Nov 24, 2009 - Two rules for buying packaged products

Can you trust the front of the package?

There are two simple rules for reading labels.

Rule #1) NEVER, EVER believe ANYTHING on the front of ANY package. EVER.

So why can’t you believe the front of the box? Simple. The box is designed to sell the product. Period. Nothing else. There is simply NO value to the front of the box except to get that box or that can or that package into your cart. They don’t care if you eat the whole box and have a heart attack. Of course, if the box says organic, at least you’ll have the distinct advantage of having an organic heart attack!

Rule #2) Always read the nutrition facts label and the ingredients list. Always.

The number one reason to stay vigilant? Because the ingredient list changes as the product line (especially small companies selling a decent product) is bought and sold from month to month, behind the scenes, faster than bubble gum trading cards. Need to turn a quick profit on that overpriced product line you just bought? Keep the brand and use cheaper ingredients. And don't tell anyone. Use these cheaper ingredients in manipulated quantities to over-stimulate consumer demand. What you, as the consumer, read last month, and now take for granted because the packaging still looks the same, could have a whole new list of ingredients that are way off the mark. You need to know what’s in there.

Let’s talk about three of the heavy hitters, fat, sodium and sugar, the unfair deceptions used to market products, and what to look for to make better decisions. This is in no way inclusive.

Fat – The body only needs 3-5% of its calories from fat. That’s it. All fat necessary is easily attainable through plants (omega-3) and a very small amount of nuts and seeds (omega-6).
So a safe number of total fat for optimal health is no more than 10-12%. This low number has been shown to reverse heart disease and provide protection from cancer (when the diet is plant based and wholesome, of course), according to the best studies, including the China Project. The guideline established by our government is closer to 35% of total calories from fat, which is not health promoting at all, but a compromise between the decision makers, their food industry $ponsor$ (dairy, cattle, agri-business), and the fear they have that if the truth be told, we’d immediately and systematically start lynching our representatives, the economy would turn on it’s head, the earth would spin backwards and we’d all fly off. OH, that and they’d lose their jobs. Because we’d fire them. Now that part would be true…

Trick #1 – Use fat percentages by weight rather than fat calories per total calories. Our food regulators have never advocated reducing fat by volume because it means nothing. The only meaningful measurement has always been determining a “safe” limit of fat by comparing fat calories to total calories. It is way too high by any other standard but their own, but at least it’s honest.

Here’s the rub about fat content shown on the box. The front of the box may say ‘Only 2% fat’. This is not 2% of the total CALORIES from fat, this is 2% of the total WEIGHT, which means absolutely nothing. This is done for every product (it’s even one of the nutritional numbers on the back to further confuse you!) ever packaged, with the intent to make the product look healthy - and it makes it even easier for manufacturers to claim “now with 20% less fat” by simply increasing the water content! Did the product really change?
Take a 12 ounce can of water as a simple example. Add 2 tablespoons of oil. Any oil, they all have the same amount of fat. Percentage of fat by weight? Negligible. Therefore, listed as zero. Percentage of fat by calories? Anybody guess 100%? Correct! Is this lower than the recommended optimal amount of 10%? They could actually put on the front of the can of pure fat-water “0 grams fat”. Milk? 2%? – by weight that looks good. By calories? 32% of all the calories in 2% milk is fat! Whole milk - which is only 4%, derives a remarkable 48% of its total calories from fat. Will that get anyone the health they want when optimal is 10-12%?

Trick #2 – They change portion size. Manufacturers do not have to list the fat if there is less than .50 grams per serving size. The front of the box can even say, “0 grams of fat per serving size”, and according to their own twisted guidelines, they aren’t really ‘lying’. Did they tell you a serving size was one cracker? If there’s .49 grams of fat in one cracker, and you feed your child 8 crackers (that’s not unreasonable, who can eat just one), can you do the math here? But the box said “0 grams of fat” on the front! Even if you ate one a day until the box was gone, you’ve taken in 75 grams of fat that you did not need, and after you choke on the list of ingredients, you’ll discover it to be the worst fat you can put into your body!

Cooking spray? It says 100% heart-healthy olive on the can AND it says 0 calories! How can this be? Easy - A serving size is a spray that lasts 1/3 of a second. In that third of a second, out comes .49 grams of fat. Can you spray a pan with 1/3 of a second’s worth of spray?

Trick #3 – They label the product ‘Heart healthy oil”. This trick is designed to lull you into thinking you don’t need to look at the back of the package AT ALL. If you did look before, now you don’t need to because this oil is ‘Heart Healthy’! We’ve got your back, smart shopper! I’m not even going to cover what I think of ‘heart healthy’ oils bought off the shelves again – check one of my previous entries.

Trick #4 – Don’t call it fat. That’s nasty! Instead, put these on the ingredients list.

Monounsaturated fats:
· canola oil
· peanut oil
· avocado oil
· olive oil.
Saturated fats and Trans fatty acids:
· animal fat/oil
· Kremelta
· baking margarine
· hydrogenated fat
· butter fat
· lard
· milk solids
· copha
· palm oil
· dripping
· shortening
· coconut oil
· coconut cream/coconut milk
· chocolate
· cocoa butter
· cream.
Polyunsaturated fats:
· soybean oil
· safflower oil
· corn oil
· sunflower oil
· grape seed oil.


How to determine true fat content? It is EASY.

Find the food label. Find total calories per serving. Find total fat per serving. Fat / calories = fat percent. If you come up with more than .12, and and you want to make a difference in your health (as far as fat goes), find a better product.

Sodium. The upper, upper limit established by the most reasonable guidelines is 2300 mg per day. For optimal health, you need only 300-500 mg at the most per day – all found in whole foods. It does not need to be added to any food product you eat. How many people do you know who have attempted to lower their blood pressure by tossing the table salt only to find it made no difference or sadly discovered it actually went up?
That’s because only five percent of the total sodium consumed in the typical American diet comes from table salt! Where does the rest of the sodium come from?

Trick #1 – Call it ‘Low Sodium’.
Never believe this. The packaged products – especially the ones labeled ‘Low Sodium’, are the drivers of hypertension this country has ever seen. But it is easy to determine the correct amount in a product to determine whether it is safe or not.
On the back is the total sodium. Also listed is the total calories. Are they the same number or close to it? Don’t consider the units, just the number. A 1:1 ratio is as high as you want to go. That’s the upper, upper limit! Even then, the portion size can be so small that it wouldn’t fill a mouse. So you eat the whole can of “safe” soup just to get a meal and still wind up taking in 5000 mg of sodium. Homemade vegetable soup, in contrast, is 120 calories and 5 mg sodium. It’s ridiculous! Sodium is one mineral that you’ll never have to worry about getting enough of. It’s found everywhere in the plant kingdom. If you shake the salt shaker once or twice just before you eat your homemade soup (assuming it is made entirely from only whole natural ingredients, of course), fine. Just remember, salt stimulates the desire for more salt and before you know it….

Packaged vegetable broths are a real problem here. Never trust ‘organic’ or ‘low sodium’. They mean nothing. Read the label on the back. Julie just bought one of those cartons of ready to pour organic vegetable broth that said ‘low sodium’ on the front. She then read the back of the box after she got home and found it had 120 calories per serving and 640 mg of sodium! That’s almost three times higher than the high limit using this simple test. How they came up with ‘low’, I will never know. They can say anything they want. Back to the store these went. Now we’ll be making our own and freezing it.

You, too, can make it for next to nothing and freeze it by the gallon. It’ll taste better and you’ll know exactly what’s in it. It will have no fat and only a small amount of sodium from the vegetables and be perfectly good for you. You can use it as a base for an infinite number of recipes. I’ll share the directions for it in a separate blog entry so it will be easy to find.

Sugar. How much sugar do you need? In a packaged product – none. What we need are complex carbohydrates in their whole form. No one needs packaged simple sugars in a box, can or bottle. It has no value. Have a piece of fruit or use fresh fruit juice right from the fruit to use as a sweetener.

Agave nectar, which I thought would be a better poison, instead stands proud among the best. Its’ chemical structure dictates that it is nothing but an even more concentrated form of high fructose corn syrup, which is absolutely foreign to the body. It cannot be converted to blood glucose for energy to be used by the muscles like fruit sugars can in their whole form. It instead shows up as elevated triglycerides in the blood stream and stored body fat. Elevated triglyceride levels lead to cardio-vascular disease by causing inflammation in the arteries.

So here is the rundown of some of the sweet benefits of this totally man made product and all high fructose corn sweeteners - While high fructose corn syrup won't spike your blood sugar levels quite as much as plain old sugar, it can kill a diabetic quicker than sugar can. The fructose will cause: mineral depletion, liver inflammation, hardening of the arteries, insulin resistance leading to diabetes, cardio-vascular disease, obesity, and may be toxic for use during pregnancy.

So who is most at risk? That’s right - our kids - with every juice box and fruit rollup and sugary snack. Pancake syrup comes to mind. Add this to all the rest of the junk called food. You have diagnosed heart disease at 50 like me? Your children and mine stand to get the same diagnosis or worse ten years earlier, or sooner. Watch the news. We now have kids on Lipitor – for life.

Trick #1 - Manufacturers avoid listing sugars as the number #1 ingredient.
Why? We’re not THAT stupid! Sugar listed as the number one ingredient is, in the eyes of most savvy consumers, provokes an immediate sub-conscious rejection. We may actually even think twice about buying it. How do manufacturers avoid product suicide? Easy. Since the ingredients must be listed in descending order by weight, use a lot of different sugars so no single sugar outweighs the refined pixie dust they pass off as oat flour as the main ingredient.

Again, as a manufacturer, this is what you do. If only one type of sugar were used, it would outweigh the flour. Easily. Throw in some other sugars and you can spread the weight of these sugars around all over in the ingredients list and no one will be the wiser. Now, this month’s version of the product is so much BETTER than last month’s version because the main ingredient is now ‘oats’, which makes this product, according to the box, ‘Heart Healthy’, AND it has, as a free gift to you, a ‘New, Improved Taste!’, because now it can have more sugar than ever. And it’s probably saltier. If it stays crunchy, even in milk, you’ve just made a customer for life.

So now when Little Johnny screams for his favorite brand, which is strategically placed on the shelf that is at HIS eye level (it’s a higher profit item), you’ll actually feel good about buying it!

You just earned yourself a nifty bonus and a key to the executive men’s room.

Trick #2 - There are so many different names for essentially the same end results.
Check these out – mix and match any way you like. As a manufacturer, just keep any one sugar from becoming your heaviest ingredient!

· barley malt
· beet sugar
· brown sugar
· buttered syrup
· cane-juice crystals
· cane sugar
· caramel
· carob syrup
· corn syrup
· corn syrup solids
· date sugar
· dextran
· dextrose
· diatase
· diastatic malt
· ethyl maltol
· fructose
· fruit juice
· fruit juice concentrate
· glucose
· glucose solids
· golden sugar
· golden syrup
· grape sugar
· high-fructose corn syrup
· honey
· invert sugar
· lactose
· malt syrup
· maltodextrin
· maltose
· mannitol
· molasses
· raw sugar
· refiner's syrup
· sorbitol
· sorghum syrup
· sucrose
· sugar
· turbinado sugar
· yellow sugar
The bottom line here is, when it comes to packaged foods, even if the product passes the fat, sodium and sugar test, is there really any nutritional value in it? Most of the time, a handful of chemical vitamins are irresponsibly sprinkled on the final product and held there by lots omega-6 fats called preservatives to keep it all ‘fresh’. And it has no vitamins because it’s had the living daylights cooked out of it to the point of being totally unrecognizable next to it’s original, wholesome source.

Our bodies need real fuel and nutritionally-based disease protection to go the distance. Eat as much fresh, unprocessed foods as you can, prepare your meals from scratch at home, pack a picnic basket of those same foods and head for the park every chance you get.

I gleaned much of this information from a DVD lecture entitled, “Health Food Versus Healthy Food”, by Jeff Novick. I did not find this entertaining and informative lecture on his website, but it appears he does have at least one DVD for sale entitled “ Lighten Up! Weighing in on the Weight Debate”. May be worth the purchase. He is very informative with a great delivery.
His website is: http://www.jeffnovick.com/JeffNovick/DVDs.html