Sadly much of the so-called diet or lite foods are just as big of culprits w/ all of the strange additives and chemicals. I'm constantly shocked by friends and family members' "diets." I don't know why its so hard to convince people that its just not what you eat, where it comes from matters too.
Luckily, here in L.A. we have farmers markets year-round and i've actually convinced a few that the quality of the organic produce is well worth the price. Its not as hard when the markets have so much beautiful food - it must be an uphill battle in other regions.

interesting links within that one as well, thanks Bruce.

I am glad we have a place to discuss issues like this and debate the issues together. Personally, everything seems so interconnected that an entire infrastructure supports and reinforces itself as long as their is a demand. Its all basic economics....supply and demand.

The Guardian piece sounds like one of the paper's typical anti-American rants with far more flash than substance.

One would like to see some evidence that modern food is "nutritionally depleted" (in comparison, say to what was available a century ago), and how food is "adulterated" with fat to trap unwary consumers, to mention just a couple of examples.

You can make valid points about abuses in the current corporate agricultural system and unfairness to farmers, without going out on these non-science based, politically-motivated tangents.

Is it non-science based to say Cheez Doodles are nutritionally depleted or have a lot of fat? Here's what's on the package:

serving size: 1 oz. (28 g)
calories: 150
fat: 9 g
protein: 2 g
Vitamin A & Calcium: 0% of RDA

Since you demand science, I did a little research.

I checked the cheddar cheese data at food-data.com, which you can see at http://www.food-data.com/food/Cheese_cheddar8.html. Here's what's in the same amount (1 oz.) of cheddar:

calories: 114
fat: 9 g
protein: 7 g
Vitamin A: 284 IU (~9% of the 3000 IU RDA for adult men)
Calcium: 204 mg (~20% of the 1000 mg RDA for adult men)

That site also has data for whole-grain, yellow cornmeal which you can see at: http://www.food-data.com/food/Cornmeal_whole-grain_yellow29.html. Here's what's in 1 oz. of cornmeal (I used my trusty calculator to convert data from 100 g to 1 oz):

calories: 103
fat: 1 g
protein: 2 g
Vitamin A: 61 IU (~2% of the 3000 IU RDA for adult men)
Calcium: 2 mg (~0% of the 1000 mg RDA for adult men)

The Cheez Doodles have more fat than the same amount of cheddar cheese or cornmeal and have less nutrition. How is it a politically-motivated tangent to say it? As I said before, great article.

Nice researchin' Bruce!

Good. Now could you please demonstrate how Cheese Doodles is equivalent to "modern food" (most of us do not depend on this product to get our RDA of calcium and vitamin , for example), and how our modern diet is "nutritionally depleted" compared to what our ancestors ate a century ago? You could start out by comparing rates of pellagra and iodine deficiency goiter, to name a couple of diseases. You could also look at the sort of chemical adulteration and contamination that led to the passage of the original Pure Food and Drug Act, compared with the safety of modern food.

And I couldn't help but notice that the fat content you listed for cheddar and Cheese Doodles is exactly the same. So much for "adulteration with fat".

That was a mistake in wording and I apologize. But don't forget that cheese is down below salt in the list of ingredients. So not much of the fat is from cheese. It's from the oil listed right below cornmeal. As for the rest, I don't see any point in either of us continuing down this path. There isn't a prize for winning.

The central statement in the article is, "Our food is being produced in a way that has devastating consequences for the environment, for social justice, and for our individual health." There's no debating it.

A century ago, there was no such thing as hydrogenated oils or fats. These ingredients, used to cut back on saturated fats and to keep products from spoiling when sitting on shelves, have created a thing called Trans Fat, which until recently has been hidden in foods (not listed on the nutrition facts label) and is actually worse for people in terms of health than saturated fat.

And no that article was not American-bashing. The article criticizes both American and British food systems. I cite the following parts of the article, "Three-quarters of grocery sales in the UK are in the hands of four supermarket groups. They have a stranglehold on how our food is made and distributed." "Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers now live in Britain in conditions that would make Dickens blush."

Also, I often see people eat a bag of chips and a soft drink for lunch. Yes this is modern food. You are ignoring that people no longer eat the same foods they did a century ago. It is known that the more refined a food item is, the less nutritional value it has. How many soft drinks does the average person drink per day? For that matter, how many do you drink? May I suggest water or milk instead?

In addition, food doesn't taste the way it's supposed to anymore. Tomatoes, for example, are supposed to be very soft. However, shipping squishy tomatoes around isn't profitable, so agri-business has developed tomatoes that don't get squishy. The enzyme that makes tomatoes squishy is called Pectin. Tomatoes with less pectin get less squishy. But Pectin is also what makes tomatoes sweet and flavorful. So a firm tomato is a flavorless tomato.

As a final note, Americans recognize this problem with the food system as well. Joan Dye Gussow has spent her lifetime writing and speaking about the bebefits and the necessity of eating locally grown, less refined foods. She is also a living example of how well it can be done because she has spent decades eating year-round from what she can grow in her suburban backyard. Read her book, "This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader."

Really you just come off as argumentative and uninformed. I am aware that I come off as antagonistic, but only because I am. I can only hope that you are more informed than you present yourself to be.

Ashes

I think we could do without deliberate antagonism.

What I was addressing were the unfounded claims that modern food is "nutritionally depleted" and that the Evil Food Overlords are "adulterating" our food with fat. Suggesting Cheese Doodles are a diet staple makes about as much sense as my citing the mini-pizza I had as part of dinner last night as nutritionally complete because it contained added thiamine, riboflavin, ascorbic acid and folic acid (I suspect the mixed salad and cranberry juice I also had were better for me).

Incidentally, "shipping squishy tomatoes isn't profitable" because consumers, sadly, reject less than perfect specimens even if they taste better. Even less than optimally flavorful fresh fruits and vegetables, though, are better than few to none at all. Which is what most people used to deal with this time of year in "the good old days".
It would be interesting to hear just how pectin is responsible for the flavor of tomatoes. I've never heard that one before.

Arguments that the current food system is environmentally damaging, unfair to workers and complicate efforts at good nutrition can be readily made based on solid evidence. The more extravagant claims (as in that article) are easily picked up by detractors to discredit the legitimate arguments.

Eric, I supplied a link that may support what ashes is trying to say in regards to the tomatoes being squishy.

Hi ashes, and welcome, I see you are newly registered here with us. Perhaps you were a lurker for some time, anyways it is always good to hear from the GW audience.

My experience on the forums is that all claims are better respected with research or studies or personal experience which we can digest rather than have thrown at us with all the sqishy genes removed. ( sorry, couldnt help myself- just trying to make light)

Alright now, Iam trying to focus on world peace and getting cheerful again...how about a cup of dandelion tea....wonder if that has lost any nutrients in the last 10 years....naw, I dig it up and roast it myself fresh every season!

Tea any one?!

Here is a link that might be useful: GMOs

Eric, is the it essense of your argument that if people are eating junk it's because they want to, not because they don't have any choice? If so, I agree.

You could have made your own pizza from whole grain flour and unflavored tomato paste and if you used organic cheese you could be reasonably sure the milk hadn't any rGBH or anti-biotics. The nutrition per-ounce would have probably been double or triple and without most of the undesirable trace chemicals.

But there is that couple of hours prep time instead of the 30 seconds to rip open a box and turn on the oven. Of course, we don't have to make pizza or lasagna or pot-pie from scratch every day to eat more healthily without busting the budget - but even putting on a pot of rice and beans and washing and chopping vegetables is more work than most folks will do these days.

The culprit is time management primarily I think, and secondly the addictive nature of the pre-prepared foods.

Maybe I shouldn't revive this, but I'll waste some of GW's storage space on some interesting history I researched for a term paper I wrote a few years ago. I finally tracked down a copy and feel like typing as I finish my (fair trade) coffee while waiting for the temperature to warm on my day off.

The Sixth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of the Statistics of Labor (1875) indicated 35% of working class families it studied ate no vegetables, other than potatoes, in a normal day. Only 1% had vegetables in more than one meal. Almost 88%, on the other hand, had meat for one or two meals and 45% had desserts with three meals. That was at the beginning of the mass immigration from Eastern & Southern Europe, which brought different food traditions to the US.

According to Harvey Levenstein in his book Revolution at the Table (1988), early 20th Century reformers criticized even the sparing use of expensive imported Romano cheese and olive oil by Italian immigrants. They were also critical of the Italian preference for fresh food. Levenstein mentions that a founder of housekeeping instruction centers for NYC tenements complained that Italians buying fresh bread and rolls each day didn't realize "the well-managed home breakfast is bought the day before."

A 1901 report by the US Industrial Commission noted that Italian-Americans had a preference for certain foods "which they must satisfy at all cost. That they satisfy it at the cost of their health is a matter of fact. Farinaceous foods, in the shape of bread and macaroni, vegetables and fruit and olive oil, are most favored ..."

The benefits of such a diet, however, were recognized by some. According to Lord, Trenor, and Barrows' book The Italian in America (1905), a Boston social agency indicated, "The Italians have in fact created a wholesome appetite for fruit among the mass of the people."

In 1943, The National Research Council's Committee on Food Habits also commented how poor Italian-Americans bought expensive Italian cheeses and olive oil and added that, if they didn't have those, Italian-Americans would stop using fresh vegetables.

But the Committee on Food Habits noted that Italian immigrants' consumption of meat and sugar increased after arrival in the US. Margaret Mead, working with that Committee, wrote that an important factor in American food habits was the high status European peasants accorded to those who ate meat every day. The Committee's report did say, however, that the best solution for improving the diets of Italian-Americans in New York City was to encourage people to re-establish previous food habits.

The Food Habits Committee's conducted a study in 1942 that found only 43% of low income families considered meat to be an essential food, while 91% of high income families did. 87% of high income families named meats as a favorite food and only 35% named vegetables. But 76% of low income families named vegetables as favorite foods and only 57% named meats. The income effect is striking and there's an interesting contrast with the 1875 Massachusetts results. I didn't delve deeply enough to discover if potatoes were included as vegetables in this study, but suspect they were.

Anyway, one can make an argument that modern dietary problems can be blamed on corporate evildoers or a governmental-industrial conspiracy. Or maybe they should be blamed on cheap food prices and high incomes (for people who can afford food). People seem to be born with a sweet tooth and a craving for fats. Sweet and fatty foods are well suited for industrialization and corporations know how to exploit the power of marketing. Food industry giants could sell their corn and cheese and oil for consumers to extrude their own snacks, but there's more money to be made if the ingredients are sold as Cheetos. And there's more money to be made if commodity prices are kept low, even if family farmers are squeezed off the land. And there's more money to be made with the heavy use of fertilizers, even if soil is depleted and eroded. And so on. Money talks.

Another point about food being nutritionally depleted-what foods are readily available in supermarkets? Everything is bleached, enriched, and white. Where are the whole grains? If you check labels on so called whole wheat breads, most are just white breads colored with caramel and have a few grains sprinkled on top-they have no more fiber! There are no whole foods anymore, everything has been enriched, refined, processed to be convenient

Bruce in ct, if you do not like foods such as Cheez Doodles, or cheddar cheese, then it is very simple to avoid being "poisoned" by their ingredients, just dont eat them. I happen to like cheddar cheese even if it has a high fat content, it taste beter to me than spinach or okra.

That was fascinating Bruce, thanks.

I don't see where Bruce says that he does eat doodles, dude.
And why would somebody eat them if they don't like them? To get some of those fortified vitamins?

I will not eat them in the dark
I will not eat them on a train
I will not eat them morning noon nor night
I will not eat them sam i am.......

Bruce...Thanks for the article.

Given the fact that I recently posted an article titled: "Is Organic Food Better For You," and it too brought-out the naysayers with negative comments and arguments, I suggest the following: Whenever one wishes to share something they've read with the ORGANIC FORUM, and the intent of their post is nothing more than sharing an article with people who "Supposedly" have like interests, one preface their post with a disclaimer. Perhaps it could go something like this...

DISCLAIMER - The purpose of posting this article is to Enlighten - Enrich - Entertain and Educate those who visit the Organic Forum. It is NOT an attempt on my part to instigate arguments, heated discussions (pro or con), unwarranted diatribes, or personal attacks. Please enjoy the article.

Just a thought.

Nice 1 Sandhill - tho I doubt it would make much difference. I've been teaching school-age kids for our city rec program for over a decade now & no matter how many times I repeat a direction - even directingmy attention specifically to kids w/ poor listening skills, there are ALWAYS @ least 1 or 2 kids who didn't 'get it'....

Speaking of kids - I love the way people take for granted that just because THEIR particular circumstances are in their control, everybody else's must be so as well. Plenty of children in our program over the years have demonstrated that plenty of people DO consider a bag of Cheez Doodles (or the equivalent) & a soda a 'lunch' - & these kids did not pack their own lunches either.

& don't get me started about "Lunchables"...

{{gwi:133834}}

Carol, IME, kids will always eat the trashiest stuff they can get ahold of - regardless of what the parents do or don't do.

Few families eat healthier at home than ours, but our kids despise vegetables and whole wheat bread and pasta and etc. They love chips and soda and white-flour junk. If the junk and trash foods weren't available kids would like the alternatives, and processed food manufacturers understand that very well I suspect. I remember up until about age 3 or 4 my youngest daughter ate steamed greens like there was nothing else in the world. She sat at the table mouth open like a bird. Now at age ten it's a struggle to get a piece of carrot or scrap of lettuce in her. Because now she knows how chips covered with msg taste, and soda, and so on.

Which is why it is absulutely critical that the processed food trash be banned from schools, because for some kids it's the only chance for a healthy meal. There is no reason other than money for chips and soda and twinkies to be on sale in schools. Or for mashed potatoes or cole-slaw to pass as fresh vegetables.

Alarming statistics about childrens health are being revealed almost daily:

In the past 25 years, the percentage of overweight children ages 6 to 11 has nearly doubled from 7% to 13%.
U.S. spending on hospital costs related to childhood obesity has tripled in the past two decades
Type II (adult onset) diabetes, which used to affect mostly adults, is now appearing at an increasing rate in children.
Obesity across all age levels has reached epidemic levels. According to a recent Surgeon GeneralÂs report, half of all Americans are overweight. Obesity is associated with hypertension, gall bladder disease and diabetes.

Frankly, I am proud of myself,, There are not any "junk" food allowed in the house outside of holidays. If food is advertised on the tele, we won't buy it( I am under the assumption the if they have enough money to advertise on national t.v., the money ain't going into quality) or if it has ingredients with more than 3 sylables (sp) We don't buy it. The canned food we use is canned by me. I know whats in it. My fam is agreeable on this issue. I think the idea of injected chickens suck, but it's hard to find one that isn't. n We really need to address the companies responsible and tell them how we want our food. Which is : un-f'd with!! I do write companies and tell them why I won't buy they're product, They send me coupons. I refuse to give up, Join the fight??? darlene

***Carol, IME, kids will always eat the trashiest stuff they can get ahold of - regardless of what the parents do or don't do.***

pn - that is a weird take on the sitch, IMO - exactly how many school-age kids do you know who do the grocery shopping for their households? & they're certainly not allowed to leave school/camp grounds on their own to buy food .& I've seen plenty of parents bring this stuff to their kids, after we've called 'em to tell 'em they neglected to pack a lunch & snack for their child who's spending the entire day(7-10 hrs) w/us.

IME, the majority of children are a 'captive audience', not masters of their fate.

Here's another from the Guardian.

Bruce, I would fail the test of eating 5 different fruits or vegetables a day, especially since patatoes dont count.
:(

So I know I would have great difficulty to eat the nine portions of fruit and vegetables per day as recommended by the American National Cancer Institute, as recommeded in the link you provided.

3 a day is pretty average for me. I am gonna try to make a conscious effort to up the intake of fresh fruits and veggies. I cant believe that fruit juice no matter how much you drink only counts as one portion! This will definitely take some effort on my part.

Its almost 3:00pm and so far all I've had is mashed patatoes and gravey, squash soup and a cup of tea for the day. That was all before I read your link. Now, I will seriously try to achieve this goal for one week and see how it goes.

veggiefruitveggiefruitveggie
alias gggg

eric oh - "What I was addressing were the unfounded claims that modern food is "nutritionally depleted" and that the Evil Food Overlords are "adulterating" our food with fat." unfounded claims? obviously you do not know very much about how agribusiness produces food or how the food processors turn it into 'food'. the former grows plants in depleted soils, drenched with pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers while the later processes it into a nutritionally deficient object replete with high levels of sodium, sugar and fats.

you also said "how our modern diet is "nutritionally depleted" compared to what our ancestors ate a century ago?", allow me to ask you a question. if you have $100 in your wallet and i remove the $100 and put back $20 would you believe my claim that i just enriched your wallet by $20?

i did not think so.

this is very interesting to me, I wanted to share this with you all, its on the revised food pyramid.

Anybody else see this news item from a few days ago???

**EU Warns Food Industry on Junk Food Advertising**

Thu Jan 20, 2:06 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A senior EU official said on Thursday urgent action was needed to tackle obesity among Europe's young and warned the food industry it faced legislation in a year unless it stopped advertising junk food to children.

Health and Consumer Affairs Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said Europe used to consider obesity to be a U.S. problem.

"We made fun of the Americans in a way. It is a European problem now," Kyprianou told the Financial Times in an interview.

"I would like to see the industry not advertising directly to children any more," he said.

"The signs from the industry are very encouraging, very positive. But if this doesn't produce satisfactory results, we will proceed to legislation."

Kyprianou said self-regulation was the fastest and most effective way to achieve the goal, but if action was not forthcoming then European Union (news - web sites) legislation would follow.

He is to announce in March a new arrangement with the food industry to agree self-regulatory targets, which he hopes will be in place by the end of this year or early in 2006.

Kyprianou said food manufacturers should use clearer labeling to make it "more easily understood by a consumer who doesn't have a PhD in chemistry."....**

Good luck. The continued waves of the future: "cheap" convenience food and child-focused marketing (our future adult consumers...catch them early and often).

Thata another reason why we dont have TV going on except for PBS and the computer. Although, PBS and some of the kids computer sites are getting hit with propaganda on junk foods and toys. good golly it just doesnt stop does it? Surprise its not coming in on our telephones and cell phones.

The video that I provided a link to with our secretary of
a_riculture, did you noticed the contradictions slip ups and recoverups on allownaces of trans fats? I think they were so incompetent on the subject matter that they freaked out and depended on other experts to get them through it, which is understandable.

Also, I couldnt help but notice the back drop matching the blue outfit buttoned up to the chin seem to hide the dietary and caloric abuse of a certain the speaker(s).

Personally, I dont think they have a clue on it all, or dont care?! Again, I just dont see how politics should get involve with our food choices. If you want to do something right, you just gotta be responsible and do it your self!

Bruce, interesting information about immigrants' diets.

It is true that consumers shape what is sold to some extent, but sometimes there is little choice. Try finding whole wheat sandwich bread which has no corn syrup added and no trans fats. I haven't been able to find it, and yet I hear no one calling for MORE corn syrup in their bread. And few people bake at home.

I've heard the average american eats eight burgers a week. Can that be true? I eat no burgers, so is someone out there eating 16?

Mag

Do you remember in the 70's when the warnings about sugar in our foods was advised. It was the hook which brand names were starting to take advantage of becasue we have such a sugar addictive society....now look at ourselves!!

I don't eat a burger a year, so someone out there is eating 36 burgers a week. :) I sometimes dream of big juicy and pink inside and outer charred hamburgers, monster ones on giant kaiser rolls. I haven't had one in years.

I'll grab a Wendy's Bacon/cheese burger only once every 3 months or so. But in the summer we'll prepare and grill our own burgers at home with fresh tomato (2/month tops).
As for "the industry" quietly replacing sugar in just about every product they make with High Fructose Corn Syrup....smells like a rat to me. Ain't nothing wrong with sugar unless you're a diabetic or got bad teeth. It's been tested in vitro for thousands of years...but HFCS - who knows? vgkg

Marshall, this reminds me of a passage in the introduction of the Jeffrey Masson book on farm animals that I read recently, where he claims to prefer tofu to steak. (And soy cheese to real cheese, too.) Now, I am not a big fan of steak, and I am quite fond of tofu, but really!

At a recent convention I attended Dr Andrew Weil said to avoid the grill that produces the black marking on food.

He didnt get alot into name brand things/corporations or establishments, however, the processed sugars like HFCS is much more concentrated and hits our body systems much differently...sugar over load in a highly processed form is difficult for the body to process.

Its like fat/obese people are actually starving because their really not getting the neccessary nutrients met and instead the high caloric and transfatty oils are really causing havic in the USA. Just one bag of french fries from a fast food place has more than the maximum allowance of trans fatty fat which we should be avoiding anyways.

Alfie, I sort agree with Cecil of the Straight Dope; OTOH, HFCS are likely to appear in more products, products that used little or no sugar in the past. He's right about the reduced activity contributing to obesity so bring on the Oleastra or other faked fats and down with trans-fatty acid compounds! Fling those Freedom Fries away and eat your burgers boiled, not broiled or fried! Tofu for all meals. Monsanto is working on a low-cholesterol non-gmo soybean line and abandoning transgenic wheat. Nirvana is on the horizon!

Soybeans have cholerserol? Isn't that overkill?

I'm pretty sure soybeans don't have any cholesterol. It's just Marshall indulging in his inexplicable fondness for hyperbole. (I have never, not even once, in my whole entire life, even come close to indulging in hyperbole.) My question is, how come soybeans are low in fat, but tofu, made from soybeans, is high in fat?

Alfie, according to this fat content site below Soybeans contain about 17% fat - assuming that these are unprocessed of course. Soybean oil = plant derived fat I suppose? Maybe they concentrate the fat in tofu to make it taste better........well, better luck next time ;o).

BTW, this is one of the few sites that give fat content as % instead of grams. I got nothing against "gram" measurements but when it comes to "grams of fat per serving" that's pretty meaningless info without mental calculations and fiquring out each manufacturer's "serving". % is the best visual measurement (like 2% milk). Junk food makers don't want to make it easy to fiqure it out.