February 27, 2008
Can You Recognize Faux Food?
If only it were this easy to recognize faux food!
What is Faux Food?
Faux food is anything that your body does not recognize as food but is packaged, marketed, and sold as food. Faux food contains nonfood things like . . .
- preservatives
- food dyes
- hydrogenated oils (trans fat)
- fillers
- emulsifiers
- “natural” flavors (go figure…to the FDA, many chemicals are considered natural flavors)
- artificial flavors and other chemicals (you know… that long list of ingredients on the food label that you cannot pronounce)
Advertising Smoke and Mirrors
Beware of food advertisements and food packaging. The food industry is clever; they want you to buy their products. Do not expect them to tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Where they can wiggle out of telling the truth, they will.
When I read Fast Food Nation, I was shocked to learn that artificial flavor can really mean 49 chemicals that make up the strawberry flavor in a milk shake. I assumed “artificial flavor” meant one chemical. And I assumed “natural” flavor meant natural flavor–but it can also mean chemicals. And did you know that “foods” containing trans fat can be marketed as having 0 trans fat if they contains low levels of trans fat? Unfortunately, scientific studies have shown that even trace elements of trans fat can have negative health effects.
Faux Foods We Frequently Eat
- fast foods
- pre-packaged convenience foods
- box mixes of all kinds
- frozen meals
- packaged snack foods (e.g., – chips crackers, cookies, donuts)
- genetically modified organisms (GMOs) A high percentage of our processed foods contain GMOs including corn, soy beans, and potatoes.
What Should We Eat?
Eat things that are real. Eat whole foods that are miminally processed such as fruits, vegetables, eggs, dairy, meats, grains and legumes. Use fast cooking techniques like sauteeing, steaming, stir frying, baking, and broiling. Eat a variety of raw fruits and vegetables. And make soup! Soup is a satisfying, fast, healthy alternative to faux food.
READERS — Comment on this topic below. Has this article sparked an opinion in you?
- Do you eat faux food? What percentage of the total?
- Would you like to eat real food? What stops you?
Comment at the link at the very, very bottom of the page. We want to know what YOU think.
See comments from last month’s newsletter (very, very bottom of the page)
To your healthy, happy, real life! 
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February 27th, 2008
You need to get a bit of scientific knowledge behind this stuff if you’re selling it. There is no such thing as your body not recognising something as food. Digestion is a process of breaking whatever goes into your body (’real’ food, addititives, vitamins, medication, etc) into its base substances and either using or excreting them. It’ll ‘recognise’ whatever you put it, in that it will engage in the same process with whatever it receives.
Where do additives, chemicals and ‘natural’ flavours (that you say aren’t natural) come from? Manufactured in a lab? Where did the manufacturer get their raw ingredients? From nature, I guess, since that is the only source we have for raw material. We’re not God, we can’t manufacture something ‘unnatural’ from nothing - there has to be a source material, and it has to come from the earth. We change the form - just like we do when we cook. And when we digest.
February 27th, 2008
Jae, if it were true that there are only two actions the body takes when you put something into it - either using it or excreting it - there would be no such thing as poison! You could eat all the arsenic, etc. you wanted.
Whereas there is legitimate controversy over exactly what certain substances do to the body, there is no controversy over the fact that the body does not have the infinite ability to process anything you put into it! Trans fats are the most recent man-made substance accepted by scientists as well as the general population to be detrimental to health.
February 27th, 2008
I have come to realize that there isn’t any way I am ever going to completely eliminate processed foods- nor would I want to really. What I believe and what I’ve taught my children is to eat as much food as you can every day that comes from nature and then don’t feel quilty or bad for adding processed foods. There was a study I read some time ago that revealed that the vitamin and mineral content in the blood of people who ate fast food and enjoyed their fast food was higher than those who were on so-called ‘healthy diets’ where the people did not enjoy their food. The fast food eaters were much happier as well. So I say, love what you eat and eat what you love!
February 27th, 2008
One more thing…I definitely think there is a difference in quality of processed foods. Some are definitely better than others and I know my gut feels awful after eating foods with poor quality fats. Cheryl is right, you can’t let labeling make your decisions for you. You can read labels alright, but I learn so much from paying attention to how my body feels after I’ve eaten my food- processed or not. As healthy as everyone says soy is, my body feels terrible after drinking soymilk!! It probably takes too much processing to take a bean and make milk out of it. Sooooo, trust you body and you’ll feel better for it!
February 27th, 2008
Thanks Jae for getting the conversation started. And thanks Joycelyn and Trisha for adding your wisdom to the pot.
I totally agree that enjoying what we eat makes a big difference in how our bodies process it. Love goes down a lot easier than eating something out of judgment about the food. Love rocks on so many levels. Love your food, love your body, love your thoughts, love your neighbor, love your subscribers
I could go on!
And I also agree that we need to trust the wisdom of our bodies. Like Trisha says, if soy doesn’t do well in her body, she would do best to make a different selection. The body knows what it likes and doesn’t like. It is sometimes difficult to listen, though, because we may have fed our bodies foods for years that it really would prefer not to eat. It may take a while of “testing” foods (eating with awareness) to see how well certain foods are tolerated.
An interesting discussion. Thanks to all for sharing your thoughts. We can all learn from each other. Cheryl
March 10th, 2008
Jocelyn, I see your point, but when you eat a poison like arsenic, it poisons you precisely because your body is trying to process it in the same way it digests anything you put in - but some chemical in the substance overwhelms the organs trying to deal with it.
For example, the liver processes out toxic chemicals… that is why long-term alcohol use damages the liver. Or why you can overdose on alcohol in a single session of binge drinking. Yet a small or ‘normal’ amount of alcohol is pretty much harmless to the liver - it can manage that without becoming overwhelmed. You could also ‘poison’ yourself with too many bananas (potassium affects heart function), or too much baking soda/bicarbonate (similar effect), or even too much water.
A poison is a poison to humans because it takes only a small amount of the substance to overwhelm the organs trying to use/excrete it. The fact that medicines and even vitamins have dosages, recognises that there is not a clear division between ‘food/good stuff’ and ‘poison’ but rather a continuim related to amounts and grey area between the two. If someone overdoses on something the first thing medical staff want to know, after finding out what they took, is how much.
I know you probably picked aresnic as an arbitary example of a poison, but did you know it actually has a threaputic use - small doses are used in the treatments of cancers, particularly leukemia.