BBC News - Scrubbing Up: Do hospitals legitimise junk food? Following up the last blog I whipped out (admittedly!) on Brain Foods, this article from the BBC finishes another "nail on the head" of my personal list of pet peeves. There are plenty of stories one can find online that concur with what the BBC is opening for discussion. In fact, some of us have been talking about this issue for thirty years! Thank you, Cardiologist Asseem Malhotra, for writing about the problem in a fresh way. Nutrition is not all that hard to calculate.... pointedly, nutrition is still as simple as A, B, C, because we humans have not had an opportunity to mutate all that much since we began to be able to calculate the nutrients in our foods. So what is going on? Why are we being given limited choices for high quality healthy nutrition everywhere we turn? but especially, why are we being given limited choices from the places one would expect to have the best choices offered? As promised, I am working on a quick and concise discussion of why whole fats are much healthier than low fat foods. From this BBC article, you may begin to guess why. In a nutshell, right now, I will sign off saying, the less we bother the food before it gets to our kitchen, the healthier it is for our bodies. Until our next interaction, live well...Love and laugh. ~janet
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Update on this brief story line.....
I have not been able to get out of this story because I went on to discover a lot more written on the topic plus then NYT published a very thorough article on The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food" six days ago. I cannot stop studying it and "Running off" in cyber land to follow up the details.....!
Crazy making lines from the astounding article "The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food" at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4 :
“One article said something like, ‘If you take Lunchables apart, the most healthy item in it is the napkin.' " ===================== "... the food industry already knew some things about making people happy — and it started with sugar. Many of the Prego sauces — whether cheesy, chunky or light — have one feature in common: The largest ingredient, after tomatoes, is sugar. A mere half-cup of Prego Traditional, for instance, has the equivalent of more than two teaspoons of sugar, as much as two-plus Oreo cookies." ===================== “(Stephen)Sanger (of General Mills) was trying to say, ‘Look, we’re not going to screw around with the company jewels here and change the formulations because a bunch of guys in white coats are worried about obesity.” ===================== "These (new Lunchables) would be promoted as more healthful versions, with “fresh fruit,” but their list of ingredients — containing upward of 70 items, with sucrose, corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup and fruit concentrate all in the same tray..." ===================== "The company’s Yoplait brand had transformed traditional unsweetened breakfast yogurt into a veritable dessert. It now had twice as much sugar per serving as General Mills’ marshmallow cereal Lucky Charms." ===================== ....and more.... O.o