So there I was sitting on a Southwest flight, when the flight attendants came down the aisle to pass out those awesome, delicious and nutritious snacks. I watched the other passengers as they agonized over their three choices: Animal Crackers, Ritz Cracker Sandwiches or Oreo Thin Crisps. I again realized how modern man has so blurred the line between our food choices and its effect on our health. I think that this is especially so when it comes to eating snacks. It seems that ‘snack’ has achieved the status of non-consequential eating choice. It’s as if people have been led to believe that because a snack is ‘just a snack’ and not a ‘meal’, that “it can’t be that bad, after all, it’s just a snack”.
All three of the airline snacks were made by Nabisco and all three had virtually the same ingredients: enriched flour, processed vegetable oils (canola, soy, palm and/or palm kernel), not one, but two forms of sugar: sugar and corn syrup (two had high fructose corn syrup), artificial flavoring, and calcium and/or sodium phosphate. The Ritz Cracker Sandwiches had Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 artificial colors, and of course, processed dairy. I thought Nabisco had been especially bold when I read on the Oreo package it said “Sensible Solution – 0g trans fat, 2g fat, 0mg cholesterol” in a special call out on the label.
This is what stirred me – since when is any food made with white flour, processed vegetable oil, sugar AND high fructose corn syrup considered ‘sensible’?
I realized then that sadly this is where we were in our culture: People’s attention has been diverted away from nutrition or nutritive value and focused on such things as fat content, trans fat content and cholesterol. Certainly the public’s awareness about trans fats is a good thing – trans fats are man-made unnatural, chemically derived fats which are known disease promoters (cancer and heart disease). But the focus on fat and cholesterol is a slippery slope, similar to focusing on calories. There are so many foods available today that meet the criteria (based on portion sizes not actual content) of having no fat or cholesterol and/or minimal calories, yet they provide absolutely no nutritive value and are simply unwise and unhealthy foods to put in your body. The airline snacks described above are perfect illustrations of how this type of thinking can derail you from making healthy choices. Combined with patently false marketing statements like the ‘sensible solution’ one on the Oreo package, many people are being lulled into a false sense of security about their lifestyle choices and its affect on their health.
For example, would eating an avocado and some walnuts be considered “not sensible” because of their fat content?
Because we often do get hungry between meals, having and eating decent snacks are without question, part of a sound health regimen. The key here though is that we eat ‘healthy’ snacks. Like all of our lifestyle choices within the domain of eating, the key is to choose nutrient-dense foods that provide health-promoting phytonutrients, antioxidants, healthy fats, quality proteins, fiber and complex carbohydrates (in the form of vegetables and fruit, not grains).
On a positive note, the man sitting next to me on this flight turned out to be a Navy engineer who, when seeing me eating my fresh foods from home (raw vegetables, egg salad, raw nuts and fruit), he lamented on his sad choice. This kicked off our conversation. When I learned that he worked on a Navy ship, I asked him what the food was like on a ship that carried two thousand people. I was pleasantly surprised when he told me that recently the Navy had tested a new kitchen configuration on board where they had replaced the deep fryers with convection ovens.
So there is hope. If the Navy has figured out about avoiding deep fried foods, there is indeed hope.
This photo is of a promotional display in front of one of our local chain supermarkets. Very clever design – someone clearly had a talent to be able to create it - the display is made of twelve-pack boxes of soda pop (the other picture gives you the detail perspective). I find it maddening that our soft drink consumption has become so enormous that supermarkets have to pile their supply on pallets outside the store because they don’t have room for them inside the store (not to mention that there’s a percentage of product that the supermarkets are willing to accept will be stolen from the unguarded displays).
There are many huge problems affecting our health today. We no longer eat fresh, whole organic nutrient-dense foods; instead our diets are now dominated by processed foods devoid of nutrients and filled with toxic chemicals, synthetic fats and artificial sweeteners. Neglecting the critical nutrient of movement or exercise in our lives, which like fresh foods, is genetically essential for health, the vast majority of people now live sedentary lives which further hastens the onset of virtually all diseases. As a result, the current disease rates for heart disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity keep increasing (by the way, obesity is the defining risk factor for heart disease, cancer and diabetes). The most startling aspect of these statistics is that heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity were nonexistent amongst our genetic ancestors, the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers that determined the genetic code that our bodies live by today.
One of the central players in this cultural health maelstrom (def: a situation marked by confusion, turbulence, strong feelings, violence or destruction) is our nation’s habit of consuming sweetened beverages that destroy our health – in particular, Americans love soda pop. Soft drink manufacturers make enough soda pop for every person to drink 54 gallons per year. That works out to be 576 12oz. cans per year or 1.6 cans per day. It also works out to be over 15 teaspoons of sugar (150 calories) per day. Making matters worse is that soda pop is most often sweetened using high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners, both of which have even greater health risks than sucrose or table sugar. By the way, eating 50 extra calories per day for five years will cause you to gain 50 pounds. Hopefully you are starting to understand the connection between the consequences of our lifestyle choices and their effect on our health (i.e. the ever-increasing diabetes and obesity epidemics).
SODA POP DESTROYS YOUR HEALTH IN THE FOLLOWING WAYS (for the complete version of this article click here):
Soda pop causes calcium and bone loss
Soda pop causes diabetes and insulin resistance
Soda pop causes cancer
Soda pop disrupts the critical pH of the body
Soda pop causes weight gain (contributing to the obesity epidemic) in three ways
Soda pop causes atherosclerosis (clogging and hardening of the arteries), high blood pressure, and heart disease
Some people reading this will be thinking ‘Isn’t that a bit extreme; after all, what’s more American than having a soft drink at a picnic or my son’s baseball game?’ (not to mention that soda is usually served with a hot dog or chips that have been deep fried, and a sandwich made with processed flour and cured meats – boy, we’ve got this disease-food thing down to a science don’t we; unfortunately an evil science).Or my favorite, ‘I just have one once in a while – if it’s in moderation it can’t be that bad, can it?’. There are two types of toxicity or poisoning: 1) Acute: resulting in vomiting, fainting, convulsions, death, etc.; 2) Slow or chronic accumulation of toxins which ultimately break down the body’s physiological function. Soda pop falls into the second category (diet soda is even more toxic than the regular sugar-poison variety). (My cynical response to the “everything in moderation” paradigm is to ask ‘Is it okay to do crystal meth or cheat on your spouse, in moderation?’)
UPDATE: September 17, 2009: The California Center for Public Health Advocacy (CCPHA) and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research released the report Bubbling Over: Soda Consumption and Its Link to Obesity in California. This landmark study provides important scientific evidence of the direct contribution of sugar-sweetened beverages to California’s $41 billion obesity epidemic.
Should you have any further doubts about the dangers of soda pop, high fructose corn syrup and their direct correlation to the obesity and diabetes epidemics that are CRUSHING Americans of all ages, I encourage you to watch this video:
IMPORTANT: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that diet sodas containing artificial sweeteners like sucralose (Splenda®) or aspartame (Nutrasweet®, Equal®) are safe – they are far from it – scientific research links artificial sweeteners with leukemia, brain cancer, migraines, depression, and blindness – more on that topic here. And, artificial sweeteners have been found to actually cause weight gain (if you think about it, who’s always drinking diet soda? Yep, overweight people).
Make water your predominant beverage – it’s what we are genetically designed to drink.
ent to be able to create it - the display is made of twelve-pack boxes of soda pop (the other picture gives you the detail perspective). I find it maddening that our soft drink consumption has become so enormous that supermarkets have to pile their supply on pallets outside the store because they don’t have room for them inside the store (not to mention that there’s a percentage of product that the supermarkets are willing to accept will be stolen from the unguarded displays).