WASHINGTON, 4 June — Buy it in a box. Buy it in a can. Buy it in a plastic container. Voila! Instant dinner. Pre-cooked and ready to eat, just add heat. Somewhere in the race for convenience food, Americans have abandoned one of the most basic human activities — preparing food. Ninety percent of the money Americans spend on food is used to buy processed food, according to the recently published book, Fast Food Nation.
Today, fresh, whole food in the supermarket is passed by for convenience food offered in jars, cans, boxes, plastics and frozen food containers promising delicious dinners in seconds.
You may have wondered, at least once, how a dinner cooked months ago, frozen and stored in a box, could taste any good? The answer lies in those interesting ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ flavorings, the small but potent ingredients in nearly all processed foods. There is a limit to what you can do to food and still have it taste good. Food processors often use high temperature, flavor-draining methods to create shelf-stable foods. A factory production line that flash freezes, boils and/or dehydrates huge quantities of foodstuff cannot duplicate the complex flavor of fresh food. But a close replica of that complex flavor can be produced in labs where men and women in white coats carefully deconstruct the chemical constituents of flavors, then re-create those flavors in the form of highly potent chemicals.
The results are easy to detect: Simply compare the canned chicken soup to the homemade chicken soup. Or, compare fast food French fries to homemade French fries. Or, fresh juice to canned juice. In all of these examples, you are likely to taste that processed foods have an overwhelming, ever over-stimulating, essence. When nutritionists talk about diet, they are referring to live whole foods — unprocessed food with nothing added or taken away. Whole foods are more healthful because they contain non-potentially harmful ingredients. In addition, plant foods are full of hundreds of phytochemicals that can help prevent disease and keep the body healthy. These are our front-line defenders against cancer and free radicals. Foods known to supply important phytochemicals include soybeans and soy products, broccoli, citrus peels, flax, garlic, green tea, grapes, and tomatoes.
Additives are placed in foods for a number of reasons: To lengthen shelf life; to make a food more appealing by enhancing color, texture, or taste; to facilitate food preparation; or to otherwise make the product more marketable. Certain additives, like sugar, are derived from natural sources. Other additives, like aspartame (NutraSweet), are made synthetically. Although many additives are used in very small amounts, it has been estimated that the average American consumes about 5 pounds of additives per year. If you include sugar — the food-processing industry’s most used additive — the number jumps to 135 pounds a year. So it doesn’t take much to understand that anyone whose diet is high in processed products clearly consumes a significant amount of additives and artificial ingredients.
At their best, additives and artificial ingredients simply add little or not nutritional value to a food product. At their worst, additives pose a threat to your health. The history of additive use includes a number of products that were once deemed safe but later were banned or allowed to be used only if accompanied by warnings. The artificial sweeteners cyclamate and saccharin are just two examples of such products. Other additives, like monosodium glutamate (MSG) and aspartame, are used without warnings, but have been known to cause problems ranging from headaches and diarrhea to confusion, memory loss, and seizures.
The number of food additives now in use is staggering. To learn more about these substances, you can consult Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), Michael Jacobson’s Safe Food: Eating Wisely in a Risky World, (Living Planet Press, 1991), or Unsafe at Any Meal by Earl Mindell (Warner Books, 1986).
Out of curiosity, I called several food production companies to ask what was in the “natural flavor” listed on their food product’s label. No company would was willing to share the precise components of their “natural flavor.” The customer service representatives explained, “That information is proprietary and part of the secret recipe.” Consider this; natural flavor is the smallest or second smallest ingredient in most of the products I researched. The other ingredients, the main ingredients, added such a small amount to the flavor of the product that they could be listed in full while the components of the “natural flavor” must remain secret. Flavor is processed out of processed food and then returned by way of chemical distillates. Those who are observant Muslims, or vegetarians, and are interested in making sure all the ingredients of your food are from a non-pork or non-meat source, the “natural flavor” on a food’s label will not help you choose products that contain no pork, or meat-derived additives. For this, one must contact the company listed on the label and ask for the source of their natural flavor. While they may not give you the “secret ingredients,” they must give you dietary information about their “natural” flavoring. A soy milk company explained that their natural flavoring was “vegetarian, kosher, and did not contain MSG.” A canned bean chili company said their natural flavoring was “from a botanical sources.”
What to do
• If you are interested in consuming whole and real foods, carefully reading labels can help you make informed decisions. When in doubt regarding a specific ingredient, many companies will specify the source of their natural flavor.
• It is important to understand a “natural” flavor is not a spice, like cumin, or it would be listed on the label.
• The solution to the natural flavor question, of course, is not petitioning far-away food manufacturers or the corporate headquarters of fast food companies. The answer is easily achievable and within reach. Tonight, walk back into your kitchen, and cook a wholesome meal made from live, whole foods.
