READ labels at the grocery store--save your health

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In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective. We do posts on staying healthy; preventing disease; aging more slowly; weight loss; exercise; nutrition; & news in medicine.

Today's post: Monday, 6-18-2007


READ labels at the grocery store to save your health ….

Here are two examples. And, the second example includes some new ways to watch for one of the most health damaging ingredients & why to do so.

1. I was at my Dad’s house for Father’s Day yesterday. My mom had bought some liquid chocolate fudge topping made by a major food company.

But she cannot see well. I like chocolate & fudge. And, it was a special occasion. So, I read the label in hopes that the worst ingredient it had was sugar or butterfat or both.

OUCH !! No such luck.

I will NOT voluntarily eat anything with high fructose corn syrup. And this topping had that instead of sugar.

But, there was a MUCH worse ingredient in it. Instead of butter, it had FULLY hydrogenated vegetable oil. (This made it possible for the company to claim no transfats & claim saturated fat content instead.)

Unfortunately, as we covered in an earlier post, fully or totally or 100 percent hydrogenated vegetable oil is like transfats on steroids. It’s as bad or worse for building up plaque in your blood vessels as the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils & their transfats; but it’s also been found to cause the insulin resistance that leads to type II diabetes.

Using 100 percent hydrogenated vegetable oil as an ingredient instead of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is like trading out rat poison for cyanide.

Neither ingredient belong in food you sell the public. But this new ingredient, 100 percent hydrogenated vegetable oil, is much worse.

So, if the transfat reading on a food is other than zero, don’t buy it or eat it. And, no matter what kind of hydrogenated vegetable oil it lists as an ingredient, if you find that term in the list of ingredients, don’t buy it or eat it. And, that’s still true even if the transfats listed are zero—as it was in this case.

2. Day before yesterday I bought a kind of curry spice at the store that has a taste I’ve liked. And, I DID check out the label.

However, today in my Early to Rise email in its health article, I found that the ingredient listed I was unfamiliar with but didn’t know to be bad & so gave it the benefit of the doubt was really MSG. It seems that ingredient term, autolyzed yeast, was a much less known way of stating that it contained MSG. I already try to avoid buying any food with MSG.

But the article goes much farther & lists several more reasons to avoid MSG than I knew before.

So, this spice I had planned to use several times a week on my dinner will go back to the store for a refund.

The article below was from the Saturday, 6-16-2007 Early to Rise email.:

Exposing (and Evading) Grocery Store Fat Traps

By Shane Ellison, M.Sc.

My wife recently pigged out on beef jerky. What was supposed to be light, healthy snacking turned into an all-out eating binge. Her ravenous consumption of the stuff made me think it must be an especially good brand. I was in a hurry when I bought it at my local health food store - and that's where I messed up big time. Ignoring the label, I was caught by the number one grocery store fat trap - which was the cause of my wife's abnormal appetite.

A grocery store fat trap is nothing more than a scheme designed by food manufacturers to make you eat more of something that you think is healthy. These foods and food additives are fat fertilizer. They are great for a company's bottom line, but really bad for your "bottom."

Right before she threw her head back to dump the last crumbs of the beef jerky into her mouth, my wife turned the bag over to read the fine-print ingredients. She gasped, "Why the hell did you buy this! It's loaded with high-fructose corn syrup!"

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is fat fertilizer on steroids. And she knows it. A very fit mom, she keeps her lean and muscular build by avoiding grocery store fat traps.

HFCS transforms people into eating machines. Once consumed, it sets into motion a chemical cascade that begins with spiked insulin and ends with feel-good molecules known as "endorphins." Intoxicated by artificial feel-good, the brain is unable to sense overeating and demands more, more, more - and the excess calories get stored in your body.

I've even heard of kids accidentally taking bites out of their fingers when under the influence of HFCS. Worse yet, many children who overindulge in Frankenfoods that contain HFCS and other sugars eventually become diabetic.

From beef jerky to bread and even spaghetti sauce, HFCS has infiltrated most processed foods and turned them into fat traps. Avoid this ingredient at all cost!

But that's not the only trap lurking in grocery stores.

"Fat-free" labels

These hoodwink millions of unsuspecting victims, and have been a goldmine for the food industry since 1993. The obese seek out this label in hopes of waking up skinny. It never happens - but that doesn't stop them from getting ensnared over and over again. I can hear the rationale: "It just seems so plausible. I'm fat, so I should eat fat-free foods." Wrong.

After the fat is removed, sugar is added. Sugar is great if you're at a birthday party, but that's it.

Like HFCS, it is nothing more than fat fertilizer and a heart attack waiting to happen. Look for it listed as sucrose, dextrose, or cane sugar on the labels of your favorite foods. Then buy something else - like an all-natural food high in healthy fat.

Healthy fat - which you can find in grass-fed beef, seeds, nuts, avocados, and eggs - is essential for proper growth, development, and the maintenance of good health. It provides your body with vital energy, without causing you to gain weight. In sharp contrast to carbohydrates, sugar, and trans-fats, healthy fats tell your body to burn fat and make you feel fuller quicker. Add them to your grocery list.

Artificial sweeteners

This trap gets most weekend warriors. "Energy" bars, protein powders, and sugar-free goodies - each and every one of them is loaded with drugs disguised as sweeteners. The widespread belief that these nicely packaged foods and drinks are good for you is a perfect example of how marketing strategies supersede medical science and common sense.

Artificial sweeteners make your body lose its natural ability to count calories. If athletes cannot distinguish between proper eating and overeating caused by artificial flavors, they will never reach their fat-loss or muscle-building goals, period. Exercise becomes a waste of time.

Artificial flavors include sucralose (Splenda), aspartame, acesulfame K, saccharin, and neotame.
MSG

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) has several aliases you should be on the lookout for, including hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed protein, hydrolyzed plant protein, plant protein extract, sodium caseinate, calcium caseinate, yeast extract, textured protein, autolyzed yeast, and hydrolyzed oat flour.

This white, crystalline amino acid is made in a lab and then added to meat products and most canned or packaged foods to "enhance flavor." One small problem: It doesn't have any flavor. It just enhances overeating - and the food manufacturer's bottom line.

Once consumed, this fat fertilizer not only spikes insulin, it also lowers the hormones that ward off obesity, premature aging, and diabetes: IGF-1 and human growth hormone. And if that's not enough to scare you off, it can be damaging to brain cells too.

Consider the shocking findings by German scientists who recently warned that their country should abandon the use of MSG at once. Why? They found that pregnant mothers consuming this fat trap were giving birth to children who were insulin-resistant.

Apparently, fetuses can be doomed to overeating for life, thanks to neuronal damage caused by Mom's MSG-eating habit. The damage was most prevalent in a specialized group of nerve cells in the medulla oblongata, thalamus, or hypothalamus - the areas of the brain that control proper eating and metabolism. This might be one explanation for the drastic increases in childhood obesity worldwide.

Some things are worth dying for. Fat traps are not. If you want to live thin and slim, be alert to these common grocery store fat traps. You might have to dedicate some extra time to carefully reading food labels... but you'll never fall victim to them again.

[Ed. Note: Shane "The People's Chemist" Ellison has an MS in organic chemistry and firsthand experience in drug design and synthesis. He is an internationally recognized authority on therapeutic nutrition. His AM-PM Fat Loss Discovery e-book shows how he personally beat obesity and insulin resistance in 90 days. To pick up your copy, click here.]

>>> This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.

I don’t find them to be perfect. But most of their health articles are excellent.