Dan's Papers - August 15, 2008 - Leave Products with a Long Shelflife on the Shelf

When you walk through a supermarket, does it ever occur to you that the packaged cakes have an expiration date of a year from now? That the processed crackers can be consumed in 2010? Is it science fiction? Fantasy? No - its synthetic ingredients - and they're attacking our food supply.

My tenet is this: if food has ingredients that you cannot pronounce, have never heard of, can't explain or have more than five syllables, then they are not likely found naturally on Mother Earth. Therefore, you should probably not be ingesting them. Packaged foods that rest on shelves for hundreds of days and are still fit to be eaten cannot be made from pure, unaffected components. The mental image of a wholesome baker creating heavenly baked goods with flour, eggs and sugar has been replaced by lab coat-wearing scientists, concocting fudge cakes and apple pies with test tubes and beakers, then boxing them and shipping them off to the market.

The following may sound like a supply list for a manufactured toy, but here's a real deal food label taken from a POPULAR BAKED PRODUCT: in addition to egg whites, water, sugar and milk there is polysorbate 60, propylene glycol, artificial flavor, sodium caseinate, calcium caseinate, aluminum sulfate, sorbitan monostearate, mono and diglycerides.

Now I don't know about you, but I haven't heard of a chicken laying a diglyceride, or a plant growing a monostearate. And what if you left out the propylene glycol? Would the cake taste much different?

There are so many ingredients in processed food that require closer examination, but for now we'll discuss two: high fructose corn syrup and trans fats, or partially hydrogenated oil.

Let's start with the first one: high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is corn syrup that endures a process to increase its fructose content, then is mixed with pure corn syrup or glucose. Why is it in our food? It is sweeter and cheaper than sugar. In addition, it acts as a preservative and helps prevent freezer burn and bread from hardening.

HFCS is hiding in places you wouldn't dream of. If you took inventory of your cupboard, I guarantee you will find it in 50% of your food. Culprits include most cereals, almost all breads in supermarkets, cookies, crackers, syrup, yogurt, ketchup, soups, soda, fruit drinks, ice cream, jelly, condiments, salad dressing, sauces and many other processed foods.

The reason it is a potential health hazard is that the body digests it differently than plain old sugar, the end result being more fat storage. Though there are conflicting views about the exact dangers of HFCS (and in actuality, many experts believe there may be no dangers at all), speculation includes strong ties to obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol.

Let's get to the good stuff - I mean the bad stuff, the really bad stuff, trans fats, or partially hydrogenated oil. This fat is, or was, liquid vegetable oil that is magically transformed through a chemical process into solid fat. Yuck.

This so-bad-for-you "matter" (I can't even bring myself to call it food) is found in snack foods, breads, peanut butter, margarine, baked goods, fast fried foods and literally hundreds of other items found in the grocery store and in restaurants. Its effect on food is added shelf life. Its effect on you is raised LDL cholesterol (the bad one) and lowered HDL cholesterol (the good one). Doctors and scientists call it a "double whammy". Trans fats are a serious health threat directly related to heart disease.

The FDA recommends less than 1 percent of your food consumption coming from trans fats. If you take in 2,500 calories in a day, that is 25 calories. About a cracker. And just recently, New York City actually put a ban on the use of trans fats in restaurants and bakeries.

The lesson here is this: read your food labels. ALL of them. You will be shocked, not surprised, at what you are putting in your mouth. At a later date we'll review more fun food additives like bulking agents, artificial flavors and colors, anti-caking agents, preservatives, and more. Until then, bon appetite!