You are what you eat - processed foods

You Are What You Eat - Processed Foods
Paul Chek
[This article is an excerpt from the newly released nine-hour
CD/Workbook program "You Are What You Eat!" by Paul Chek.]

http://www.chekinstitute.com/articles.cfm?select=42

Do me a favor before you read the next paragraph - go to your
cupboards and refrigerator, and take a look at how many packaged
food items you have in your kitchen. While you are there pull out a
desert item (i.e. ice cream), a boxed item (i.e. breakfast cereal)
and any other item you have that is flavored (i.e. salad dressing)
and take a look at the labels. After reading the ingredients list,
ask yourself:

How many words am I unable to pronounce?

Which of these ingredients have I never heard of and/or have no idea
what it is?

Go take a look at those labels and, when you come back to finish
this article, I will tell you why you may be having such a hard time
flattening your abs, and why, even if they are flat, you may feel so
dull every day!

If you did this little exercise, you may be surprised at the number
of multi-syllable words that look more like they should be the
ingredients of super glue than of something you're eating.

It is time to enlighten you with regard to what some of these
ingredients are and what they can do to you. The gigantic and often
strange words listed as ingredients (where food items are supposed
to be!) are various concoctions used to color, stabilize, emulsify,
bleach, texturize, soften, preserve, sweeten, add or cover smells,
and flavor!

In case you were wondering just how many of these little chemicals
were sneaking into your mouth each year, current statistics say that
the FDA lists approximately 2800 international food additives and
about 3,000 chemicals, which are deliberately added to our food
supply. When considering the number of chemicals used in the process
of growing and processing food, by the food to the time it reaches
our stomach we have consumed between 10,000 and 15,000 chemicals a
day! (1)

While some of you may be thinking, "I don't eat that many food
additives," I have news for you. The FDA doesn't require food
additives considered to be Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS) to be
put on an ingredients label.

Instead, all that is required are the words "artificial flavor"
or "artificial coloring" or "natural". The fact is, the average
American eats approximately his/her body weight in food additives
each year, or approximately 150 pounds; this statistic is roughly
the same for most English speaking countries.

Of this amount, 15 pounds or more will be used as flavoring agents,
preservatives and dyes, many of which are considered GRAS by the
FDA. Before you get comfortable with chemicals considered to be
GRAS, you should realize that to save time and money, the FDA allows
the food and additive manufacturers to notify them of the GRAS
status of their additives and they are allowed to provide their own
evidence to support their claim! Think about that for a moment.

Having the chemical manufacturers provide their own research showing
a given chemical is safe is like asking a cigarette manufacturer do
their own research showing cigarettes are safe! It's no wonder that
this takes place when billions of dollars are at stake and the
health of the average person is unimportant.

The fact of the matter is food and additive manufacturers, like drug
manufacturers, are running the largest study ever run in history -
and you are the guinea pigs! That's right.

It is only when they get enough reports about the damaging effects
of a given additive that they remove it from the GRAS list. With
that in mind, what are the chances of some doctor reporting to the
FDA that their patient suffered adverse reactions to acetaldehyde,
acetic acid, or agar-agar when they were merely on the label
as "food additives" and not listed individually because they are on
the GRAS list? Consider the side effects of these chemicals:

Acetaldehyde is known to be an irritant to mucous membranes, which
line your entire digestive tract, is a central nervous system
depressant and large doses may cause death.

Acetic acid may cause gastrointestinal distress, skin rashes and eye
irritation.

Agar-agar may cause flatulence, bloating (good bye abs!) and may
have a laxative effect (2).

Please realize, I just pulled these GRAS food additives out of a
book entitled "Food Additives, A Shopper's Guide To What's Safe &
What's Not" by Christine Hoza Farlow, D.C., and there are hundreds
more GRAS additives whose side-effects look more like something
Saddam Hussein would be interested in purchasing to use against
Americans than it does something to be put in food.

Yet millions of people are eating these chemicals every day!

By the way, don't be fooled by the use of the term "natural".
Insects, insect larvae, monkey guts, and even mercury are
all "natural" and are just a few of the natural items that end up in
your food! Eric Schlosser, in his book "Fast Food Nation", sums it
up nicely by quoting Terry Acree, a professor of food science
technology at Cornell University who says, "A natural flavor is a
flavor that's been derived with an out-of-date technology".

Food manufacturers play with your perception of what given words
mean and they know that if they can label an additive as "natural",
the health conscious label reading consumer is much more likely to
purchase it, yet just because something is natural, doesn't mean
it's better for you. After all, alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and
cocaine are all natural, but none of them are good for you!

To show what is being hidden from us and is right under our nose
(literally!), consider these ingredients used in a Burger King
strawberry milk shake, but are not disclosed because they are GRAS:

Amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate,
benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl
isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl,
dipropyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate,
ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl Nitrate, ethyl
propionate, ethyl valerbate, heliotropin, hydroxyphrenyl-2butanone
(10% solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl
butrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl
anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine
carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential
oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter,
phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, g-undecalactone, vanillin, and
solvent (3)!

To make this even more alarming, the ingredients listed here are
only for the "strawberry flavoring" in a Burger King milk shake,
this doesn't include the ice cream or anything else in the shake!

Can you imagine what the ingredient list for Neapolitan ice cream
would look?

Our liver must process all of this (Figure 1A & 1B), and when our
liver becomes overworked, these chemicals can end up in our blood
stream, with almost unlimited access to the cells of our bodies, as
well as placing strain on our detoxification systems!

"Can't Just Eat One" Syndrome

Have you ever reached for a bag of chips while thinking, "I really
don't need these, but I'll just eat a few," only to end up reaching
back in the bag over and over until you reach the bottom?

Or how about a tub of ice cream - ever started out nibbling away
thinking "I'll just have a few bites," and next thing you know
you're scraping the bottom of the carton?

Don't feel bad if you do because, unless you were eating 100%
certified organic chips or ice cream, you most likely fell prey to
the chemical tricks food manufacturers are playing on your body and
your wallet!

It turns out that food scientists have determined how to manipulate
the part of your brain that controls food cravings called the
appestat.

The appestat constantly monitors the nutrient content of you blood
and only when fifty-one specific nutrients are present at their
proper levels will an individual feel entirely full and satisfied.

Food scientists have found that by adding or subtracting some of
these nutrients, they can manipulate your sense of hunger and
satiety.

While the research is still incomplete, it's believed that that
adding excess fat, sugar and salt to a food tends to make people
over eat (4).

This is why both sugar and salt show up in some of the strangest
places.

For example, would you have expected to find sugar in sandwich
meats? Have a look at the ingredients on the package in your
refrigerator and look for words ending with "ose".

Anything ending with this suffix is a sugar. While you're at it,
look at your catsup bottle, your canned soups, medicines and even
cigarettes! How sweet of them to play such tricks on your appetite
centers. If you are overweight, you are more than likely one of
millions of victims of chemical manipulation!

So how effective have the food manufacturers been with their
chemical games? Currently, approximately 90% of the money that
Americans spend on food is used to buy processed foods (3).

When you follow the advances in food science, there is loose
parallel in how much fast food Americans are purchasing and the
amount of chemical-trickery scientists do to our food.

Consider that in 1970, when the food sciences were comparatively
undeveloped, Americans spent approximately $6 billion a year on fast
foods.

By the year 2000, scientists had added thousands of new chemical
tricks to their arsenal and, with more attractive packaging and
advertising campaigns, fast food sales soured to $110 billion! This
combination of advertising and chemistry used by fast food
manufacturers is so successful that American fast food business
tycoons can't resist the opportunity to make billions by poisoning
almost every corner of the globe.

As of the middle of 2000, McDonald's planed on opening 650
restaurants in Asia, 550 in Europe, 350 in Latin America, 200 in the
US and another 250 in the rest of the world - a total of 1,500 new
restaurants in Asia were planned by 2002! (5).

Their strategic combination of marketing and scientific trickery
has been so successful that half of Australian children ages 9 and
10 thought that Ronald McDonald knew what kids should be eating;
McDonald's has become the favorite food eaten by children in China!
(6)

Table 1
America ranks among the lowest of all the major industrial nations
in terms of life expectancy, yet spends significantly more money on
health care than any country in the world.

Human beings, armed with some 10,000 taste buds, are thought to have
a fairly comprehensive sense of taste (7).

While you would think that we would be capable of using this
arsenal of taste buds to sniff-out foods of superior nutritional
quality to eat, it would appear that chemical science has put up an
effective smoke screen.

Approximately 50% of the American population have eaten themselves
into some degree of obesity and semi-starvation by consuming
nutritionally inadequate foods!

If that's not enough, the US spends more money on health care than
any other nation with each person averaging over $4,000 per year in
medical expenses.

Yet the US ranks last for life expectancy among all industrialized
nations, is far from being the healthiest nation (Table 1).

This is not hard to believe when you consider that in the year
2000, retail pharmacies in the US filled 3 billion prescriptions -
that's hardly what I would consider a healthy nation (8)!

Then when you take into account that there were 281 million people
living in the US in 2000, with 3 billion prescriptions being filled,
that's almost 11 prescriptions per person.

This means, for every person who doesn't buy a prescription, there
is someone else getting 22 filled each year!

With prescription drug sales amounting to $145 billion in the year
2000 alone (9), and an additional $20.8 billion coming from over the
counter retail sales (10), it would appear that the chemicals used
in commercial farming, fast food restaurants and processed food are
contributing a great deal of money to the medical and drug industry -
all one big happy family of multi-billionaires!

Is Processed Food Really Food?

Have you ever wondered how it is that today that, in spite of the
most advanced medical technology in history, in spite of the fact
that we have more doctors, therapists, nutritionists, diet experts
(per capita) and diet books than ever in history, we are more sick
than ever in history?

Could it be what we are eating? Were we always this sickly? I don't
think so, or we would never have withstood the selective pressures
of evolution! Something has gone wrong - VERY WRONG!

In 1936, a highly respected scientist, dentist and expert in human
nutrition named Weston A. Price, traveled the globe studying
indigenous populations and correlating their dietary habits with
their incidence of disease and dental carries (11).

Price found that in tribes and cultures consuming a whole-food diet
had virtually no dental carries (cavities) or disease!

Price also noted that diseases such as cancer were relatively
unheard of in many cultures. Look at the photos in Figure 2A and 2B
and ask yourself which Figure shows people who were eating "white
man's food" (processed food) and which were eating food native to
their culture!

(Used with kind permission from the Price-Pottenger Foundation.)

Figure 2A
Figure 2B

In Price's study of primitive cultures, he consistently noted that
they engaged in minimal food processing. Primitive peoples mostly
used fire to cook meats, but not all, as the Eskimos and others
commonly ate many portions of animals and fish raw.

Salting, lacto-fermentation and pickling were among the very few
methods of processing foods for storage and not surprisingly, these
methods have been found to increase the nutritional value of many
foods (12)!

Dr. Price's research was consistent with the research of famous
medical doctor, Francis Marrion Pottenger, who wrote the
book, "Pottenger's Cats". Pottenger clearly demonstrate using
extensive studies of cats that exposure to pasteurized milk and/or
cooked meats resulted in rapid onset of disease and bodily
malformation; his clinical observations suggested that similar
results occur in humans.
Because of the findings in his studies, Dr. Pottenger stated, "…
nutrition becomes one of the most important elements in preventive
medicine." Regardless of which disease process is studied, the link
between poor nutrition and disease, including cancer, clearly exists
in studies and clinical observations of animals and man. In fact, I
know of no study showing that a diet of processed foods provides
health-giving benefits when compared to a whole-food diet!

What you see in most shopping carts today are what I call "non-
foods". My definition of a non-food is, "Any food that costs more in
nutrition to digest, absorb and eliminate than it delivers to your
body."

Most people forget that there is a cost to metabolize anything you
put in your mouth. Literally every cell in the body needs proper
nutrition or it will die. There are billions of cells involved in
the processes of digestion, absorption and elimination of foods, not
including the nutritional demands of human movement. Yet as
indicated above, 90% of all the money spent on food in the US is
spent on FAST FOODS! So where does that leave you?

We don't need to be a doctor, nutritionist or research scientist to
figure out what's going on. We can use a simple accounting analogy
to get a clear image of the blunder we have purchased our way into.

Consider your body as a business. It costs money to run a business -
you must purchase goods and services such as supplies, electricity,
water, waste disposal and you must pay your workers.
If your business doesn't bring in enough money to pay your
expenses, including adequate money for you to make a living, the
business will go bankrupt! Your body is just like any business. You
have about 100 trillion cells, all of which are like little
employees working for you around the clock.
To keep your body running, it too needs water, air, energy and
supplies in the form of nutrition.
The business of running a body is also a little tricky because while
you may have an unproductive employee now and then in a business,
you can always lay them off or fire them.

In your body, you can't lay your cells off, you can't fire them,
and if you don't supply them with adequate nutrition to repair
themselves, they get sick and start to die. If this goes on long
enough, you too will go bankrupt and you will die!

Now, just look at the statistics for disease and drug-use in this
country and you will get a very good picture of what happens when
you consume a diet of "non-foods" -
foods that take more out of your bodily bank account than you have
in the account to spend.

Literally every time you eat candy, cookies, soda pop, processed
sandwich meats, white bread, white flower or pasteurized, processed
anything, you are deviating away from the dietary plan the human
body was designed for.

You are also spending more money/nutrition to process garbage
disguised as foods than the foods themselves bring in.

This leaves the body no choice but to draw upon your own tissues for
the nutrients it needs to try and survive. To prove my point, one
need only look at the skyrocketing rates of degenerative diseases,
which are highest - you guessed it - in those countries consuming
the highest percentage of processed foods.

CHEK POINTS:

If you can't pronounce a word on the label, don't eat it! If you
can't pronounce a word on a food label, chances are very good it is
a chemical that your liver will have to work to detoxify, and most
likely, your liver won't like it!

Dr. Price found in his research of healthy people that they ate
mostly unprocessed whole-foods and some minimally processed foods.
They lived in accordance with nature and if you want to have a
beautiful, healthy body, you should too!

If it's a non-food, don't eat it! The more non-foods you eat, the
more likely your body is to go bankrupt!

Remember, food manufacturers are NOT required to prove that their
products sustain life.

Pretty much every research dollar they spend is to determine how to
make foods cheaper, increase shelf life and how to trick you into
buying them. Just remember this Paul Chek rule - "The more money
they spend to market any food, the worse it is likely to be for
you"!

Good healthy food requires little marketing because people know it's
good for you. They need to convince you to eat their garbage, so
they need to spend a lot in marketing to ensure you do.

The longer it lasts on the shelf, the worse it is for you! Most
things in nature will not last more than a few days once picked or
killed for consumption.

Increasing a product's shelf life means stripping it of anything
that can eventually go bad or rancid out of it, such as enzymes,
vitamins, minerals and ultimately it's life force!

Many of the foods you eat today are so full of chemicals and
pesticide residues you can leave them sitting on the kitchen counter
for days on end and the ants won't even touch them! The bugs are
smarter than we are!

Never eat anything with "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated
oils/fats" in it! These are cooked fats that have been altered in a
way that make them very hard to digest, as well as being damaging to
the body.

This form of fat does not occur naturally in nature and in fact,
chemists say the molecular structure of hydrogenated fats more
closely resembles plastic than food! Read your food labels and you
will likely be surprised at how much hydrogenate fats and oils you
are eating!

Never eat any food product that has been "enriched"! The only reason
food manufacturers "enrich" foods is because they have completely
killed and stripped them in processing, leaving the foods so void of
nutrition and life-force that they must add things back to them so
they don't kill off all their customers!

If you read "Beating The Food Giants" by food scientist Paul A.
Stitt, he tells you that the food manufacturers purchase the
cheapest possible synthetic vitamins possible and they often apply
them to foods (i.e. cereals) on the way in the oven!

Any nutrition expert will tell you that most vitamins can't
withstand high heat and most of the rigors of processing. There is
also plenty of literature suggesting that some synthetic vitamins
may be toxic to the body!

Avoid eating anything that has been genetically modified or
genetically engineered! Currently, almost ALL processed foods
contain genetically modified organisms. This is an entire topic unto
itself, but eating any genetically modified food is a risk that you
may want to seriously consider if you value your health.

References

Dworkin, A. and Kella, W. "Thriving in a Toxic World." Olivenhain,
CA: Professional Preference, 1996.
Farlow, C.H. "Food Additives: A Shopper's Guide to What's Safe and
What's Not". KISS For Health Publishing, 2001.
Schiosser E. "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American
Meal". New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Stitt, P. "Beating the Food Giants". Natural Press; 1993.
The Ecologist, July/August 2000. News In Brief p.10
The Ecologist June 2001. "Pulling A Fast One", by Ian Elliott p.36
Chek, P. "Under the Veil of Deception". Encinitas, CA: A C.H.E.K
Institute Publication, 2002.
Prescription Drug Sales Increased By Nearly 20% Last Year in US.
http://www.mercola.com/2001/may/19/prescription_drugs.htm
US Drug Sales Up 15% Last Year. Reuters June 2, 2001.
Prescription Drugs and Mass Media Advertising 1999-2000. National
Institute for Health Care Management Foundation