Nutrition Gleanings from "Chew On This"

It seems crazy that I can even post that I've read a book in the last month. But I have! And more than one, actually. This, I must confess, was in the juvenile section of the library, but I found Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation so interesting that I wanted to read this, too. Some of what I read surprised me, so I thought others might find it interesting, too. I carved out time to type a few of my favorite portions of the book, but I can't make time to add all the comments I would like, nor to even tie them all together nicely for you. The general synopsis is that Americans have a health crisis and fast-food and artificial colors and flavors and processed food are exacerbating the problems (or causing them!). These got me thinking. Hope this is still helpful or interesting to others, too!

From "Chew On This" by Eric Schlosser:

"If you went to a fast-food restaurant during the 1950s and bought a Coca-Cola, you'd probably get about eight ounces of soda. That was the adult portion. Today the smallest Coke that McDonald's sells (a child's Coke) is twelve ounces. That's a 50% increase in size. Many customers purchase a large Coke, which is 32 ounces- four times bigger than the Cokes that fast-food restaurants used to sell. One of these large Cokes has 310 calories and contains the equivalent of almost 30 teaspoons of sugar. Th hamburgers have gotten bigger, too. In 1957 the typical fast-food burger patty weighed one ounce. Today the typical burger patty weighs six ounces."

A shocker to me: "About 20 percent of American children between the ages of one and two drink soda every day." (page 144) We know the dangers of liquid candy, right?!

"About 19,000 public schools- one of every five in the United States- sell branded fast food in the cafeteria." (page 133)(Kids eating Subway, Pizza Hut and McDonalds every day is NOT a good thing.)

"Tartrazine, a yellow food coloring, can cause hyperactivity, headaches, rashes, and an increased risk of asthma in some children. It has been banned in Norway, Finland, and Austria but is still used by food companies in the United States and Great Britain. Tartrazine can be found in British and American sodas, candies, chewing gum, Jell-O, and butterscotch pudding mixes, among other things." (page 124) The Feingold website is really helpful with this.

"[Children] were more hyperactive when they had the drink full of artificial ingredients than when they had the fruit juice." (page 124, referring to a 2004 study in England on the behavior of 277 three to four year old children.)

"One of the most widely used color additives comes from an unexpected source. Cochineal extract (also know as carmine or carminic acid) is made from the dead bodies of small bugs harvested mainly in Peru and the Canary Islands. The female Dactylopius coccus costa like sot fee on cactus pads, and color from the cactus gathers in her body and her eggs. The little bugs are collected, dried, and ground into a coloring additive. It takes about 70,000 of the insects to make a pound of carmine, which is used to make processed foods look pink, red, or purple. Dannon strawberry yogurt gets its color from carmine, as do many candies, frozen fruit bars, fruit fillings, and Ocean Spray pink grapefruit juice drink." (page 121-122)

Artificial flavors in milkshakes and what is in "artificial strawberry flavor?" (see pages 113-114). You won't believe how many different chemicals it takes to make a shake TASTE like strawberry when it doesn't have any real ice cream or strawberries in it.

"Some of the latest research suggests that your taste in food can be formed even before you're born. The fluid in a mother's womb may carry the flavors of whatever she's been eating, and that fluid is often swallowed by the fetus growing in there." (page 108) Schlosser goes on to describe an experiment by Julie Mennella which seemed to show that babies whose mothers drank carrot juice (and they therefore learned to like it) were more likely to enjoy carrot juice than other babies whose mothers did not drink it. I love this because we can HELP our children to eat well and therefore LIVE well! (This is where I would tell you all about JuicePlus+, if you were interested. *smile*)