There was a meme on social media recently and it said this: “90 Calories” sells a lot better than “30 Ingredients.” And at the bottom of the meme it said: “Convincing the World to count calories instead of ingredients is one of the most profitable schemes ever.” I could not have said this better myself – what I have always said is: It’s not about the calories!
This is the 4th in a series of blogs on the “Reality of our Food and the Demise of our Health.” Today I’d like to just spend a little time hopefully enlightening you on the different parts of the food packaging and the most important things to look for and what to not be deceived by.
But first, I said I would start off each blog with what the definition and the function of food is, just so we remember what the foundation of our focus is each week:
Definition of Food
Food: substance consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, fat, and other nutrients used in the body of an organism to sustain growth and vital processes and to furnish energy. The absorption and utilization of food by the body is fundamental to nutrition and is facilitated by digestion. (Britannica)
Food: material consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, and fat used in the body of an organism to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy (Merriam Webster).
Function and purpose of food: …to sustain growth, repair and vital processes and to furnish energy.
For this blog I am going to use a product I actually pulled out of my kitchen cabinet specifically for the sake of writing this article. I will give the disclaimer now that I did not read the label carefully, simply because I “assumed” I knew what was in there. I am real tempted to just throw it in the trash and it was just freshly opened. The product I will be referring to is simply a jar of peanuts. Sounds straight forward enough, yes?
Rule #1 – Don’t “assume” you know what is in a product, no matter how straight forward it may sound.
The Front of the Package
For starters, I always say don’t pay a lick of attention to the front of any packaged product. All this really is, is the manufacturer’s marketing tool. They print enticing pictures, splash words they think you want to hear across the front – words like “sugar free, fat free, whole grains, fortified with…, nutritious” – the list can go on and on. About the only thing I would pay attention to, that typically appears on the front of the label that are important are “USDA Organic, Non-GMO Project Verified, Gluten Free” or any other certifications that are important to you like Kosher etc.
Using the jar of peanuts I bought as our example, the front of the package states the brand name, which in this case was the store brand, the word “peanuts” and “dry roasted” beneath, on the side of the front, in smaller print it listed the number of calories per 1 oz serving, the number of grams of fat, the number of milligrams of sodium, and here is the kicker – the number of grams of sugar! What? Sugar? Of course, I did not pay attention to “rule number 1” – I assumed it was just peanuts, after all, how deceiving can it be – I can actually see the peanuts through the clear container?
Let me just pause here and admit some of my own shortcomings with this purchase:
- I was pinching pennies, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case, it was at the compromise of my health, by buying a store brand.
- As I already mentioned, I assumed it would just be peanuts and maybe a little bit of salt, regarding the ingredients.
- I didn’t follow my habit of turning the package over and reading the ingredients listed first, if I had, I would have been appalled and put the product back on the shelf and splurged for something healthier.
- I should have splurged even more and bought organic
- And it was packaged in plastic that was not BPA free (a topic for another day)
Let’s move along through the label reading journey by looking next at the back of the package.
The Back of the Package
As my little meme example I used earlier demonstrates, we have been so conditioned, for many, many years by not just the food industry but the medical profession, dieticians in particular, as well as our government, that our health, or its demise, is centered around the number of calories we consume, and therefore, if we even care to take a look at what we are getting ready to put into our mouth, we automatically look at the “Nutrition Facts” listed on the back. However, the importance of this information is so far from the truth regarding the vitalness of your health.
Nutrition Facts
This portion of the labeling is what government regulations, and probably the food industry as well, want to draw your eyes to first – because this is what they have always promoted, calories, macro-nutrients – things like fats, sugars, carbs, cholesterol, sodium etc. This is where they maintain their control over the health deceptions that continue to make them billions every year. In measuring the size of the label on the back of the peanuts jar I would say the part that states the nutrition information is a 4:1 ratio – four times larger than the ingredients part of the label. This is where the emphasis has always been, but in reality, it should not be our primary focus of attention.
But this is what we have been trained to look at if we want to make healthy choices – or so we have been told. Once again, deception. It’s taking your eye off the ball of what is most important, the ingredients.Allow me to turn your focus there now.
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Ingredients
This is where you should look first, when trying to decide if something is healthy or harmful, and whether you should ultimately, not just spend your hard-earned dollars on, but put into your body.
Let’s continue with our example, and next take a look at the ingredients in the jar of peanuts. I am admittedly a salt-aholic – although whenever possible, if I’m consuming a salty packaged food, I like to choose the one that is salted with sea salt. I also like salty crunchy snacks, and I am limited as to what I can consume in this treat department as I have a high sensitivity to wheat and gluten. Probably lucky for me, it keeps me from eating too much salty junk food. Therefore, peanuts is one of my cheap go-tos. I had been buying the store brand of lightly salted dry roasted peanuts because they have far less salt on them than the raw salted peanuts – it was even too much salt for me. But I was admittedly finding the lightly salted a little lacking for my taste. So, I thought I would change it up a little and just buy the dry roasted peanuts (not lightly salted).
Once I got home and opened the jar, I was thinking to myself “hmm, these taste a little sweet” – I checked to make sure I didn’t grab the “honey roasted” by mistake, nope. Then, and only then, did I look at the ingredients. First of all, there are far too many ingredients for a simple jar of dry roasted peanuts – after all, what else could or should be in there but well, peanuts – and okay, salt? Here is what is listed on a jar of dry roasted peanuts (in order of quantity):
- Peanuts
- Contains 2% or less of sea salt
- Spices (contains celery) – what?!
- Onion Powder
- Garlic Powder
- Paprika (color)
- Natural flavor (the proverbial catch all mystery ingredient)
- Sugar (yep, there it is!)
- Cornstarch
- Torula Yeast (I have no idea what this is)
- Maltodextrin (a processed ingredient that is classified as a carbohydrate, has a high glycemic index – meaning a sweetener, and is basically a food additive and filler)
- Corn Syrup Solids (and there it is again, another sugar!)
All of these in a simple jar of dry roasted peanuts! Why?! At least I know my tastebuds are working – they certainly detected the sugar. And the kicker with this product, and the labeling that is permitted? It states that the “total sugars” is 2 grams, and yet says that it includes 0 grams of added sugar! Then where did the sugar come from, the peanut? No, of course not. The FDA allows them to state that when the amount of sugar is under a certain percentage. We know there is sugar in there because it’s listed as (more than) one of the ingredients (and because I tasted it!). And yet they can deceive us by saying “no added sugar.”
This is just one example, of one packaged and processed food. What ingredients are in other foods that are not as straight forward as peanuts? All of these ingredients are synthetic – they have been processed, they are not in any real form to add any nutritional value of significance. And the nutrition they claim this product has, is also synthetic and processed. I promise you, this product has not added any value to my body’s nutritional needs, and worse. It most likely has tapped into some of the good nutrients my body has, and needs for other functions, and has now used those nutrients to fight off the toxins that were just introduced into the delicate balance of my body’s microbiome.
Here is another problem I have with this jar of peanuts, because it is not organic, I know that the corn ingredients used are genetically modified – who would have thought I would find genetically modified corn products in a jar of peanuts?
Don’t do what I did and “assume” that you know what is in a product.My great-niece has severe food allergies. I can’t tell you how many times my niece has had to take her to the emergency room because of anaphylactic reactions to food. And my niece is extremely diligent as to what her little girl consumes. One of the things my niece has learned over the years is that she has to read the ingredients every single time, even though she may routinely buy what seems to be the same product. What she has found out is that it is not uncommon for companies to change the ingredients they put in their products. Wow.
And the labeling information gets worse for me on this supposed simple jar of peanuts – let’s read their subtle “warnings” – I say subtle because apparently, the only thing they have to do is make some warning information stand out some way – in this case it is some information listed in bold lettering. Here is what is on this particular jar of peanuts.
“Warnings”
Contains: Peanuts (no kidding – although at this point nothing would surprise me if there really weren’t peanuts at all in the jar)
May Contain: Almonds, brazil nuts, cashews, coconut, pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts, milk, soy, sesame, wheat. (Now quite often I see “may be processed in a factory that processes these other ingredients” – especially nuts, but that is not what this label says.)
And may contain WHEAT? What? I bought a jar of peanuts. I would never have thought I would need to be concerned that there could be wheat in there – something I am very diligent with avoiding.
Simple Steps to Reading a Food Label
- Ignore the front of the packaging, it is just the manufacturers marketing tool
- Turn package over and go to the bottom of the labeling FIRST – to the “Ingredients” section. Assess whether there are simply too many “ingredients” in there for your liking. The more ingredients listed the more removed the food is from being a real food. If you can’t pronounce the ingredients, put it back on the shelf.
- Then if you are still interested, observe the Nutrition Facts – the most important item here would be how many grams of sugar does it have? Then what kind of fat is in there – if trans fats are in there, you may also want to put it back on the shelf.
In Summary
This is just a brief lesson on label reading of packaged and processed foods. There are many books written on the deception of how our government lets the food industry get away with deceptive labeling practices all for the sake of the almighty dollar and our health.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to be wise, read labels, and minimize the number of foods in your grocery cart that have a label on them. Fruits and vegetables, and real meats, chicken, fish, eggs have minimal labeling.
We will talk next week on other labeling practices that are on even our real food – organic versus conventional, GMO foods and more.
And remember, it’s not about the calories, it’s about the nutrients – or in the case of processed foods, the ingredients.
Did you miss the first two blogs in this series? Visit them now…
“The Reality of Our Food and the Demise of Our Health”
“Genetics or Lifestyle?”
“How Did We Get Here? The History of Processed Foods”