Chemical food

I have never been a fan of what I call 'chemical food'. Well not now. I admit there was a period in my life where I lived on Tab and Diet Coke and went to fast food restaurants occasionally. (I also admit that my favorite food of this lifetime is fried clams.)

I am snickering sarcastically these days at the idea that Coca Cola is trying to reposition their artificially sweetened sodas as not being so bad. Ahem, what is that they say? Its not bad? Oh, come on.

In my personal opinion and I am neither a nutritionist nor a doctor of any sort, coke and diet coke are not health foods. A healthy food has to meet one of three rules to me: Either it has no more than five ingredients or it is handmade and full of natural ingredients or no scary, unpronounceable or unfamiliar ingredients.

This is what is in these two beverages:

Coke's official ingredients: Carbonated water, sugar, colour (caramel E150d), phosphoric acid, natural flavourings (including caffeine).

Diet Coke's official ingredients: Carbonated water, colour (caramel E150d), sweeteners (aspartame, acesulfame-K), flavourings (including caffeine), phosphoric acid, citric acid. Contains a source of phenylalanine.

They clearly fall into the category of chemical food. Phosphoric acid is a rust inhibitor, dental etchant, and a food additive. It gives food a sharper taste and slows mold and bacteria growth. But it might eat away your teeth.

Another comparison between healthy food and chemical food is yogurt. How about yoplait light vs. Fage fat free Greek yogurt.

Yoplait includes aspartame, potassium sorbate, acesulfame Potassium, Red #40, Vitamin A Acetate, Blue #1, and Vitamin D3 with a note that for Phenylketonurics that it contains phenylalanine.

Vs. the ingredients in Fage fat free Blueberry yogurt which is my preferred brand.

INGREDIENTS

STRAINED YOGURT: Grade A Pasteurized Skimmed Milk, Live Active Yogurt Cultures (L. Bulgaricus, S. Thermophilus, L. Acidophilus, Bifidus, L. Casei). BLUEBERRY FRUIT PREPARATION (20%): Blueberries, Cane Sugar, Water, Corn Starch, Contains 2% or less of: Lemon Juice Concentrate, Natural Flavor, Xanthan Gum.

So why does a better tasting and healthier product actually contain natural products and has smaller market share? Marketing monopoly? I don't know.

The best and easiest comparison for anyone is the butter vs. margerine comparison. What is in butter: cream and possibly salt.

What is in margarine (I Cant Believe its Not Butter):

Ingredients: Water, Vegetable Mono and Diglycerides (Adds a Negligible Amount of Fat), Rice Starch, Salt, Gelatin, Lactose (From Milk), Soybean Oil (Adds a Negligible Amount of Fat), Vegetable Datem (Adds a Negligible Amount of Fat), Coloring, (Potassium Sorbate, Calcium Disodium EDTA) Used to Protect Quality, Natural Soy Lecithin, Lactic Acid, Artificial Flavor, Vitamin A Palmitate, Beta Carotene (Color).
 
You can do this too - buy your bread in the fresh bakery section of the grocery store or better yet at an organic bakery vs the bread aisle  where the bread was made weeks ago and sits in little packages in a row that might have been shipped across country.

I vote with my feet and buy the healthier way. Go get a laugh and watch some of the Coke commercials for artificial sweeteners.




I find the ad somewhat offensive in that it only says two things: asparatame is safe and obesity is a big problem in the US.  If you switch to diet coke you may no longer be obese. I say save your money and drink some water.

Vitamins vs. eating a balanced diet

I try to eat a healthy diet. I really do. I mean we eat vegetables and grains and less and less meat and cheese and other high fat things. But I know I am not perfect and need vitamins so I take my vitamins (when I remember) and make up the difference. So I saw this article 'How to eat your vitamins' and thought wow, maybe I can do this. Then I started reading what you need to eat to get everything you need.

I believe for example that I would need to eat a 3 oz piece of red meat, a cheese burger on a whole wheat bun, a piece of salmon, and a piece of halibut as well as yogurt and a glass of milk, a cup of raw broccoli, a banana, an orange, a fig, some almonds, 1 serving of fortified breakfast cereal, a spinach salad, a cup of lentil soup, two slices of whole wheat toast, some raisins, and a baked potato. What? I can't eat that much in one day? I would be a balloon. Forget it, I am sticking with my vitamins. (And I'll really try to remember to take them.)

I am slowly motivating this morning. It was very hot again yesterday and that is just tiring. Today it is going to be 20 degrees cooler. I have lots to do and have to go to work and then run around and get a thousand things done. Might as well get moving.

I'm trying

I know I can be trying as well (or so I have been told by my loving husband) but I am trying to diet. I was very good and wrote everything down. The scale slightly nudged downward. Then we went on vacation and I decided my diet deserved a vacation as well and stopped writing things down. I have not been able to motivate to write things down again. I have several days where I have written down my healthy breakfast. I have even written down lunch a few days as well. But I haven't made it to write down everything through dinner. The scale is standing still.

I do have the best of intentions. I was told losing weight would be very difficult for me so I don't have any great expectations of losing zillions of pounds. Ideally I would like to like to be able to eat correctly and lose some weight and not have to write everything down for the rest of my life.

I did learn I had some bad eating habits that I wasn't aware of and have since eliminated those from my diet. I am scheduled to go back to the dietitian in a few weeks. I will try to get back on track in the next few days so I can bring in some successful food logs and show her I can do it. But I am not sure I will go back after that. She didn't tell me anything I didn't know. She did refer me to the online tool, SparkPeople.com, that helped me learn what I was doing wrong. But that's it. I think I have to be happy with the size 12 me, instead of the size 8 me that I used to be. Wah!

I guess what I am trying to say is there is no magic bullet to make me lose weight. I am not going to by conventional means (liposuction is not going to happen). I am not someone who can cut down for a bit and drop some weight. Its not going to happen. This is due to the combination of my medical history and my current medications. I can hope to hold my own and slowly go down but that's about it.