By: Jean Johnson for Reflux1A cruise around the Internet makes the case clear. People in developed countries are less physically active than their hunter-gatherer, farmer-rancher predecessors. Still, though, they’re hooked on the equivalent of those Sunday Iowa farm suppers.
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Heft those platters of fried chicken, brim up the bowls of potato salad edged with deviled eggs and flourishes of extra mayo, and step up a whole extra table for the pies and cakes and what have you. Even better, add a contemporary twist to the mix – wash the whole works down with a canned soda or two and follow with a fancy coffee drink complete with artificial syrup designed to make you think you’ve gone to Tuscany, or at least a Disney version of it.
The New York Times is on the issue of fake food like a bloodhound, and in a recent article described one of the latest processes that halves the amount of fat in fried chicken. Breaded breasts and thighs on the assembly line are dunked in a “gray liquid” consisting of “water and protein molecules extracted from a slurry of chicken or fish tissue [that form] a thin, imperceptible shield around the meat.” There you have it – good old country fried chicken with 50 percent of the fat.
The food industry knows we’re out here. So even though olestra, the infamous, diarrhea-inducing fake fat that chip makers jumped on a few years back wasn’t exactly a resounding success, scientists are forging ahead. Fried chicken coated with gray gook and all manner of fat free foods are only half the story, though. Fat’s close ally, sugar, is the rest of it. From the currently discredited saccharin to latest Splenda bandwagon, those of us unwilling to give up our sweet rushes are anteing up sizable amounts of hard-earned cash to have our cake and eat it too.
Private nutrition consultant to athletes in the Seattle area and fellow of the American College of Nutrition, Susan Kleiner, Ph.D., R.D., is skeptical about society’s last ditch effort to avoid simply toning down portion sizes. “The bottom line is that to lose weight, you must create a calorie deficit by reducing calorie intake and increasing energy output. Fake sugars and fats might help you cut back on calories or fat, but you can’t trick your body into a calorie deficit simply by using foods that contain them,” Kleiner said. “Also because the safety of some of these products is still in question, if you choose to use them in your diet, do so in moderation.”
That’s an understatement according to Sean Faircloth, a Democratic state representative in Maine who was honored by the Northeast Chapter of the American Heart Association in 2005 and named legislator of the year in 2004 by the Maine chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Faircloth helped create a state health commission focused on ridding public schools of canned pop and junk food, and his radical list titled “Six Ways the Government Promotes Obesity,” he singles out “directing billions in subsidies toward processed foods while neglecting fresh produce.”
Neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis, John W. Olney, M.D., comes at the debate from a less political angle than Faircloth, but Olney’s skepticism in the fake food department strikes a similar note.
“Since about five years after aspartame [another of the artificial sweeteners on the market] was approved, there has been a striking increase in the incidence of malignant brain tumors,” said Olney. “I’m not saying that aspartame has been a proven cause of brain tumors. I’m saying that there is enough basis to suspect aspartame; that it needs to be reassessed.”
Reassessment of all fake foods is something Miles Hassell, M.D., medical director of the integrative medicine program at the Providence Cancer Center in Portland, Oregon, advocates. Prominent on his list of six types of foods to take wide berths around is fake food. Don’t even stop off in that realm if you want to truly care for your body is the message Hassell has for his patients.
In the meantime, science, major food producers and food-ingredient companies – and the government if you buy Faircloth’s argument – are full steam ahead. It’s all about supply and demand in a capitalist system, and thanks to those of us unwilling to bite the bullet and consider a little slicing and dicing, the powers-that-be know they have a potential market.
With two-thirds of the American population overweight, the focus is on things like “modified starch” added to corn chips to make them high in fiber, additives put into yogurt to keep the fruit from sinking to the bottom, and hydrolyzed protein added to whole grain crackers to give the mouth-feel of soft, white flour. Then there’s omega-3 fish oil palletized and encapsulated to keep the taste from seeping out stirred into breads so manufactures can tout the product as “heart-healthy.” And the list continues to include all manner of gums and plant sterols that are extracted from soybeans using a chemical solvent.
If the chemical solvent alone doesn’t send up a red flag, Marion Nestle, Ph.D., professor of nutrition at New York University, cautioned that another reason to beware of food engineering is that ingredients that are removed from their natural sources and rearranged just aren’t the same. It’s like an ecosystem – a river valley in which the synergy between the river and fish and trees is more than the sum of the parts. When one element is removed from the whole, it is diminished to the point of becoming only a shadow of its former glory. The same it true with food says Nestle.
“No way do plant sterols replace whole foods or vegetables, or even beans for that matter,” said Nestle. “The evidence is pretty clear that foods work, but single nutrients don’t.”
Engineered, fake food. One thing’s certain, with ingredient companies today selling $4 billion worth of additives to the food industry each year, fake food won’t be leaving society any time soon. Processed food of the 21st century doused with additives, preservatives, fake fat and artificial sugars can even be equated to the 20th’s tobacco culture.
The stuff might not be good for our bodies, but somehow our emotional craving is gnawing at our bellies to the degree that we willingly fork over mega-bucks to get our fixes. All the while, say those in the know, we’re selling our physical health so short that winding up in line at our nearest medical treatment center should come as no surprise to anyone.
