating, pop, soda, soft drinks

High Fructose Corn Syrup: What’s The Big Deal?

Erika Nicole Kendall — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 16:25:11 +0000

And now, a moment of tough love.

I’m not gonna lie – this is more for me than it is for you, dear reader, because I have a bad habit of running back to foods that are laden with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and usually don’t realize what I’m doing to myself until I’m halfway through the package. As if my mind says “Nooooo! Don’t look at the ingredients li– aww, damn.”

Conventional wisdom (and your brain) tells you, “if it feels good, do it.” Well, you know how sometimes, things feel a little too good? Like, so good, it’s downright sinful? Rest assured, you probably have no business doing it. My favorite piece of cheesecake? Sinful. My favorite Tira Mi Su? Sinful. The BBQ sauce I just tossed out the other day because I was clenching the bottle trying to understand why common sense wouldn’t let me put it down? Sinful! (By the way, all three of them contain HFCS.)

Having said all that, let me introduce you to HFCS. Actually, I’ll let the Corn Refiners Association do it:

Now… I laugh, only because I work in marketing. Ads like this serve one purpose: damage control. So when I see something like this, my first thought is “what happened to make the corn farmers toss money at the small screen?” They’re essentially mocking the very people they’re targeting — those who know it’s bad for them, but aren’t able to quickly express why — and still expecting to win them over. Or… is this a stealthy method of giving “comebacks” to HFCS fans to use when those hoity toity picky eaters get on their soapbox about Cheetos and Capri Suns? Who goes to those kinds of lengths when everything is ok? …when the accusations are baseless?

So… digging, I go.

First, let’s look at that ad up there. “My hair dresser says that sugar is healthier than high fructose corn syrup.” Follow that up with the witty retort of, “Wow! You get your hair done by a doctor?” [insert laughter]

You and I BOTH know that it doesn’t require an MD to be able to study and understand a pros and cons list. If I show you a list that says “fattening,” and another list that says “leaves you prone to diabetes, inflates your appetite, and apparently can be linked to high blood pressure,” you’re going to be able to easily identify which one is going to leave you worse off, right?

Do you need to explain to someone that High Fructose Corn Syrup fiddles with leptin, a hormone in the human body that aids in regulating the appetite, in a way that prevents you from being able to control your hunger? Do you need to be able to explain to someone that HFCS screws with your body’s ability to process insulin? (Just in case you’re wondering, that works like this: since HFCS is metabolized as fat quicker than regular sugar once it hits your liver, this process triggers something called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This process leads to insulin resistance and type II diabetes.) It isn’t enough that you know something makes you uncomfortable and you don’t want to partake in it. You have to be a doctor now to speak ill of it?

Well, let me tell y’all somethin’ – I’m no doctor, and I’ll still be damned if someone tells me that my own bad feelings aren’t enough to justify not wanting a chemistry experiment nourishing my body I was given. Period. You might get the mental judo chop for that one.

Let’s also talk about this moderation thing, here. Of course, HFCS is safe in moderation. At the same time, so are Doritos. The difference between the two is, well… do you know how many foods you eat each day contain HFCS? Let me put it to you like this: Soda? High Fructose Corn Syrup. “Processed Cheese Food?” HFCS. Jam, jelly, ketchup, BBQ sauce , “fruit juices,” Wonder bread (most breads, actually), eggos, pop tarts, cough syrup, and mayo? High Fructose Corn Syrup.Yes. Apparently, you have a better chance of escaping Doritos than you do HFCS.

I think I’ve named at least ONE thing that we all eat throughout the day. If not, then think about this: I’m sure you’ve had a McDonalds menu meal, right? The same corn that makes your HFCS feeds the cows that turn into your burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients in the Chicken McNuggets. Now, think about “moderation.” How can you effectively moderate something that is everywhere and in everything? You can’t… and they know it. Your ability to gauge what “moderate use” is becomes swayed by the fact that it’s been in everything you ate that day. For those of you who use these foods regular and often, “HFCS in moderation” is pretty much… a joke.

Why is that, though? Why is it that you can’t escape this substance? In as few words as possible, here’s why.

Once upon a time, our government approved a plan that pretty much pays farmers to overproduce corn in America. Considering the basic principle of supply and demand (the more rare, the more expensive; the more common, the more cheap), that drives the price of corn down. Since they have this item in such abundance and so cheap, they come up with multiple ways to use it… hence HFCS. You, a food exec, have an extremely cheap item in your hands that makes food taste (or, at least appear to taste) better. Why not use this to your advantage? Stick some extra fat in certain foods to stretch out our supply… and when the taste is altered? Stick a little HFCS in there. Want to create a cheap juice? Find a “strawberry” flavor, some high fructose corn syrup, and water. Pow. Cost $0.50 to make, but watch me sell a giant jug of it for $2.50. I’m in there like swimwear. It’s just smart, business-wise.

Nutrition-wise, it’s doing nothing for you, the consumer. It’s empty calories. That means for all that you’re ingesting, there is no vitamin or nutritional value for any of it. At all. You should seek for all of your food to provide you a liiiiiiittle somethin’ in the end. Besides a gut, that is.

There’s one more point I want to bring up before I wrap this up… and that’s the point about rewards, gratification, and habit. HFCS tends to trigger a sort of… Pavlov’s dog syndrome, if you will.

To summarize briefly, a Russian scientist named Ivan Pavlov studied conditioned responses in dogs. In short, if you get in the habit of doing something and the SAME reward happens each time you do it, you begin to expect (or, in other words, you become conditioned) the reward before you’ve even done the action that brings the reward. In other words, if you know you love that BBQ sauce… if you see it, your body starts to experience the pleasure you get from it long before you taste it.. thus causing you to indulge. You want that good feeling again. It’s that simple.

Feels like I’m sticking you with a burden, right? That’s not my intention. I would love it if you could resolve a few things within yourself.

First, resolve that you’ll begin to phase out some of the unnecessary HFCS-filled foods in your life. If you overdo the mountain dew, consider packing it away… for good. If you love the ketchup or pancake syrups, look for something a little more natural. If you can’t afford the healthier option, shoot for a less expensive option. (In the case of the syrups, the healthier alternate that my grocery had cost an extra $4. So instead, I top my pancakes and french toast with a little confectioners sugar, $0.99, and fruit slices, $1.29. In the case of the ketchup, I simply stopped eating hot dogs… the one thing I couldn’t eat without ketchup.)

Then resolve that you’ve made the best decision for you, and no corny commercial or insulting advertisement will make you feel less comfortable with the decision you’ve made for yourself. Just like you don’t owe anyone any expanation for why you want to lose weight and eat healthier, you for damn sure don’t owe anyone any explanations for why you choose to phase High Fructose Corn Syrup out of your diet.

Lastly, like I’ve written before, resolve that this is a difficult lifestyle change — a lifetime lifestyle change and it will be bumpy at first. That’s perfectly okay. As long as you’re taking and following steps each day, you’ll be able to bet that you’re moving in the direction in which you need to go.

Be happy, be healthy!

b!g(g)2*w@l#

High Fructose Corn Syrup: What’s The Big Deal? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 32 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Fast Food, food labels, high fructose corn syrup, obesity, overeating, restaurants

Portion Distortion: Stop Eating Out Of The Bag

Erika Nicole Kendall — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:20:33 +0000

Once upon a time.. I used to kill the bag. Destroy the box. I could barely sit down before I tore into it… whatever the “it” was for the day.

I’m talkin’ about snackin’. Although, for me, it was never really a snack. Not in the traditional sense – it wasn’t simply a little bit to hold me over. It was a LOT to hold me over unnecessarily… and on a regular basis.

I remember one day, coming home from the grocery and getting ready to start putting everything away… and the first bag I opened had a bag of Verona cookies inside. Guilty pleasure, yes they were. It felt like for every item I put in the fridge, I was tossing a cookie in my mouth. I don’t even know if I consciously realized what I was doing at that time.. but I was just eatin’ for the sake of eatin’.

Now… it’s all funny and jokes until I think about the fact that by the time I had finished putting the groceries away, I had finished the entire bag of cookies. There’s what – 24 cookies in a bag, right? If one serving size of 3 cookies is 140 calories… 24 divided by 3 equals 8 servings in a bag… so if I ate 140 calories 8 times… that’s over a thousand calories in one fell swoop.

I realized this was a habit for me. If I ate some goldfish crackers, I’d just get them directly out of the box. Pour them from my hand directly into my mouth – that way I never had to face how much of them I was eating. Not like I didn’t care, but… I didn’t care.

If I ate some ice cream? I’d get a spoonful from the pint, sometimes leave the spoon on top of the ice cream (nasty college student habit, I know), and go back to what I was doing. Cheez-its? Pfft, don’t even. My hand would go from box to mouth.

But then, I started reading the nutrition labels. I could never gauge – and if I did, I’d underestimate – just how much of something I was eating. It was getting in the way of my calorie counting. Of knowing what I was really putting in my body. So… I had to figure out a plan. A way to get a better grasp on how much food I was scarfing down mindlessly.

I bought myself a bag of blue corn chips. They taste a little heavier than your typical tortilla chips, but there’s this rich-and-almost-velvety taste to them that totally rocks. I turned the bag over, and took note of the serving size. 1 serving is equal to 15 chips. I then promptly grabbed a box of ziploc bags, and got to work.

Inside each bag… is 15 chips. One serving per ziploc. And wouldn’t you know it – I was eating three and four servings at a time just from mindless snacking? Do you see those portion sizes? Add in the typical guacamole or sour cream? Holy jeez… I was killin’ myself.

How did the ziploc treatment work? Well, let me tell you. It worked. Believe it or not, there’s science behind why.

Consider this study done by researchers at Cornell University:

According to a new Cornell University study, when moviegoers were served stale popcorn in big buckets, they ate 34 percent more than those given the same stale popcorn in medium-sized containers. Tasty food created even larger appetites: Fresh popcorn in large tubs resulted in people eating 45 percent more than those given fresh popcorn in medium-sized containers.

“We’re finding that portion size can influence intake as much as taste,” said Brian Wansink, the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics at Cornell. “Large packages and containers can lead to overeating foods we do not even find appealing.” [...]

So… if all it takes to make you eat more of something you don’t like is a larger container..

…could you imagine what it does to you to eat something you like without even transferring it to a container at all? Eating your favorite chips out of the bag, instead of a bowl or a paper towel? Eating your favorite ice cream out of the pint container, instead of a champagne flute (hey, get creative – work with me, here)? Never getting a bowl, a plate – or in my case, a ziploc bag – allowed me to eat at will… never having to face how much I was eating, or exactly how often I was eating, either. Not like I ever had any dishes to clean, right?

Can everyone set aside time to get their ziploc on? Of course not. That’s not my suggestion at all. However, I do believe in baby steps. Take it slow. Start by no longer eating out of the box, bag, or container. Commit yourself to every time you get something to eat, you’ll put it in a bowl or plate before you put it in your mouth. Give yourself the opportunity to see what you’re eating, and if you know you shouldn’t be eating in the first place… feel a little guilt about it as you put it on your plate. ‘Cause yes – sometimes, you know you have no business eating seconds (or firsts, in some cases) and you should feel a little eater’s remorse about it.

So… I’ve fessed up about my Cheez-Its and my Veronas…. what’s the source of your portion distortion?

b!g(g)2*w@l#

Portion Distortion: Stop Eating Out Of The Bag is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: mentality, overeating, portion sizes

Pleasure and The Puritans: Why “If It Tastes Good, It MUST Be Bad” Is Wrong

Erika Nicole Kendall — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:09:56 +0000

Everywhere I turn, there are people who are talking about food. And, I mean, that makes sense. It’s what we need to survive. However…. the conversations are more indicative of a fear of food than anything else.

Think about it – how often are conversations about pleasureful foods followed up with “Oh, I’m gonna spend all night on the treadmill for that one?” or “It’s going to go straight to my thighs?” I mean, this inordinate amount of guilt that we feel because we actually enjoy what we eat is so… bizarre to me, now.

From the nourishing revolution:

Basically, I’ve been thinking about the way people often talk and think about food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – as though there’s an implicit moral value judgement. I think this is left over from the religious roots of Western culture, there’s something absurdly puritanical about the idea that what is good is hard work and not particularly enjoyable (healthy food), whereas anything pleasurable, a sweet, fatty indulgence for example, must somehow be sinful. Perhaps this partially explains the promotion of bland foods like grains and the public execution of saturated fat.

This is what I wrote a few days ago as part of my thesis:

According to Warde (1997) health was rarely a concern in recipes in 1967-8, only four percent of recipes recommended food because it was healthy. This was before concerns over nutrition escalated; in the 1991-2 sample sixteen percent of recipes made reference to the healthy nature of foods. There was a common assumption that healthy food equated to light food which would (hopefully) equate to a lighter physical form. Health (nutritionism) information was increasingly supplied, alongside recipes, about factors such as fat, fibre and calories following the trend of increasing obsession with health and healthy eating, particularly prevalent in the middle class and often more of a concern for women. Warde asserts that this reflects government propaganda campaigns encouraging healthy eating.

This kind of compromise is discussed by Warde in his book Consumption, Food and Taste (1997). “Comfort food” is a common term used to describe the consumption of (usually unhealthy) food for emotional pleasure rather than bio-physical health. This may be a way that lay discourse patches the divide between good and sinful foods – allowing for some emotional pampering on the part of the unhealthy food, but just occasionally. Warde calls this: “one of the most important mixed messages regarding contemporary food. We should eat healthily; but not if it makes us sad. Implicitly hedonistic consumption is justified in terms of what the mind and the body need. This juxtaposition of indulgence and bodily self-discipline identifies a profound contradiction. Its only resolution is by eating something different tomorrow. Bangers and mash is for a special occasion, when feeling blue; and that is a most important condition in the world of self. You deserve to be happy, and to be comforted when not. The indulgence may be craved for a transgression of the rules. Ultimately, this is a tale about good and evil, and what is being encouraged is evil. But you can be forgiven because you feel miserable; if you aren’t happy, try sin!” (1997, p.79)

Now, I think – personally – that the origin of the “good” vs “bad” conversation is important, so long as it is used to differentiate between the “clean” and the “unclean”; those who are “chemically altered” and those who are not. There’s a point in time where imitation foods were clearly labeled and identified as such. That is no longer the case, and my personal beliefs lead me to believe that THAT kind of distinction needs to be made, simply because the nutritional landscape is so different from what it used to be.

She also makes the following point: “According to Warde (1997) health was rarely a concern in recipes in 1967-8, only four percent of recipes recommended food because it was healthy. This was before concerns over nutrition escalated…”

I’d like to offer up an answer regarding why:

The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act imposed strict rules requiring that the word “imitation” appear on any food product that was, well, an imitation … [And] the food industry [argued over the word], strenuously for decades, and in 1973 it finally succeeded in getting the imitation rule tossed out, a little-noticed but momentous step that helped speed America down the path of nutritionism.

… The American Heart Association, eager to get Americans off saturated fats and onto vegetable oils (including hydrogenated vegetable oils), was actively encouraging the food industry to “modify” various foods to get the saturated fats and cholesterol out of them, and in the early seventies the association urged that “any existing and regulatory barriers to the marketing of such foods be removed.”

And so they were when, in 1973, the FDA (not, note, the Congress that wrote the law) simply repealed the 1938 rule concerning imitation foods. … The revised imitation rule held that as long as an imitation product was not “nutritionally inferior” to the natural food it sought to impersonate—as long as it had the same quantities of recongized nutrients—the imitation could be marketed without using the dreaded “i” word. — In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Of course concerns about nutrition escalated right before the FDA’s ruling – someone had a vested interest in making sure that we cared less about where our nourishment came from, so long as it appeared to be nourishing.

I know that’s extremely “conspiracy theorist,” but that’s real. If I only need to focus on the little building blocks, it doesn’t matter where they come from. That philosophy was thrown at us for decades – focusing on the little bits and pieces, not simply how they work together. It caused us to flock to certain foods, cringe at the thought of eating others and feel guilt for doing what we’ve always done.

Food is supposed to bring some semblance of pleasure. Ingesting carbs at a respectable rate is supposed to lift your mood. Ingesting a certain amount of fat is supposed to alleviate stress to some degree. Those are evolutionary responses. They’re also manipulated by industries with the intention of making us feel sooo good that we overindulge, use up their product and buy it again.

That reaction – right there – is the origin of what I call The Puritan Principle. If it feels good, it must be bad. We’re intimately familiar with the consequences of said indulgence. We’re “fat” and unhappy about it. We’re extremely unhealthy.

That’s also where we get the idea of “if it’s good for you, it must taste like crap.” We immediately jump to the extreme opposite. It’s why we have so many people who reject the idea of healthy food being delicious.

You have no idea how many times I have to tell people “Yes, I ‘can have’ cheese… and meat… and oil… and cream… and mayonnaise… and eat cleanly.” Their eyes bug out, they get confused, they “go dumb.” If it weren’t for the fact that I’d already lost over 160lbs with this philosophy, they’d truly think I was full of it. The problem isn’t the food, so much as it is the fact that its manufacturing can cause you to lose your ability to control yourself. I have full control over how often I eat it, and how much I eat is tempered by the naturally occurring fiber in the dish.

It’s strange, but that is commonly challenged thinking. It’s actually considered “revolutionary,” believe it or not.

We’ve spent so much time embracing this ideology that says all edible substances are equal, that we’ve failed to pay attention to the fact that some edible substances make it harder for us to control ourselves… and those edible substances are usually processed beyond belief. It’s caused us to feel guilt for enjoying food, shame for our inability to control ourselves, and confusion about why our bodies and health don’t look the way we’d like.

The reality is.. almost any foods made without excess foreign chemicals can be enjoyed with a healthy balance. They won’t compel us to overindulge. They won’t make us feel guilt, because we can accept the fact that it tastes good thanks to quality ingredients… not an abundance of that sugar/fat/salt triumvirate that we find far too often. Our bodies won’t reflect such a long and hard-fought losing battle against our non-existant will power.

That being said… yes, food that doesn’t contribute to poor health (in other words, “healthy food”) can taste delicious, and can actually come in the form of fat… or cream. Ice cream, even. When you’re working with actual real ingredients, that silly “if it tastes good, it must be bad” philosophy doesn’t apply. At all.

(PS: I know that we could get into specifics about preparation – namely salt – but the reality is that a balanced lifestyle will include fruits and vegetables that will negate the effects of sodium in the diet. The key word is balance. Not moderation… balance.)

b!g(g)2*w@l#

Pleasure and The Puritans: Why “If It Tastes Good, It MUST Be Bad” Is Wrong is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: fake food, FDA, imitation, indulgence

The Case Against Agave Nectar

Erika Nicole Kendall — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:01:03 +0000

I’m not even gonna type in this one. I’m just gonna compile the words of a bunch of people much smarter than I.

It’s true that agave nectar has a lower GI value than table sugar, and some studies found diets rich in foods with low GI values can prevent diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. However, it’s still equally important to look at other factors in the diet: total carbohydrates, fiber, protein, and fats, exercise habits, eating style, stress level, and so on.

Plus, agave nectar is 90% fructose. If excessive fructose is causing our obesity, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome epidemic, then agave might be worse than high fructose corn syrup (55% fructose) and worse than table sugar. Fructose doesn’t stimulate insulin release and as a result, doesn’t stimulate the release of another hormone that makes us feel full. So when we consume too much fructose, we are likely to eat more! Plus, fructose goes to the liver to be broken down, and there it is converted to fat, which can raise cholesterol and triglycerides. Bad stuff. Read this article from Diabetes Health for more on fructose.

And let’s not forget that agave is still nutrient-free.

Agave nectar is processed. It undergoes heat processing so that fructosans, the complex form of fructose found in it, are broken down into fructose. Now that doesn’t sound so natural from where I stand. [source]

On to Dr. Joseph Mercola:

If you knew the truth about what’s really in it, you’d be dumping it down the drain — and that would certainly be bad for sales.

Most agave “nectar” or agave “syrup” is nothing more than a laboratory-generated super-condensed fructose syrup, devoid of virtually all nutrient value, and offering you metabolic misfortune in its place.

Unfortunately, masterful marketing has resulted in the astronomical popularity of agave syrup among people who believe they are doing their health a favor by avoiding refined sugars like high fructose corn syrup, and dangerous artificial sweeteners.

And if you’re diabetic, you’ve been especially targeted and told this is simply the best thing for you since locally grown organic lettuce, that it’s “diabetic friendly,” has a “low glycemic index” and doesn’t spike your blood sugar.

While agave syrup does have a low-glycemic index, so does antifreeze — that doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

Most agave syrup has a higher fructose content than any commercial sweetener — ranging from 55 to 97 percent, depending on the brand, which is FAR HIGHER than high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which averages 55 percent.

This makes agave actually WORSE than HFCS.

It is important to understand that fructose does not increase insulin levels, which is not necessarily good as what it does do is radically increase insulin resistance, which is FAR more dangerous. You see, it’s okay for your insulin levels to rise, that is normal. You just don’t want these insulin levels to remain elevated, which is what insulin resistance causes.

That is why fasting insulin is such a powerful test, as it is a very powerful reflection of your insulin resistance.

In addition to insulin resistance, your risk of liver damage increases, along with triglycerides and a whole host of other health problems, as discussed in this CBC News video about the newly discovered dangers of high fructose corn syrup. The study discussed in this news report is about HFCS, however, it’s well worth remembering that agave contains MORE fructose than HFCS, and in all likelihood, it’s the FRUCTOSE that is causing these severe liver problems.

On agave’s production and manufacturing:

Although the industry wants you to believe that agave nectar runs straight from the plant and into your jar, nothing could not be farther from the truth.

In spite of manufacturer’s claims, most agave “nectar” is not made from the sap of the yucca or agave plant but from its pineapple-like root bulb. The root has a complex carbohydrate called inulin, which is made up of fructose molecules.

The process which many, if not most, agave producers use to convert this inulin into “nectar” is VERY similar to the process by which cornstarch is converted into HFCS1.

Though processing methods can differ among manufacturers, most commercially available agave is converted into fructose-rich syrup using genetically modified enzymes and a chemically intensive process involving caustic acids, clarifiers, and filtration chemicals. Here is a partial list of the chemicals many producers use:

Activated charcoal

Cationic and ionic resins

Sulfuric and/or hydrofluoric acid

Dicalite

Clarimex

Inulin enzymes

Fructozyme

How natural does this sound?

The result is highly refined fructose syrup, along with some remaining insulin.

Most agave “nectar” is neither safe nor natural with laboratory-generated fructose levels of more than 80 percent!

But is there a safe way to enjoy agave nectar? 3 Fat Chicks seem to think so:

Those who wish to use agave nectar as a safe natural sweetener should select raw, unprocessed agave nectar that is free from impurities. Look for USDA Organic certified agave nectar, and read labels carefully. Never buy agave nectar that isn’t grown, harvested and manufactured in the United States.

I think the point about diabetics is one of the most interesting to me, because lots of diabetics cling to agave nectar for their “sweet” taste. There are safe ways to enjoy “sweet” that aren’t so nebulous. Just have to do a little digging.

I think that what posts like this reinforce, for me, is to do what I can to get my “sweet” from natural sources, because the further away from “natural” we get, the more problems seem to arise.

As with anything else, strive for as few excess chemicals in your products, agave included, and if it’s pricey then use that as an excuse to pare down your use of it. As with all other things, your body will thank you for it!

b!g(g)2*w@l#

The Case Against Agave Nectar is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 19 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: agav nectar, agave nectar, diabetes, sugar, sweetener

Infographic: How To Find Real Food At The Supermarket

Erika Nicole Kendall — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:51:12 +0000

I don’t like it when people make neat little graphics that explain things I’ve said in 1000 words. Sure, it makes it easier on you but dang it, I put a lot of effort into those 1000 words!

From Summer Tomato:

“Might it contain bacon anyway? Yes? Probably dog food. Eat at your own risk.”

Pardon me as I close the door on my own coffin, because I am dying of laughter over here!

#teamANTIbacon

b!g(g)2*w@l#

Infographic: How To Find Real Food At The Supermarket is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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Seven Foods You Should Never Eat

Erika Nicole Kendall — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:00:03 +0000

Looking forward to hearing what everything thinks of this one:

Clean eating means choosing fruits, vegetables, and meats that are raised, grown, and sold with minimal processing. Often they’re organic, and rarely (if ever) should they contain additives. But in some cases, the methods of today’s food producers are neither clean nor sustainable. The result is damage to our health, the environment, or both. So we decided to take a fresh look at food through the eyes of the people who spend their lives uncovering what’s safe–or not–to eat. We asked them a simple question: “What foods do you avoid?” Their answers don’t necessarily make up a “banned foods” list. But reaching for the suggested alternatives might bring you better health–and peace of mind.

flickr: cogdogblog

1. The Endocrinologist Won’t Eat: Canned Tomatoes
Fredrick Vom Saal, is an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri who studies bisphenol-A.

The problem: The resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Unfortunately, acidity (a prominent characteristic of tomatoes) causes BPA to leach into your food. Studies show that the BPA in most people’s body exceeds the amount that suppresses sperm production or causes chromosomal damage to the eggs of animals. “You can get 50 mcg of BPA per liter out of a tomato can, and that’s a level that is going to impact people, particularly the young,” says vom Saal. “I won’t go near canned tomatoes.”

The solution: Choose tomatoes in glass bottles (which do not need resin linings), such as the brands Bionaturae and Coluccio. You can also get several types in Tetra Pak boxes, like Trader Joe’s and Pomi.

Budget tip: If your recipe allows, substitute bottled pasta sauce for canned tomatoes. Look for pasta sauces with low sodium and few added ingredients, or you may have to adjust the recipe.

2. The Farmer Won’t Eat: Corn-Fed Beef
Joel Salatin is co-owner of Polyface Farms and author of half a dozen books on sustainable farming.

The problem: Cattle evolved to eat grass, not grains. But farmers today feed their animals corn and soybeans, which fatten up the animals faster for slaughter. But more money for cattle farmers (and lower prices at the grocery store) means a lot less nutrition for us. A recent comprehensive study conducted by the USDA and researchers from Clemson University found that compared with corn-fed beef, grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin E, omega-3s, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), calcium, magnesium, and potassium; lower in inflammatory omega-6s; and lower in saturated fats that have been linked to heart disease. “We need to respect the fact that cows are herbivores, and that does not mean feeding them corn and chicken manure,” says Salatin.

The solution: Buy grass-fed beef, which can be found at specialty grocers, farmers’ markets, and nationally at Whole Foods. It’s usually labeled because it demands a premium, but if you don’t see it, ask your butcher.

Budget tip: Cuts on the bone are cheaper because processors charge extra for deboning. You can also buy direct from a local farmer, which can be as cheap as $5 per pound. To find a farmer near you, search eatwild.com.

3. The Toxicologist Won’t Eat: Microwave Popcorn
Olga Naidenko, is a senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group.

The problem: Chemicals, including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), in the lining of the bag, are part of a class of compounds that may be linked to infertility in humans, according to a recent study from UCLA. In animal testing, the chemicals cause liver, testicular, and pancreatic cancer. Studies show that microwaving causes the chemicals to vaporize–and migrate into your popcorn. “They stay in your body for years and accumulate there,” says Naidenko, which is why researchers worry that levels in humans could approach the amounts causing cancers in laboratory animals. DuPont and other manufacturers have promised to phase out PFOA by 2015 under a voluntary EPA plan, but millions of bags of popcorn will be sold between now and then.

The solution: Pop natural kernels the old-fashioned way: in a skillet. For flavorings, you can add real butter or dried seasonings, such as dillweed, vegetable flakes, or soup mix.

Budget tip: Popping your own popcorn is dirt cheap.

4. The Farm Director Won’t Eat: Nonorganic Potatoes
Jeffrey Moyer is the chair of the National Organic Standards Board.

The problem: Root vegetables absorb herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that wind up in soil. In the case of potatoes–the nation’s most popular vegetable–they’re treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting. After they’re dug up, the potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting. “Try this experiment: Buy a conventional potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won’t,” says Moyer, who is also farm director of the Rodale Institute (also owned by Rodale Inc., the publisher of Prevention). “I’ve talked with potato growers who say point-blank they would never eat the potatoes they sell. They have separate plots where they grow potatoes for themselves without all the chemicals.”

The solution: Buy organic potatoes. Washing isn’t good enough if you’re trying to remove chemicals that have been absorbed into the flesh.

Budget tip: Organic potatoes are only $1 to $2 a pound, slightly more expensive than conventional spuds.

5. The Fisheries Expert Won’t Eat: Farmed Salmon
Dr. David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, published a major study in the journal Science on contamination in fish.

The problem: Nature didn’t intend for salmon to be crammed into pens and fed soy, poultry litter, and hydrolyzed chicken feathers. As a result, farmed salmon is lower in vitamin D and higher in contaminants, including carcinogens, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides such as dioxin and DDT. According to Carpenter, the most contaminated fish come from Northern Europe, which can be found on American menus. “You could eat one of these salmon dinners every 5 months without increasing your risk of cancer,” says Carpenter, whose 2004 fish contamination study got broad media attention. “It’s that bad.” Preliminary science has also linked DDT to diabetes and obesity, but some nutritionists believe the benefits of omega-3s outweigh the risks. There is also concern about the high level of antibiotics and pesticides used to treat these fish. When you eat farmed salmon, you get dosed with the same drugs and chemicals.

The solution: Switch to wild-caught Alaska salmon. If the package says fresh Atlantic, it’s farmed. There are no commercial fisheries left for wild Atlantic salmon.

Budget tip: Canned salmon, almost exclusively from wild catch, can be found for as little as $3 a can.

6. The Cancer Researcher Won’t Drink: Milk Produced With Artificial Hormones
Rick North is project director of the Campaign for Safe Food at the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility and former CEO of the Oregon division of the American Cancer Society.

The problem: Milk producers treat their dairy cattle with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST, as it is also known) to boost milk production. But rBGH also increases udder infections and even pus in the milk. It also leads to higher levels of a hormone called insulin-like growth factor in milk. In people, high levels of IGF-1 may contribute to breast, prostate, and colon cancers. “When the government approved rBGH, it was thought that IGF-1 from milk would be broken down in the human digestive tract,” says North. As it turns out, the casein in milk protects most of it, according to several independent studies. “There’s not 100 percent proof that this is increasing cancer in humans,” admits North. “However, it’s banned in most industrialized countries.”

The solution: Check labels for rBGH-free, rBST-free, produced without artificial hormones, or organic milk. These phrases indicate rBGH-free products.

Budget tip: Try Wal-Mart’s Great Value label, which does not use rBGH.

7. The Organic-Foods Expert Won’t Eat: Conventional Apples
Mark Kastel, a former executive for agribusiness, is codirector of the Cornucopia Institute, a farm-policy research group that supports organic foods.

The problem: If fall fruits held a “most doused in pesticides contest,” apples would win. Why? They are individually grafted (descended from a single tree) so that each variety maintains its distinctive flavor. As such, apples don’t develop resistance to pests and are sprayed frequently. The industry maintains that these residues are not harmful. But Kastel counters that it’s just common sense to minimize exposure by avoiding the most doused produce, like apples. “Farm workers have higher rates of many cancers,” he says. And increasing numbers of studies are starting to link a higher body burden of pesticides (from all sources) with Parkinson’s disease.

The solution: Buy organic apples.

Budget tip: If you can’t afford organic, be sure to wash and peel them. But Kastel personally refuses to compromise. “I would rather see the trade-off being that I don’t buy that expensive electronic gadget,” he says. “Just a few of these decisions will accommodate an organic diet for a family.”

I won’t lie – the potatoes made me groan a bit, but everything else felt pretty spot on.

Thoughts?

b!g(g)2*w@l#

Seven Foods You Should Never Eat is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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The Case Against… Juice?

Erika Nicole Kendall — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:58:47 +0000

I acknowledge that I’m not going to make any friends with this post. It’s probably going to piss a few people off, turn a few people off, frustrate a few people, annoy a few people… but at least I’m being honest.

I don’t drink juice. Orange juice, apple juice, rooty rooty fresh and fruity juice, whatever. I don’t drink it.

I have my reasons, though.

A while back, I wrote this:

To be honest, I don’t know whether there’s much purpose to a “reasons to forgo food with added sugar” rant, simply because it breaks down to an understanding of “natural sugar” against “processed sugar.”

Okay, here goes.

In nature, the primary place you find sugar is in fruit (there’s also honey, but we’ll save that for another day.) The sugar in fruit is… fructose.

Sidebar: This, I presume, is why people always ask if they should “stop eating fruit,” mixing the anti-high fructose corn syrup message up with the understanding that fructose is a “natural sugar found in fruit.” There’s a big difference between the two.

Whenever you find fruit in nature, it is paired with two things: nutrients and fiber. Emphasis on the fiber. The fiber within the fruit blunts the impact of the sugar on your system and helps cleanse your insides out at the same time.

Excerpted from: Q&A Wednesday: High Fructose Corn Syrup vs. Table Sugar | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

The further we take sugar out of its natural context – meaning, the further we take sugar from its origins… granulated sugar and sucanat from sugar cane, beet sugar, etc – the more problematic it becomes. Why? Because there’s no fiber. There’s very little in pure sugar that can fill us up, and since our body is always sifting through the food we’ve ingested and looking for nutrients, you’d be eating a sugary snack for quite a while before you became full. Not like there’s anything nourishing in it to fill you up.

This, I believe, is why the soft drink industry is always talking about how “soft drinks are no different from fruit juice.” They’re both sugary drinks taken out of the context in which they’re originally found. They’re both sugary substances with no fiber and limited nutrients. By applying that logic, both should be avoided.

Don’t get me wrong – on a scale of “bad” to “OMG HORRIBLE DEATH LIQUID,” a juice that comes directly from squeezed fruit isn’t on the “death liquid” side. Soda pop, however…. I’m sayin. It can clean the rust off a penny. Juices with artificial flavoring AND artificial coloring? It’s a chemistry experiment with salt (check that out next time you drink it… they almost all have salt.) Juices from concentrate… a little better, but not quite as nutritious as their non-concentrated counterparts.

(What does “from concentrate mean?” It means a fruit juice was taken, had the water extracted from it (?!), and stored away so that it could have the water added back at a later date. Sometimes you can purchase the “concentrate” in the freezer aisle of your grocery store. Sometimes, you can buy a “fruit juice” that says “from concentrate” on the label. Juices from concentrate are often cheaper, though not by much.)

For me, it was also about a lot more than just nutrition and keeping a flat tummy. I was using juices to further my addiction to sugar. Taking in a substance that had “everything meant to fill me up” removed from it, especially when that substance is full of sugar, only allowed me to gorge myself on the sweet stuff. And let’s face it – when you have a full on sugar addiction, anything sweet will suffice.

Like I wrote before:

Having said all of that, I cringe a little on the inside when people talk about how they “can’t give up” or “can’t live without” or justify use of a certain food… because that is addiction talk. I know… it’s not cocaine, it’s not alcohol, it’s not heroin. I get it. But I’m not certain that it’s that different. In fact, science has long said that the reaction that sugar causes in the brain is equal to that of heroin or cocaine, and causes us to crave it for the high… crash when it’s low. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s a vicious cycle… and every time I give in it, it makes it that much more difficult to say “no” the next time I encounter the opportunity to give in.

It’s even more strange when people acknowledge that they go through “withdrawals” when they don’t get their “daily fix,” but don’t acknowledge that cycle as an addiction. That is particularly strange. Perhaps that’s because so much of society is addicted to sugar and exhibits the same behaviors, that it seems so common. That’s the only reason I can guess.

That’s a big part of why emotional eating exists – because sugar (in proper conjunction with fat and/or salt) provides a high that is comparable to that of any other narcotic. And because we become used to the high, it causes us to eventually crave more and more… and more… and before we’ve even noticed it we’re gaining weight and suffering from illnesses we’ve never dealt with before.

Excerpted from: What Is Sugar Addiction? | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

And, because of all that, I say no to juices. I used to give myself an allowance for whenever I was sick. That was my green light to drink all the OJ I needed… but would it lean me back toward my sugar addiction once the “sick” was gone? I no longer wish to risk it. Besides, I’m not interested in drinking my calories. If I become sick (which, I have to admit, is a rarity lately), I’ll eat my oranges.

I believe, in my heart of hearts, that this was the most important part of my success. Being able to get away from my sugar addiction meant not only that I could regain control of my emotions (I wasn’t high off sugar, and then miserable and moody once the high came down), but that I could regain my ability to say no.I can say no, not because I’m “watching my figure,” but because I’m protecting myself from falling back down the rabbit hole.

I’ll keep it funky, though – I do want to watch my figure, too. All my hard work doesn’t need to go down the toilet because the fruit punch tastes yummy. And by hard work, I mean both building my body and kicking my unhealthy mental attachments to food. It’s not worth setting myself back physically or mentally.

I say all that to say… I had to spend a lot of time considering what I was drinking. I drank a lot of calories, a lot of sugar and a lot of money (because properly made juices are not cheap) unnecessarily. I wasn’t getting any fiber. It was a lot to waste on something that wasn’t even filling me up. I made the decision to let go of the juice and simply eat the fruit (and if the juice doesn’t come from an identifiable fruit, well…) and I’ve been happier for it.

Am I the only one?

b!g(g)2*w@l#

The Case Against… Juice? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 43 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: emotional eating, fiber, fruit, juice, juices from concentrate, punch, sugar addiction

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