Better Choices: Ingredient Labels

This month’s Better Choices post is dedicated to helping you dissect ingredient labels. To catch up, this is why I am doing this series. So far, we have talked grains, dairy, dyes, GMOs and last time was sweeteners and chocolate.

Also, as a reminder, I have a few standards I try to stick to:

• Eat real foods as often as possible
• Focus on unprocessed or less processed foods
• Not falling for low fat, low calories, healthy food claims, etc
• No strict restriction
• Doing what I can as often as I can
• Enjoying life while trying to make better choices!

So where do ingredient labels fall into eating real foods. Well, as you might assume most real foods don’t have labels. With that said, there are still plenty of items I need to get from the store to be successful in cooking, although the thought of being completely self sustaining would be amazing. Not sure my neighborhood would appreciate chickens in my backyard!

I will do my best to point out today some of the things I look for when reading ingredient labels. Some of it you have heard before, but having it in one comprehensive post never hurts right?!

So why do companies use additives and preservatives? These are added to processed foods with a couple goals in mind. First and probably the most well known is to increase shelf life. Food is not supposed to last forever! Does this gross you out as much as it does me?

Source

Secondly, is to trick you into eating more. Have you ever realized you can eat an entire bag of chips and not feel full?

I totally get advances in convenience, science, technology but my problem is a lot of these advances are not tested for long term effects on humans prior to being approved. America and the FDA’s take is if not proven unsafe, lets use it instead of proving safe before use. I don’t agree and sadly we have been failed many times before with different products being taken off the market because they are later found to cause problems.

Here is a lovely infographic about food additives to get us started: The Truth About Food Additives

Couple of rules from Michael Pollan, a food journalist that has taught me a lot:

• Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third grader cannot pronounce
• Only eat foods with 5 or less ingredients
• Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry
• Eat only foods that will eventually rot

So what are my list of ingredients to avoid?

The ones I have previously commented on are:

• GMOs and GMO derivatives, as previously mentioned here.
• Artificial dyes, especially Blue 1, Blue 2, Citrus Red, Green 3, Orange B, Red 3, Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, as previously discussed here.
• rBGH / rBST and carrageenan (popular in dairy products), as previously discussed here.
• Artificial sweeteners, as previously discussed here.

A couple other important ones to keep in mind:

• Nitrate/Nitrites. Mostly found in processed meats (deli meat, bacon). These can mix in the stomach to form a carcinogenic substance and are known to damage DNA. Don’t you also find it interesting you should avoid them while you are pregnant, but it is okay when you aren’t??? I always try to eat nitrate / nitrite free, regardless.
• Olestra/Olean. Mostly added to fat free chips. Prevents your body from absorbing vitamins and can cause gastric issues.
• Brominated vegetable oil. Mostly found in sports drinks to act as emulsifier and preventing flavorings from separating. It is also used as a flame retardant!!! It is linked to many organ problems and birth defects.
• Potassium bromate (derived from the same chemical as brominated vegetable oil). Mostly found in packaged grain products and breads and is used to strengthen dough and decrease baking time. Linked to kidney and nervous system damage and cancer.
• Azodicarbonamide. Mostly found in breads, frozen dinners, boxed pasta mixes, packaged baked goods. Dough conditioner. Also used in yoga mats and sneakers!! Induces asthma.
• BHA/BHT. Mostly found in gums, cereals, nut mixes, etc. Is a waxy preservative used to prevent products from becoming rancid, losing flavor or changing color. Made from petroleum and questioned as a carcinogenic.
• MSG. Disguised as natural flavorings, yeast / protein / herb extract, gelatin, textured, hydrolyzed proteins, calcium caseinate, sodium caseinate. Mostly in soups and sauces. Can cause eye damage, fatigue, migraine headaches, insomnia, rashes, asthma attacks, behavioral disorders, depression, heart irregularities, anxiety, arthritis, sinus problems and many digestive problems including diarrhea.
• Carmine. I just learned about this one last week, but you might have read a blog post I did at the beginning of 2012. Jamie Oliver shared some interesting substances that were used as ingredients in candies. This one is similar to some he mentioned. Carmine in particular is essentially crushed insects used as food dye. Honestly, I can’t even begin to comprehend why the FDA allows this, but I guess I am thankful they require labeling so you can at least make an informed decision. Read more here.
  
  

The best part - on my journey to making better choices I have learned most all of the above are banned in other countries which infuriates me!  

I also wanted to say a bit about ‘natural’ and ‘natural flavorings’. This is also frustrating to me. There are no regulations for these terms, so they are used all the time!! While one product may be more natural than others, at the end of the day most of them have nothing natural about them.

Organic labeling is the best regulated way to help know what you are getting in your food. Here is a great summary all about organics. Also, from their site are definitions of the different organic labels you might see.  

• 100% Organic – Foods that are completely organic or made with 100% organic ingredients may display the USDA seal.
• Organic – Foods that contain at least 95% organic ingredients may display the USDA seal.
• Made with organic ingredients – Foods that contain at least 70% organic ingredients will not display the USDA seal but may list specific organic ingredients on the front of the package.
• Contains organic ingredients – Foods that contain less than 70% organic ingredients will not display the USDA seal but may list specific organic ingredients on the information panel of the package.

I could do an entire post dedicated to labels found on proteins and seafood and hope to one day. In the meantime, check out these older posts on ground meat and eggs.

Finally, keep in mind ingredients are listed by weight, so the ones listed first are going to be in the highest quantity. Occasionally companies use two similar products so they can break them up on the ingredient list giving the illusion they are less.

Hope you learned something. No recipe for you this week, but check out my archive list of all previous posts on the Recipe Index tab at the top of the page. In the meantime, try not to feel overwhelmed! The intent of these posts are to help you become aware and to help you make better choices. Remember, you can’t do it all overnight! If you think you can and try, you will likely not succeed in making any change - trust me!  Make gradual changes and just know these posts are filed in the Self Education tab at the top of the page, so you can come back to them at anytime, when you are ready to move onto a new topic.

One last thing. If you follow the Cooking For A Better Tomorrow Facebook Page, I have talked about Fooducate a couple of times. Fooducate is an great informational website that helps you dissect product labels. They have a blog you can sign up for and a free app you can download. Using either the website or app, you can search/scan products. Fooducate will give the product a letter grade, review nutritional and caloric information as well as talk about the good ingredients and maybe ones you should consider avoiding. Great resource to help us all!

The next three weeks I will be dedicating to staples in my pantry, freezer and fridge, along with some tricks I have to avoid unwanted additives in your food.

See you then!

Don’t forget, "the bottom line is that while none of us can do everything, all of us can do something."

-Robyn O’Brien

Update: I forgot to mention one other resource. Whole Foods has a list of ingredients that they do not allow in products sold at their stores. All of the ones I mentioned above are on the list, plus many more. One reason I am willing to pay more to shop at Whole Foods is because they will do some of the work for you. It gives me peace of mind knowing a lot of the crap out there they won’t allow. They are not perfect by any means and still have products that aren’t ‘good for you’, but they definitely take a lot of the pressure off of doing all the work / investigation yourself. If you can’t shop at Whole Foods or simply choose not to, consider printing this list as a reference of ingredients to avoid.

~Ashley