BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 06:00 PM

Did anyone follow through on that "Never Eat Bananas" adv. that shows up on Mudcat?
What is their rationale?

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: GUEST,mayomick
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 10:21 AM

I see baked beans "without added sugar" for sale in my local supermarket that are more expensive than ordinary baked beans , which presumably do have added sugar . I can understand the economics of scale involved -less people want this healthy sugarless option - but it strikes me as being immoral all the same. It's a bit like going into a restaurant and having to pay more for food that doesn't contain mouse droppings

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: saulgoldie
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 10:02 AM

Spam, Spam, eggs and Spam. I'll have his Spam. I love Spam. etc...
(Monty Python, anyone??)

I heard report not so long ago where they found a Twinkie that had been around for like 50 years, or something. They unwrapped it, and it was still, um "fresh."

Some health-oriented food critic was deconstructing Twinkies once on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" on NPR. Paula Poundstone said, "You may know a lot about Twinkies, buddy. But you don't know nothing about living!"

I'm just saying...

Saul

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 09:51 AM

Potted meat. Just as gross as canned cat food but actually intended for human consumption.

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 08:18 AM

Twinkies are utterly devoid of value. Ever since the day I noted the rainbow like oil inside the package resembled a road oil slick in the sun, I shudder at the mere mention of the name. And since Hostess makes them I swore off all other Hostess products.

Sadly the American diet is overloaded with processed food.

Some useful info from Puristat Digestive Wellness Center

Processed, Junk, and Fake Foods
Processed food is made from real food that has been put through devitalizing chemical processes and is infused with chemicals and preservatives. Beef jerky, canned tea, jam, hot dogs, and low-fat yogurt with sugar or aspartame are a few examples of processed food.

Junk foods contain very little real food. They're made of devitalized processed food, hydrogenated fats, chemicals, and preservatives, and include anything made with refined white flour. Canned breakfast drinks, cold/sugary cereals, doughnuts, drive-through foods, and soda are examples of junk foods.

Fake foods are made primarily of chemicals, and often contain gums and sugar fillers. Examples include bacon bits, bottled salad dressing, dehydrated soups, and instant coffee.

Energy Output > Exceeds Nutritional Input

These non-foods have one thing in common; it costs your body a great deal more to digest, absorb, and eliminate them than they offer your body in nutritional value – an extremely poor return on your investment that leaves your body sluggish and depleted.


Toxins, Poisons, Processed Food, And The Body
Our ancestors preserved foods naturally, using salt, fermentation, and sun drying. Food processing has evolved away from these simple practices into more complicated and dubious methods. Today, nearly six thousand additives and chemicals are used by food companies to process our food. Many of them can have a devastating effect on our health.

It is important to note the fact that additives and preservatives cannot always be painted with a negative brush. The addition of vitamins to bread and milk has helped to stamp out diseases such as pellagra and rickets.

Unfortunately, the good intentions that characterized the processed food industry during the early days have now de-evolved to finding ways to cheaply process food and manipulate buyers, regardless of the detrimental affects on the health of Americans.

Today, many additives and preservatives are harmful toxic chemicals as problematic as the decay they are used to prevent.


Preservatives
Preservatives are a type of additive used to help stop food from spoiling.

Nitrates and nitrites are used to preserve meats such as ham and bacon, but are known to cause asthma, nausea, vomiting, and headaches in some people. In addition to allergic reactions, the same is true for sulfites (sulfur dioxide, metabisulfites, and others), which are commonly used to prevent fungal spoilage, as well as the browning of peeled fruits and vegetables.

Sodium nitrite in some foods is capable of being converted to nitrous acid when ingested by humans. While animal testing showed that nitrous acid caused high rates of cancer, it is still in use.

Benzoic acid aka sodium benzoate is added to margarine, fruit juices, and carbonated beverages. It can produce severe allergic reaction and even death in some people.

Sulfur dioxide is a toxin used in dried fruits and molasses as well as to prevent brown spots on peeled fresh foods such as potatoes and apples. Sulfur dioxide bleaches out rot, hiding inferior fruits and vegetables. In the process, it destroys the vitamin B contained in produce.


Antioxidants
While antioxidants such as alpha-carotene are recommended by health specialists to prevent premature aging, some of the antioxidants used as food preservatives may be unhealthy. Contained in nearly every processed food on the market, antioxidants prevent fatty foods from spoiling when exposed to oxygen.

BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) and BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) are two of the most widely used, yet controversial of all antioxidants. So alarming were the results of BHT and BHA in animal testing, that a number of countries have severely restricted their use.

Some people have difficulty metabolizing these chemicals, which is thought to result in health and behavioral problems, and hyperactivity. They cause allergic reactions, may also contribute to the development of tumors and cancer, as well as be toxic to the nervous system and liver.

In spite of these findings, the use of BHT and BHA has increased, rather than decreased, in the U.S.A.


Coloring
Each year, the American food industry uses three thousand tons of food color. Many coloring agents are derived from coal tar, and nearly all coloring is synthetic. Norway has a total ban on all products containing coal tar.

Though some artificial food dyes have been banned because they are believed to cause cancer, most dyes used today are of the artificial variety. They are also linked to allergies, asthmas, and hyperactivity.

The long list of foods and beverages in which color is altered includes butter, margarine, the skins of oranges and potatoes, popcorn, maraschino cherries, hot dogs, jellies, jellybeans, carbonated beverages, and canned strawberries and peas.

Even the chicken feed on large-scale egg farms is colored so that chickens will lay golden-yolked eggs similar to those laid by free-range chickens. Talk about the goose that laid the golden egg!


Sweeteners
Most processed foods contain sweeteners, many of which are artificial sugar substitutes containing no natural sugars, such as saccharine and aspartame.

Artificial sweeteners are linked to behavioral problems, hyperactivity, and allergies. Because saccharin was shown to increase the incidence of bladder cancer in animal testing, all foods containing this sugar substitute are required to carry a warning label.


Emulsifiers, Stabilizers, and Thickeners
These additives alter the texture of foods. Emulsifiers, for example, prevent ingredients from separating into unappealing globs in food such as mayonnaise and ice cream.

A first cousin to anti-freeze, propylene glycol is a synthetic solvent used as an emulsifier in foods. Although it is recognized as toxic to the skin and other senses, and is considered a neurological toxicant, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has deemed it generally recognized as safe (GRAS).


Flavorings
The most common food additive, flavorings – of which there are over 2000 in use – may be natural or artificial, and are usually comprised of a large number of chemicals. Peruse the ingredient list for the strawberry flavoring in one popular fast food outlet's strawberry milk shake.

Artificial flavors are linked to allergic and behavioral reactions, yet these ingredients are not required to be listed in detail as they're generally recognized as safe.

MSG (monosodium glutamate) is another popular flavor enhancer. Found to cause damage in laboratory mice, it has been banned from use in baby foods, but is still used in numerous others. It causes common allergic and behavioral reactions including headaches, dizziness, chest pains, depression, and mood swings, and is also a possible neurotoxin.


Refining
Refined flour has had the brown husk of the grain stripped away, leaving the white, refined starch found in white bread, white rice, pasta, cookies, and numerous other junk foods.

Without the fibrous husk, refined starches are broken down quickly into sugar and absorbed immediately into the bloodstream causing glucose levels to rise, and increasing the risk of obesity.

In contrast, whole grains – such as whole grain bread and cereals, brown rice, and barley – retain the bran surrounding the starch, so they're absorbed more slowly into the bloodstream than refined starches. This slows sugar absorption from the intestine, and reduces the risk of obesity.


Refining Destroys and Devitalizes Most of Foods' Goodness:
Healthy unsaturated fatty acids – high in food value – are lost during the milling process. Half the vitamin E is destroyed when the wheat germ and bran are removed. Refining wheat into white flour removes between 50 and 93 percent of wheat's magnesium, zinc, chromium, manganese, and cobalt.2

Additionally, approximately 50 percent of calcium, 70 percent of phosphorus, 80 percent iron, 50 percent potassium, 65 percent of copper, 80 percent thiamin, 60 percent of riboflavin, 75 percent of niacin, 50 percent of pantothenic acid, and about 50 percent of pyridoxine is lost.3

Refining sugar cane into white sugar depletes it of 99 percent of its magnesium and 93 percent of its chromium. Polishing rice removes 75 percent of its zinc and chromium.4 Refined table salt has had most of the trace minerals removed during processing. It contains no sodium chloride, sugar as filler, and may even contain aluminum.5


Bleaching
Part of the process wheat undergoes to become the white flour in popular baked goods involves bleaching. Various chemical bleaching agents are used including oxide of nitrogen, chlorine, chloride, nitrosyl, and benzoyl peroxide mixed with a variety of chemical salts.

Chloride oxide – which catalyzes a chemical reaction that destroys beta cells in the pancreas – is now being linked to diabetes.6 This toxic effect is common scientific knowledge in the research community. In spite of this, the FDA still allows companies to use chloride oxide in processed food.

For more about processed foods, read on.


A Healthier Lifestyle
Eradicating every guilty pleasure in life is not the end goal here, nor is it a particularly realistic approach to making changes...we all enjoy the occasional cheeseburger, order of fries, or bag of chips.

But if we understand the consequences of making what ought to be an occasional treat into the mainstay of our diet, we can begin to make wise choices about how many of these things we are willing to eat.

When it comes to avoiding many of the questionable – and possibly deadly – additives contained in processed foods, we're only human after all, so taking baby steps toward change is usually the best approach.

If you can accomplish just one of these 10 steps, you're moving in the right direction. Try implementing one change a month...

1. As a general rule, if you don't recognize – or can't pronounce – the words on a label, don't buy it, or eat it. Opt instead for the real thing!
2. Avoid products containing
Nitrates and nitrites (including sodium nitrite)
Sulfites (including metabisulfites)
Sulfur dioxide
Benzoic acid (aka sodium benzoate)
BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene)
BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole)
Coloring
Coal tar
Propylene glycol
MSG (monosodium glutamate)
Refined or bleached flour (i.e. whitened using chloride oxide)
3. Don't eat partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated trans fats
4. Don't eat products containing sugar substitutes such as saccharine and aspartame.
5. Avoid products with a long shelf life – the better they do on the shelf, the worse they are for your body.
6. Avoid products that have been enriched. They have been completely devitalized during processing.
7. Avoid food that has been genetically modified or engineered. Nearly all processed food contains GMOs.
8. Avoid products made with ingredients euphemistically described as "natural flavoring" or "natural coloring."
9. Avoid products with added sugar – watch for words with "-ose" endings such as glucose.
10. Incorporate a multi-vitamin into your health regimen.

If you've had a history of eating products high in sugar and are concerned about diabetes, incorporate disease-fighting products such as garlic, vitamin E, and aloe vera into your diet. Vitamin E supplements can also protect your body from the harmful effects of eating refined products that have been bleached with chloride oxide.

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: ranger1
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 07:34 AM

Twinkies, margarine, and Spam are three that really gross me out. I don't mind velveeta, though, but I would never consider it real cheese.

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 06:06 AM

Just after the war we used to get Spam a lot, and I personally loved it! (But not fried in batter, as in school dinners) Kraft Dairylea 'Cheese'...YUK!

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: Crowhugger
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 02:35 AM

Alice you are definintely not alone! But for me it's the wax & chemicals that gross me out in processed cheese "food". It seems to me that most aged cheese is way salty, otherwise it tastes remarkably bland. I just under-salt foods to which I'll add cheese, or eat it with foods can take a lot of salty accompaniment like cucumbers, tomatoes, apples, avocados, spinach, potatoes, rice...

On a related note, I remember some years ago thinking Subway Sandwich stores were thoughtless and disgusting for automatically using processed cheese on most of their sandwiches. To be fair, they did have real cheese for the vegetarian subs, and would substitute it for the waxy stuff in other sandwiches upon request. But one did have to ask, which struck me as completely wrong for a store that bills itself as being a fresh and healthy option. I'm happy to say that in the last few months I've eaten at 2 or 3 different Subway locations and they all offered ONLY real cheese in two types (cheddar and Swiss or similar), and there was no processed cheese offered at all. Way to go, Subway!

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: frogprince
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 01:17 AM

Then there's Spam. I can actually eat a little, preferrably fried, sometimes, but then I sorta wonder how or why I did that. When I was in grade school our class toured the Hormel plant and we saw the stuff heaped, uncompressed, in big tubs; if you think it's gross as canned, you should see that.

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Jan 12 - 12:54 AM

Margarine! Gross to the max. Then there's Kraft processed cheese slices in the plastic wrappers...ARGH!

And poached Weimaraner is pretty repulsive too, but they're not that bad roasted or barbecued.

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: catspaw49
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 10:48 PM

Canned cat food? So what? My cats could all care less and the Siamese would kill for it!   I just asked her about it and she says it all seems pretty damn good to her. As a matter of fact I just fed them all a special canned food treat and she ate all of hers then ran off the other four before they finished.


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: Alice
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 10:41 PM

I think margarine is gross, for the same reason velveeta is gross. It has that shiny, oiliness that doesn't look, feel, or taste natural.

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 10:38 PM

Someone once explained to me—I think he was a "food science" major from the "ag campus" of the University of Minnesota—that Velveeta is to cheese as margarine is to butter—that is, it is made by a similar process, but based on vegetable fat instead of animal fat.

Now, I think that's an oversimplification, because Velveeta does contain some animal fat, but I think it's close enough to the truth. Anyway, I never heard anyone complain that margarine is "gross."

Here are some things I eat that my wife thinks are gross: Sardines. Pork rinds. Canned chili. Canned corned-beef hash.

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 09:37 PM

C-rations, especial the ham & lima beans and the scrambled eggs.

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 09:15 PM

Mayonaise. Pumpkin pie filling. Cat food in cans. mg

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: Alice
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 06:39 PM

You mean to make fudge, Jack? Real cream cheese in a fudge recipe sounds yummy. Velveeta.... yucky.

Subject: RE: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 06:30 PM

We use fat free cream cheese it is great! once you add some salt.

Subject: BS: The Most Gross Processed Foods
From: Alice
Date: 31 Dec 11 - 06:26 PM

In general, processed food is awful, but I think Velveeta, Cheese Whiz and the canned spray cheese are some of the most gross.

On another forum, I seem to be the only one who was not delighted by a recipe for fudge that is based on Velveeta. Yuk. Not that fudge is health food, but to add high sodium processed cheese to the recipe completely grosses me out. One person on the forum called it "healthy" and that made me respond with the amount of sodium in Velveeta (I didn't go into all the other chemicals in it, too). So now I'm considered the killjoy who doesn't like the Velveeta fudge recipe.

Am I alone?

Alice