A few months ago someone pointed out to me that Nutrigrain bars have 52 ingredients.  That’s not food, that’s a chemistry experiment!

I took a look for myself to confirm the observation, and then counted that eight, yes eight!, of those ingredients were different names for sugar.  I suspect that if you added them all up together, the term “sugar” might have to be the first ingredient.  You have to admit that the marketing team came up with a great name, Nutrigrain, but that’s where the attraction ends for me. 

Luckily, I’m not the only one who’s noticed how nutritionally bankrupt these kinds of products are.  You can find a beautiful “breakfast bar” recipe at the lovely blog Peas and Thank You if you’re so inclined.  If you’re not so inclined, then you can just buy Lara bars, which have an ingredient list like this:  dates, peanuts, cashews.  That’s all, and that’s how you know it’s food: 

#1 You could buy all those ingredients in the grocery store, 

#2 You could figure out how to make it yourself if you wanted, and  

#3 A six-year-old can pronounce all the ingredients.

I’ve included below an actual ingredient list for blueberry Nutrigrain bars so you can see for yourself what I’m talking about.  I highlighted all the different kinds of names for sugar.  

CRUST: WHOLE GRAIN ROLLED OATS, ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR, SUNFLOWER AND/OR SOYBEAN OIL WITH TBHQ FOR FRESHNESS, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, SUGAR, HONEY, DEXTROSE, CALCIUM CARBONATE, SOLUBLE CORN FIBER, NONFAT DRY MILK, WHEAT BRAN, SALT, CELLULOSE, POTASSIUM BICAR-BONATE (LEAVENING), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, MONO- AND DI-GLYCERIDES, PROPYLENE GLYCOL ESTERS OF FATTY ACIDS, SOY LECITHIN, WHEAT GLUTEN, NIACINAMIDE, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, CARRAGEENAN, ZINC OXIDE, REDUCED IRON, GUAR GUM, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), FOLIC ACID. 

FILLING: HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CORN SYRUP, BLUEBERRY PUREE CONCENTRATE, GLYCERIN, SUGAR, WATER, SODIUM ALGINATE, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, CITRIC ACID, METHYL-CELLULOSE, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, MALIC ACID, RED #40, BLUE #1.

My sister-in-law passed along the following food log from her friend who has been struggling, and is not sure what she’s doing wrong.  Before we take a look at her food log, let me just say that she is a very good example of how we have internalized the messages of the food industry at the expense of our health:

Weekday breakfasts: a cup coffee with sugar and non-dairy creamer; a cup of yogurt (type unspecified); a rice cake with peanut butter.

Weekend breakfasts: pancakes make with soy milk, topped with margarine; soy bacon, soy sausage; cereal with soy milk; biscuits.

Lunch: Soy bologna (or ham) and cheese sandwich on white bread (due to “issues” with healthier breads) with veganaisse (non-dairy mayonnaise); Dr. McDougal’s vegan soups –“chicken”/miso/sweet & sour. 

Dinner: white pasta with sundried tomatoes or peas/chick peas/olive oil or margarine and locatelli cheese; bean burritos with corn tortillas and cheese; veggie burgers; spaghetti with “meat” sauce; tacos with ground “soy meat” and cheese; other soy products like ribs and “chicken” strips.

She likes the soups at lunchtime because they are vegan and low in fat, but is concerned that they are high in soy, and they, too, have been causing some “issues.”  She says that all veggies upset her stomach, and soy products maybe also.  She also reports that she eats out differently, but does not say how many meals that affects on a weekly basis.

My impressions:  Firstly, it is impossible not to notice how much processed food she is eating, and how much of it, virtually all in fact, is soy-based.  At some level she knows the soy is a problem but she is eating so much of it that she doesn’t know how to extricate herself from it.  Therefore, the first thing I would recommend is to eat soy only as tofu or edamame.  No more soy analog products, at least until her belly feels better.  

Another observation is that she is trying to minimize the amount of fat she eats.  No need to do that.  Fats are really good for you — especially plant-based fats like avocados, nuts and nut butters, and olive oil.  

For breakfast, I like the peanut butter, and coffee is fine, but I would use almond milk for now.  Eat the peanut butter on a spoon, or with banana or apple slices.  Use real butter, and make sure the pancakes are made with whole grain flour, whether wheat or some other grain.  I don’t know what she means by “cereal,” but I’m pretty sure it’s boxed breakfast cereal.  I would suggest substituting some homemade trail mix, or a bowl of real oatmeal, or both.  Again, without soy milk, margarine, or soy meats.  And no non-dairy creamer either.  Buy only plain yogurt, and add whatever you want.  Commercial yogurts contain a ridiculous amount of sugar. 

I don’t know if her sensitivity to vegetables is due to the fact that her gut is upset from all the soy, or if she is really sensitive to absolutely every vegetable on the planet.  The best way to find out is to see an allergist and let them test her.  Then she’ll know what she can eat and what she should avoid.  

For lunch, eat the cheese slices plain, or an avocado, maybe a bowl of whole grain rice with sunflower seeds and raisins, perhaps with olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing.  Or eat a baked potato with cheese melted on top.  Or a bowl of black beans.  The best soups are homemade — scroll through YOUR HEALTHY PLATE recipes on this site for many easy soup recipes.  I am assuming that the cheese is real cheese from a cow and not from a soybean.

I see that she does eat some cheese, so she’s obviously willing to eat dairy.  Therefore, eat real butter (hopefully from grass-fed cows), and toss the margarine.  I don’t know if she eats eggs, but they would be a nutritious addition to her diet if she does.  She could make scrambled eggs for dinner, or eggs poached in tomato sauce.  A pot of squash-peanut soup and a loaf of sourdough bread would be a much better choice than the processed-soy-based dinners she is currently eating.  A great resource for real vegan and vegetarian cooking is all the Moosewood cookbooks.  

Our diets have traditionally been based on produce and other real food.  The only produce she listed above was tomatoes, sun- dried.  Virtually all the other items were “manufactured calories.”  We have strayed so far from a real-food-based diet, and whatever we can do to reclaim it will be to our collective benefit. 

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If you’ve never been on “Your Health is on Your Plate” before, and you’re not sure where to start, visit Lets Start at the Very Beginning to get a jumpstart on preventing diabetes and obesity in yourself and the ones you love!!

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Then, scroll down and check out “A Milestone Celebration — Your Favorite Posts” to find a list of great blog entries!

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This week, the Huffington Post published an important article about Occupy our Food Supply, a Global Day of Action, on February 27, 2012.  That’s tomorrow.

The authors, Anna Lappe and Willie Nelson, point out that our food system has become so consolidated that:

–Only 3 companies (Tyson, Cargill, and JBS) process almost 3/4 of the beef in the U.S., 

–One company (Monsanto) sells 90 percent of the soybean seed and 80 percent of the corn seed, 

–Four companies are responsible for close to 90 percent of the global trade in grain, and 

–25% of food dollars are spent at Walmart.  

And only 10 companies are responsible for the manufacture of 20,000 of the 40,000 items in the average supermarket.

This massive consolidation of the food supply puts everyone who relies on it at risk.  It’s dangerous, and I’m not exaggerating.  The choices about which items fill the shelves in our supermarkets are made with the goal of increasing profits.  Of course this makes sense.  After all, the business of business is to make a profit.  Then what’s the problem?  The problem is that profits are being made not in support of our health and our safety, but at their expense.  

Haven’t you always heard that it’s not safe to put all your eggs in one basket?  It’s not safe to eat a restrictive diet that consists primarily of items produced by just a few entities.  It’s not healthy to eat so many “food-like items” made of just a few extremely inexpensive ingredients, and sold at the highest price that the market will bear.  And it’s not smart to allow all our knowledge about how to bring food to our tables, hard won over the course of a thousand generations, to be forgotten in a single century. 

So what can we do about this?  Tomorrow, Monday, February 27th, farmers, gardeners, chefs, students and teachers, parents and children from all over the world will start community gardens, host seed exchanges, enter supermarkets to label products containing genetically engineered ingredients, and build community alliances to support locally owned grocery stores.

We can and must reclaim our food supply.  Start by supporting local food enterprises.  Grow some of your own herbs, or vegetables, even if it’s just tomatoes this year.  Maybe next year you’ll branch out and try some peppers and cucumbers, too.  Make a compost pile, even if you never actually use it.  It’ll decrease the amount of garbage you generate, and will improve the quality of the soil in one little spot of your backyard.  Build a hen house, if you have the room, the interest, and a bit of an adventurous spirit.  [Today, I am proud to report, my daughter and a young friend went out to the coop and returned with four beautiful eggs.] 

I support the call to all of us who “eat food, grow food, [and] love food” to Occupy our Food Supply.  

You can read the original article here.

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If you’ve never been on “Your Health is on Your Plate” before, and you’re not sure where to start, visit Lets Start at the Very Beginning to get a jumpstart on preventing diabetes and obesity in yourself and the ones you love!!

—————————————————————————————————————-

Then, scroll down and check out “A Milestone Celebration — Your Favorite Posts” to find a list of great blog entries!

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Follow Dr Sukol on Twitter @RoxanneSukolMD.  

To comment on this post, follow Dr Sukol on Facebook at Roxanne Breines Sukol.

A reader sent an interesting question a few weeks ago.  She wanted to know if eating a gluten-free diet was of any benefit in the case of people who are NOT gluten-sensitive.  Great question.

The answer depends on what you choose to eat instead.

In general, processed food-like items contain large amounts of wheat.  Converting to a wheat-free diet should therefore, theoretically, have the net effect of significantly decreasing the amount of processed things in your diet.  So if you exchange wheat-containing, processed junk-food for other kinds of processed junk-food that are marked gluten-free simply by virtue of the fact that they are made with a stripped, non-gluten-containing grain such as white rice, then there will be no benefit to removing the gluten from your diet. 

But if you replace the usual commercially baked products in your diet [like bread, cake, bagels, waffles, pancakes, biscuits, muffins, and boxed items marketed specifically for breakfast (toaster cakes, granola bars, cereal bars, and so on)] with more fruits and veggies, nuts, legumes, fish, eggs, leftovers from dinner, pastured meats, and of course gluten-free whole grains, it is reasonable to expect that the change will be of enormous benefit.

In other words, there is a benefit to eating gluten-free, but it is not because of the gluten!

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If you’ve never been on “Your Health is on Your Plate” before, and you’re not sure where to start, visit Lets Start at the Very Beginning to get a jumpstart on preventing diabetes and obesity in yourself and the ones you love!!

—————————————————————————————————————-

Then, scroll down and check out “A Milestone Celebration — Your Favorite Posts” to find a list of great blog entries!

—————————————————————————————————————-

Follow Dr Sukol on Twitter @RoxanneSukolMD.  

To comment on this post, follow Dr Sukol on Facebook at Roxanne Breines Sukol.

This past week I attended a meeting at which Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn (see my post comparing his plant-based diet to other real-food-based diets) was also in attendance. He used a phrase I’d never heard before, and my ears perked up immediately. We were talking about how to inspire people to take better care of themselves and he called it “lifestyle literacy.” Wow! Lifestyle literacy! I like that. Literacy is something you can learn, like reading.  

There are all kinds of literacy and here are just a few: cultural, environmental, geographic, academic, language, financial, music, technical, athletic/kinesthetic, computer, and emotional. Naturally, we tend to gravitate to the ones for which we have an affinity. That makes sense; it feels good to succeed. We say that the best kid on the baseball team is a “natural,” even though he hones his throwing skills by practicing for 30 minutes with his dad every night after dinner. In this way, good gets better, and better becomes best. 

A tiny sign hangs by the piano in my home: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. Aristotle”

But what about the kinds of literacy that don’t come naturally?  What if your parents discover that the reason you are struggling in school is that you have great difficulty matching sounds to symbols, the way your reading classmates do with ease? What if you could never sing on key, or were always the last kid picked for the team in gym or at recess? 

These are common problems with real solutions. By breaking down the task into smaller, more explicit steps, people can develop tools to learn what might otherwise be an insurmountable task.  Children with dyslexia are making enormous strides with “Wilson-based” programs, a kind of reading instruction that assumes no intuitive leaps and provides concrete instruction for each and every possible vowel sound, consonant, and combination that a student might encounter. 

I have a friend from a musical family who considered himself tone deaf, and sang in a way that convinced me of it. At some point, he became tired of his inability to sing along with the radio. He got a teacher to sing tones into his ear, and learned to match pitches. He learned about musical intervals, and used nursery rhymes to understand. With impressive perseverance, he learned to sing along. This is a true story.

In my case, after many years of being a mediocre dancer at best, a friend convinced me to step out of my comfort zone and sign up for a Jazzercise class. The relative simplicity of the steps, coupled with repetition, repetition, and more repetition, flipped some kind of switch and, after a time, I found myself experimenting with new steps, relaxing, enjoying myself (!), and generally dancing with abandon. I never thought I’d say it, but I can dance now.

Of course my friend will never sing like Whitney Houston, rest her soul. And I will never dance like Alvin Ailey. But that’s not the point. The point is that we developed our skills to a serviceable degree, one that meets our own needs, be they emotional, physical, or both. Not only is dancing good for me, but it makes me happy; and that’s probably the best endorsement anyone could offer.

Lifestyle literacy, then, means that there is hope for all of us, including people who don’t come by it naturally. Remember that perfection is the enemy of progress. The goal, at least initially, is to adjust our choices sufficiently to become healthier than we are today. It’s okay if you don’t train like Jack LaLanne; your goal is to train like YOU.

Most importantly, if it doesn’t come “naturally,” we can LEARN lifestyle literacy. We can get better at it, and there are people out there to help us. I know lots of people who have dedicated their careers to teaching us how to stay out of the aisles at the grocery store, increase our activity levels, relax, sleep better, and quit smoking. You can find those people, too.

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If you’ve never been on “Your Health is on Your Plate” before, and you’re not sure where to start, visit Lets Start at the Very Beginning to get a jumpstart on preventing diabetes and obesity in yourself and the ones you love!!

—————————————————————————————————————-

Then, scroll down and check out “A Milestone Celebration — Your Favorite Posts” to find a list of great blog entries!

—————————————————————————————————————-

Follow Dr Sukol on Twitter @RoxanneSukolMD.  

To comment on this post, follow Dr Sukol on Facebook at Roxanne Breines Sukol.