Label Madness Monday: Something’s Fishy!

If you bought a bunch of soybeans—whether dry roasted and crunchy, frozen and shelled, or whole edamame still in the pods—would you expect to find any tuna fish in the package? No, right? Because that would be just plain crazy. I mean, you’re buying beans. You want beans, not fish. So tell me, then, why there are soybean residues in cans of tuna fish! If I’m buying tuna, I want fish, not beans. They would never think to put fish in a package of beans. So what’s up with putting beans in packages of fish?

Label Madness Monday - It's Scary Out There!

Confession time: I was going to call it quits on this label series. I was walking through the supermarket last week looking for products with labels that were ripe for a good takedown, and I found myself completely and totally overwhelmed. Because the truth is, I’d say about 80% of the food products in the store would have fit the bill. That is my non-scientific estimate. It might’ve been closer to 90% to be honest with you. Also, I use the phrase “food products” here deliberately. If you’ve read any of these label posts you’ve figured out by now that just about everything that comes with an ingredient label that has more than one thing on it (for example, chicken thighs, or broccoli, or sirloin steak, or Fuji apple, or sweet cream butter) is immediately suspect. Even things labeled “organic” or “all-natural” come with wacky and ridiculous surprises. So I kind of feel like, we get it. Just buy real food. Just buy nutritious food. But here’s the rub: many of us don’t know what nutritious food is anymore. The marketers, government nutrition authorities, and sometimes even our own doctors, have us completely snowed when it comes to what foods the human body is designed to thrive on.

If you happened to read my little rant from a few weeks ago, then you know that I’m pretty passionate about this stuff. But I’m also easily discouraged and disillusioned. Very easily. I was walking around that supermarket, overwhelmed, and I said to myself, “What’s the point?” This is such an utter, total, and complete fustercluck (feel free to rearrange those letters to get the word you know I’d rather use). What difference can one tiny person, with one tiny blog, possibly make? I told myself not to bother, that the problem was just too big and pervasive and we might as well all gather up our toys and go home. To use one of this guy’s favorite phrases, the processed food industry—along with its marketers and its government and private nutrition organization enablers—has completely shit the bed. (Sorry, kids…hope you were covering your ears. Sometimes only the real word will do.)

I left the supermarket feeling defeated. Here I am, embarking on a career in nutrition, and the deck is stacked so strongly against me I wonder if I should even bother. Almost everything “They,” with a capital T, have told us about how to be physically and emotionally vibrant and well, and get to and maintain a healthy weight, has been wrong. If you had spent the last 60 years doing the opposite of what They’ve told us (maybe by eating plenty of egg yolks, butter, organ meats, red meat, seasoning your food liberally with unrefined salt, and going easy on the grains and vegetable oils), you’d probably be in damn fine health, physically and psychologically.

It was enough to make me close up shop when the shingle’s been hanging up for less than a year. Almost.

DFNSD: Book Review

Hey Everyone,

 

Recall from the first and second posts about digestion in the stomach that, contrary to the endless stream of commercials for over-the-counter antacids and prescription proton pump inhibitors (acid-suppressing drugs), sufficient stomach acid is a normal, healthy, and absolutely essential part of good digestion.

I mentioned that I would post a review of the book Why Stomach Acid is Good for You, but I was holding off until we had covered enough of the details that the review would actually make sense. And considering we’re on to talking about the small intestine now, I’d say we’re there.

The review I wrote appeared in print a few months ago in Wise Traditions, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation. It took them a while, but they’ve finally gotten around to posting the online version. So instead of me posting it here, if you want to check out the review, hop on over there and take a look. There probably isn’t a whole lot there that I didn’t cover in better detail on the blog, but if there’s someone in your life who’s popping antacids like they’re candy and can’t understand why: 1) they’re still getting heartburn all the time, 2) they have a bunch of other health issues as well (but have no idea they might be connected to low stomach acid), or 3) you want them to “get this stuff,” but they’re not likely to read my entire series on digestion, please send them this link. There’s a better chance they’d be willing to read one book review than 8 or 9 different posts.

Here it is: Book review of Why Stomach Acid is Good for You

Have a great weekend!

Digestion for (not-so) Dummies: Small Intestine Pt.2 - Leaky Gut

Hey Everyone! We’re in the home stretch now! It’s taken us a while in this series on digestion, but here we are, covering a few more key things about the small intestine, then it’s on to the large intestine, and we’ll be done! In previous entries, we’ve done some troubleshooting to help digestion in the stomach, the pancreas, and the gallbladder. Today, let’s get into one of the most common—but least recognized by conventional medical and nutrition professionals—consequences from poor digestion: Leaky gut!

Label Madness Monday: What's in a Name?

As promised last week, today’s study in label chicanery is about ice cream…or, rather, frozen dairy dessert. See, they’re not the same thing, and unless you know what to look for on the label, you could be spending your hard-earned money on wacky additives instead of what’s supposed to be in ice cream: cream.

I’m not saying it’s completely impossible to cut corners in food production or that you absolutely cannot purchase good food at a reasonable price. But there is a kernel of truth to the saying “you get what you pay for,” especially when it comes to food quality. There’s a reason manufacturers can still make a profit when they sell their goods on buy-one-get-one-free sales (also known as "BOGO") or otherwise deeply discount their usual prices, and that reason is most likely that the raw materials used for the product were dirt cheap to begin with and the "normal price" was actually a huge markup.

But before I launch into my rant, let’s go to the pictures.

Digestion for (not-so) Dummies: Small Intestine Pt.1

The main event! Finally!

I’ve been saying for weeks that we’d get to the small intestine, and we’re finally here.

In our north-to-south journey through digestion, we started in the mind, then went south to the mouth, the esophagus & stomach, and also talked about the importance of sufficient stomach acid, and what to do if you don’t have sufficient stomach acid. Last time, we did reach the small intestine, but before we could talk about the incredibleness that is this very long, convoluted tube, we had to cover the roles of the gallbladder and pancreas.

So today we’ll start tackling the role of the small intestine (SI) itself. It’s gonna take some time, though—and definitely more than one post—because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover here, and I mean that figuratively and literally. Some sources say that if you unfolded the SI and laid it flat, its surface area would cover a tennis court! This isn’t only because it’s long—about 20 feet long, in fact. (It fits inside your abdominal cavity because it’s got lots of turns and sort of folds up on itself. See the illustration above or another good one here.) The reason the surface area of the SI is so huge is because it is exquisitely designed to suit its function. The SI is the site of absorption of almost all nutrients into the bloodstream. Remember: the GI tract is a hollow tube that connects to the outside world at both ends (mouth at the top and anus at the bottom). Until food is actually absorbed from the intestines into the bloodstream, some people consider it to still be outside the body. So the SI is really the point of connection between outside and inside, “us” and “them.” This is an extremely important point, and we’ll come back to it for sure.

Label Madness Monday: Size Matters!

Today’s food label smackdown is a bit of a departure from how we’ve done things in the past. In previous posts in this series, we’ve looked at the ingredients and/or health claims on food packages. Today, however, we don’t even have to go that far. Instead of looking at what is in these foods, we’ll be looking at how much of it there is. Why? Well, you might not be aware of this, but over the last few years, the products in our supermarkets have experienced some serious shrinkage.

Fat Tuesday: "Vegetable Oil" - A Thought Experiment

When you get a look at the pictures in this post, you might think they’re better suited for my Label Madness Monday series. But it’s been a while since I’ve served up anything new in the Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday category, and according to the pageview stats, the posts about fats are pretty popular. So in the spirit of giving you more of what you seem to like reading about (plus more of what I like writing about), I present you with a little thought experiment regarding fats and oils.

  

Here’s the challenge: Name the five fattiest foods you can think of. Really, take the time to think of them. Very fatty foods—at least five of them.

Label Madness Monday

Hey everyone! Another seven days have gone by, and you know what that means: a new food label to look at and start the work week with a laugh—or possibly a cry, depending on how much this stuff either amuses or bothers you. Today’s labels are such egregious examples of wacky marketing that we don’t even have to look at the list of ingredients. The manufacturers have saved us the trouble of going to that extra step by kindly putting all the ridiculousness right out front and center. So here goes.

Take a good look at this milk carton. I mean a really good look. Read all of it.