Mystery Sweets

The other day, I was visiting my 1-year-old nephew Omar.  He was eating these weird, puffy little cookies that dissolve in your mouth; they are supposed to develop self-feeding skills in toddlers.  (My nephew weighs over 30 lbs, so I think he’s got the self-feeding thing down pat, but whatever.)  The label prominently reports that the cookies contain real sweet potatoes, but turn the container over to read the ingredients and the truth comes out: full of sugar, and toward the bottom of the ingredients are some powdered sweet potatoes (for color, maybe?).

This label is totally misleading.  What busy mom has time to read this??  And that’s exactly what companies are counting on.  It’s symptomatic of the rampant “creative labeling” problem we have with food in this country.

Are you outraged yet?  If not, you soon will be…

Back in July, the FDA reversed an earlier ruling, declaring that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) can now be considered “natural” as long as it’s produced without getting synthetic fixing agents in direct contact with the raw materials used in manufacturing HFCS.  Wait, you didn’t hear about this?  Most people didn’t.

So there are forces actually lobbying to create more opportunities to mislead the public!

Don’t get me wrong, the “all-natural” label has always been a little ambiguous, but now it’s completely meaningless.

At this point, maybe you’re saying to yourself, “But isn’t HFCS just made from corn?  That’s natural.”  Sure it is, if you’re nibbling it from the cob.  The fact is that many, many manufactured foods today actually start as natural raw materials. Let’s run through a short list, to keep things in perspective:

Splenda is made from sugar = natural

Until the 1960’s, MSG was made by hydrolysis of wheat gluten = natural (who knows how it’s made now)

Aspirin originally derives from the leaves and bark of the willow tree = natural (And this is just the tip of the iceberg- think of how many drugs have been derived from natural sources!)

My point is, in the olden days EVERYTHING was made from natural sources, but that doesn’t mean it was automatically good for us.  Today, the spirit of the movement toward “natural” foods is to eat foods that are more whole, less manufactured, and more nutritionally balanced, the way nature intended.  It is NOT to eat foods that can lay claim to a natural heritage 5 generations back.  The spirit of the movement is completely obscured when big corporations try to make a buck off of it, by pretending that manufactured, inexpensive ingredients are something that they’re not.

Corn on the cob does not directly contribute to obesity or diabetes, but there’s a raging debate about whether HFCS does… because it’s an out-of-balance food.  The natural sugars in the corn have been separated from the water, fiber and nutrients that you would digest together with the sugars when eating corn.  HFCS is NOT natural.  It should NOT be labeled that way!

And that brings me back to my original gripe: the manipulation of the American people by way of food labels.  Our food is full of so much junk and filler, while on the front of the package it says “contains real vegetables”.  It’s all marketing, and it’s all to make a buck.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m eating HFCS, I want to know that I’m eating it, and I want to choose to be eating it.   Only by staying informed and being vigilant label readers can we all take back control over what we are eating.  Don’t trust the claims on the front of the package; turn the box over, every time.

For more information on this, see: http://naturalfoodsmerchandiser.com/tabid/66/itemid/3139/FDA-reverses-course-High-fructose-corn-syrup-now.aspx.

And from the other side of the fence: http://www.hfcsfacts.com/