Natural Foods Exposed

Apr 19, 2011 by Tatianna

 

The other day I was in the supermarket standing in line, and what caught my eye was a can of Natural Peanut Butter. I already learned to never trust the labels in the supermarket because they are always misleading. When I looked at the ingredients of the Natural Peanut Butter, I saw more then peanuts. One of the ingredients was – Palm Oil ( but what they don’t tell you, is the that specific palm oil is heavily processed ). Why in the world would you buy peanut butter with processed palm oil as an ingredient?

What I noticed many people don’t know, is what “Natural” actually means. Consumers buy natural products thinking it is better for their health, when in fact it’s toxic. Behind the big word “Natural” there is an even bigger marketing machine.
Turns out FDA allows food manufacturers to bend the truth on the front of the labels and make unverified health related claims, as long as they list the ingredients on the back. But many people don’t even look at the ingredients, they see “All Natural” and to them it’s good enough.

This is not a big secret to some people, who look at their labels and question what each ingredient is. But to others who choose to trust the manufacturing food companies this might come in a form of an illness later on in life.

Today I did a little experiment, I went to my local supermarket with my camera :). It was a bit embarrassing actually cause everyone was staring at me while I was taking the pictures. I took pictures of many different foods with the labels “Natural”, and some nice friendly pictures of their ingredients.
What I saw on the back of those packages labeled “All Natural” was added flavoring, high fructose corn syrup, processed sugar and msg (they don’t tell you it’s MSG, they use much more clever words )

I have been seeing this commercial on TV about High Fructose Corn Syrup, a very nice friendly advertisement. Learn the truth about the Corn Syrup they say, it’s made from corn, it’s natural and it’s fine in moderation. Hmm, I did some digging :).

As stated by wikipedia this is how high fructose corn syrup is made: High-fructose corn syrup is produced by milling corn to produce corn starch, then processing that starch to yield corn syrup, which is almost entirely glucose, and then adding enzymes that change some of the glucose into fructose. The resulting syrup (after enzyme conversion) contains approximately 42% fructose and is HFCS 42. Some of the 42% fructose is then purified to 90% fructose, HFCS 90. To make HFCS 55, the HFCS 90 is mixed with HFCS 42 in the appropriate ratios to form the desired HFCS 55.

After all this process do you think there is nutrients left in that corn? Am I missing something here, please enlighten me, but to me there is nothing natural about the process of processing.

The same goes for so called natural flavors ingredients, what they don’t tell you is what kind of flavor it is, and what it’s made from.
Shouldn’t we question what we’re eating?

Yesterday I made a comment on Huffington Post about making your own bread at home ( on the article “The best store brand hamburger buns”, meaning the healthiest, but of course heavily processed ). One of the people replied to me ( a real smarty pants ) – “Yeah, like I got nothing better to do”. I know it’s a bit random, but it does have to do with food. I think if you care about your health, yes you can find something better to to – learn to read your food labels!

What I am trying to do here is help people who don’t read labels to understand why they should, to question what they are eating and to realize how big of an impact it makes on their health and their well being.

Next time you are buying natural foods don’t be afraid to look at the ingredients. There is good food out there, you just have to look for it, isn’t your health worth that time?

Here are some pictures that I took of so called “Natural Foods”

Now let’s take a look at the ingredients list:

 

Here is a popular brand of cheese

The lovely ingredients:

Vegetable color?  In cheese?  Since when cheese needs extra color? And Natamycin ( a natural mold inhibitor )?

 

Deli Ham seems like a great deal, no preservatives, a natural choice 🙂

Wait a minute  turbinado sugar, natural flavoring – what kind?  Lactic acid starter culture, why are all these things inside a simple ham?

 

Healthy Cottage Cheese

Now how about the ingredients:

modified food starch, xanthan gum (another form of corn syrup ), mono and diglycerides, guar gum, what is this stuff – processed additives.

 

Skippy the Peanut Butter

I thought Peanut Butter should only contain peanuts – Call me crazy

 

Natural Pop Corn

Palm oil again and tocopherol – what?!

 

All Natural Bean Dip

Wow these ingredients are just a slap on my face – corn maltodextrin, dehydrated onion, sugar, in a bean dip?  I always make bean dip at home, but I never remember adding those things to it.

 

This is just a tiny fraction of natural claiming foods that are on our shelves, but there are thousands more.

Do you look at labels when you purchase your food?