From the ArcaMax Publishing, Healthy Recipes Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/healthyrecipes/s-181284-383790
Faux Food
By Rachael Moeller Gorman, EatingWell.com
Where have all our nutrients gone?
A loaf of white bread has been sitting on my desk for three weeks. I've
been watching it, waiting for something to happen. Mold, perhaps. A
touch of staleness. Bugs maybe. Its sell-by date came and went 14 days
ago, but a peek through the wrapper reveals a tanned crust completely
devoid of fungus, and a firm press of the package produces a springy
return to a perfect rectangular shape, just as it did the day I bought
it.
My Stepford loaf was spawned on the bottom floor of a five-story factory
by a 2,500-pound mother dough ball that contained more than 36
ingredients, from refined flour to dough conditioners for softness and
cellulose gum for "mouthfeel." A mechanized knife chopped the mound into
27-ounce balls and another machine rolled the balls into logs and
deposited them into pans. The pans spiraled through an oven large enough
to hold six full-size school buses and 16 minutes later the logs emerged
baked. My loaf was one of 150,000 from the oven that day to be sliced,
packaged and trucked to stores all over the region. Production people
told me that it would take about 15 days for my loaf to begin to mold.
My desktop experiment says it takes a lot longer than that.
In my refrigerator, on the other hand, sits a two-day-old lopsided
trapezoid of whole-wheat bread made by a local company called Small
Planet Bakery. Aaron, son of one of the bakery's owners, stirred
together eight ingredients in a Hobart Upright mixer to make the loaf,
adding more water and flour by sight and touch. Some days, the loaves he
makes are small and dense; other days, they are so big the slices won't
fit in a toaster -- it all depends on the weather, the wheat and his
whim. He uses whole-wheat flour, honey, canola oil and 38 percent less
salt than my fluffy white loaf. His co-workers carve a 100-pound mother
dough ball into 27-ounce mounds on a long maple tabletop, and after
letting the logs rise solely by the heat of the Tucson summer, they set
the pans in a large oven to bake. By the end of the day, the team has
made a grand total of 400 loaves -- each of which they estimate takes
about a week to mold if left out. They pack the loaves into a truck that
delivers the bread to local stores and restaurants.
Both processes produce a perfectly fine-looking loaf of bread. I can
make sandwiches with either one; each seems wholesome and tasty. Both
are "processed" -- we're not munching on raw wheat berries here -- but the
paths each of these loaves followed couldn't have been more different.
With growing alarms about the unhealthy state of the Western diet,
packed full of overprocessed foods, I wanted to know how making food the
white-bread way affects our health, and whether making it the Small
Planet way is any better.
Lost in Transition
Most of the food consumed in this country passes through a factory or
processing plant before ever reaching our tables, and for simple
reasons: food needs to be safe, transportable and to stay sellable in
the supermarket. Minnesotans want to eat canned peaches in January and
working parents want to buy a loaf of bread at the store instead of
spending all day baking it themselves. The result is that less and less
can be called "unprocessed" anymore. Yet the transition from field to
shelf happens in wildly divergent ways, from the simple baking of a few
ingredients, like my Small Planet loaf, to inventing a sports drink that
comes in a choice of several different neon colors, the product of food
chemists and marketers hoping to create mega-demand.
A growing number of voices question whether extreme processing is just
making modern food safe and convenient or if it may actually be creating
a long-term threat to our society's nutritional health.
"During processing, a lot of beneficial nutrients like fiber, minerals
and antioxidants are lost -- especially in highly processed,
refined-grain products," says Frank Hu, an epidemiologist at Harvard
School of Public Health who tracks the effects of food on diseases in
the American population. "Manufacturers also add a lot of sugar and
trans fats back in to enhance the taste," he says. "So you get rid of
the good stuff and add a lot of bad stuff and that's the reason those
kinds of foods are really detrimental."
The $450 billion food industry packs superstores full of 40,000
different food items in cans, boxes, pouches and packages. "This food
has become so much a part of the culture that we don't even realize it,"
says Loren Cordain, professor of health and exercise science at Colorado
State University. "If you're an average American and you're not really
too health conscious, you eat these foods every single day, and you've
eaten them every single day of your life."
Whole Grains: The Protective Elements
Consider the very first ingredient in my loaf of white bread, "enriched
wheat flour" -- refined and reformulated wheat. At the grain mill, long
rollers with hundreds of metal teeth hum noisily as they crush raw wheat
berries over and over, sifting and separating them between large screens
and eventually stripping the strongly flavored nutrient- and
fiber-packed germ and bran from the starchy, bland endosperm. Throughout
history, people considered this white flour superior to coarse
whole-wheat, but it wasn't until millers began using steel rollers in
the 19th century that refined flour became cheap enough for everyone to
afford. Ironically, although long a staple for the privileged, white
flour contains barely any fiber, vitamins or minerals, the building
blocks of healthy food. One slice of white bread has 65 percent less
fiber, magnesium and potassium than whole-wheat bread. The bran alone in
whole-wheat bread gives it 20 times more antioxidant power.
But what is the harm in eating a few random slices of white bread?
According to whole-grains researcher Joanne Slavin at the University of
Minnesota, one loaf of white bread is nothing compared to the damage
done by the hefty volume of refined products eaten by the average
American.
Twenty percent of the typical American diet now comes from refined
grainsa -- bread, pasta, doughnuts, chips, meals-in-a-box, muffins,
crackers. Slavin points me to reams of epidemiological studies that
associate a diet high in refined grains with a higher risk of stroke,
weight gain and metabolic syndrome -- a constellation of conditions that
predisposes a person to type 2 diabetes and heart disease. A diet high
in whole grains, on the other hand, is associated with a lower risk of
heart disease, less weight gain, fewer cases of type 2 diabetes and
reduced risk of colon cancer and metabolic syndrome. People who eat more
whole grains also tend to have lower bad (LDL) cholesterol and higher
good (HDL) cholesterol, all good reasons to opt for a chewier loaf and
more foods made with whole grains.
One reason refinement takes a toll on health comes from the fact that
instead of being digested in the small intestine, fiber ferments in the
gut, and the products of fermentation have been shown to lower
cholesterol and reduce the risk of certain cancers. Whole grains also
appear to increase insulin sensitivity -- the body's ability to use the
hormone insulin to balance blood sugar. On the flip side, refined grains
have been linked to lower insulin sensitivity and unhealthy spikes in
blood sugar, troublesome outcomes that can eventually lead to the
development of type 2 diabetes. Not only that, whole grains burst with
antioxidants and other compounds, including plant stanols and sterols
and phytoestrogens: a party of health ambassadors that science has only
begun to understand.
In fact, Slavin thinks the synergy of hundreds of compounds in whole
grains creates much of the magic. While manufacturers "enrich" white
flour to replace some of the nutrients lost during refining -- niacin,
thiamine, riboflavin and irona "and "fortify" with folic acid, chemistry
can't do it all, she says.
"People say, 'Let's just make this white bread the same as a whole
grain,'" Slavin notes. "You really can't. If we take a whole grain and
we completely blow it apart and then stick it back into a product, is it
still whole? White bread that has some fiber and magnesium or
whatever other nutrient dumped into it isn't the same as whole wheat,"
she explains. "Nobody really knows which particular nutrients are most important."
Turn Up the Heat...
As food journeys from farm to table, most of it, including both of my
breads, shares one important side trip: a high-heat experience. Besides
the obvious cooking, heat is necessary to kill micro-organisms, reduce
oxidative changes that cause rancidity and prevent other chemical
reactions that may produce off-flavors. My loaves have been baked in
industrial ovens. Milk and juices are pasteurized in huge
stainless-steel vats. Pasta is dried in vast machines that circulate hot
air.
Along with changing flavor and color, thermal processing takes a toll on
nutrients, says food scientist Steven Schwartz at Ohio State University,
a student of the processing road map. His laboratory frequently
scrutinizes cooked vegetables to determine just what has been lost or
gained during processing. In canned peas versus fresh peas, for example,
the nutrient content has faded as much as the color. Vitamins,
especially water-soluble vitamins like C and the B vitamins, are
heat-sensitive and some leach into cooking water in the factory, which
is why steaming or microwaving, not boiling, vegetables is the best
cooking method at home. Peas from a can have 72 percent less vitamin C,
59 percent less niacin, 56 percent less B6 and 17 percent less potassium
than the same amount of raw peas. The food industry tries to find the
best balance between safety and nutrition, but the longer and hotter the
cooking, the more a food will be altered. Frozen vegetables, plunged
briefly into boiling water and then cooled, have a much better track
record for keeping their nutrients. In fact, they can exceed the
nutrition of "fresh" vegetables, depending upon how long produce has
been traveling and waiting in the grocery bin.
...Pump Up the Salt
Taste is also lost during refinement and heating. Manufacturers often
try to add it back in the form of salt, also an aid in preservation, but
the result is devastating to our health: most Americans get 75 percent
of their total salt from processed foods. Meanwhile processing robs
fruits and vegetables of potassium, a mineral that helps to keep
sodium's damage at bay.
Potassium helps to mitigate the adverse effects of salt on blood
pressure," says Lawrence Appel, a Johns Hopkins researcher who studies
the effects of diet on blood pressure. "Processing tends to remove
potassium and add sodium -- a bad combination." In fact, while 95 percent
of men and 75 percent of women regularly exceed the recommended salt
intake, most adults consume less than half the recommended potassium,
one reason that 50 million Americans suffer from hypertension. In
England, public-health experts have made enough noise that the
government is beginning to regulate the sodium that goes into canned
goods, but no such plans are afoot in this country.
Out with the Good Fats, In with the Bad
Look at a bread with an incredibly long shelf life and you're likely to
find "partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil" on the
ingredient label. Hydrogenated oils are one of the ingredients that put
the spring and longevity into my mass-produced loaf.
It all started back in the 1960s when the public began to suspect that
saturated fat threatens the heart. Manufacturers responded by replacing
animal fats in their products with partially hydrogenated vegetable
oils, which were low in saturated fat, extended shelf life, tasted good
and provided great texture to processed foods. But these oils contained
trans fats, the result of heavy processing to make them more
shelf-stable, and trans fats have now been conclusively linked to heart
disease and premature death. Harvard's Frank Hu thinks trans fats may be
the worst part of eating processed foods.
"One of the most important things to do is to get rid of trans fats,"
says Hu. "We found a very clear association between trans fats and
diabetes and heart disease." By increasing bad (LDL) cholesterol,
reducing good (HDL) cholesterol and causing systemic inflammation, trans
fats contribute to heart disease. While many food processors are
reforming their products in anticipation of the mandatory labeling rule
on trans fats in the U.S, others continue to add trans fats liberally to their foods. Hu's colleagues at Harvard
estimate that replacing partially hydrogenated oils in the U.S. diet
with nonhydrogenated vegetable oils would prevent at least 30,000 -- perhaps up to 100,000 -- premature coronary deaths each year.
Having Your Bread and Eating It Too
Hungry for my lunchtime PB&J, I take another look at my plastic-bagged
loaf, eyeballing the long list of ingredients and thinking about all the
effort that went into producing it, an amalgam of additions and
subtractions that satisfies strict rules of marketing, safety and
convenience. Health's role in the equation is minor in comparison.
Loren Cordain at Colorado State recently published data that show just
how much processed foods dominate our diet today. He found that 57
percent of most Americans' calories come from only three foods: refined
grains, vegetable oils and added sugar.
"This mixture is ubiquitous in the Western diet. You can call it a slice
of bread, you can call it a doughnut, you can call it a pizza, you can
call it a cracker, you can call it a pretzel, you can call it whatever
you want, but it's basically a mixture of those same three ubiquitous
foods -- vegetable oil, refined flour and sugar, with a little bit of
flavoring," says Cordain. "Sugars are devoid of any micronutrients,
refined oils are also devoid of any nutrients except for vitamins E and
K. And then when you tack that onto white flour, you've basically got a
diet that can easily produce nutritional shortfalls."
He lists concerns for nutrient after nutrient -- 73 percent of Americans
didn't meet requirements at last count for zinc, 65 percent weren't
getting enough calcium, 56 percent were short on vitamin A, 54 percent
didn't consume enough B6, 39 percent lacked sufficient iron, and the
list goes on. How does the future look for these people? "They will
become a statistic," says Cordain. "If they continue eating those kind
of foods throughout their lives, they will become a statistic, if they
aren't already."
Some manufacturers are making changes -- General Mills has converted all
its cereals to a half or full serving of whole grains. Frito-Lay has
eliminated trans fats from many of its snack foods, including Doritos,
Cheetos and Tostitos. ASDA, a British food and clothing superstore, is
in the process of removing salt from all its private-label canned
vegetables, which is projected to result in customers consuming 185 tons
less salt each year.
No health expert will tell you that eating a heavily processed food on
occasion will kill you, but they do agree that relying on them for most
of your calories and nutrients is a bad idea. A degree of processing can
be found in almost any food at the supermarket. Simply choose among them
wisely, suggests Minnesota's Slavin. Frozen fruits and vegetables should
have only one or two ingredients on their label; make sure the first
ingredient begins with "whole" in any bread or grain-related food. When
choosing cans, meals-in-a-box or frozen dinners, choose low-salt
varieties. Avoid foods with "partially hydrogenated oil" on the
ingredient list and foods that have several layers of processing:
refining, drying, freezing, preserving, additives and salt. Instead
choose foods that limit processing and sport a minimum number of
ingredients, all of which you recognize. Tomato paste, for example,
needs only tomatoes, not "tomatoes, high-fructose corn syrup, partially
hydrogenated vegetable oil, salt, natural flavor."
Making Choices
After four weeks, my white bread has finally begun to sprout tiny
bruise-colored mold spots (the calcium propionate added to the dough
slowed the fungi's growth). It's still springy, though. Who would have
thought 100 years ago that a loaf of soft bread would stay good for
almost a month?
"People are so used to foods lasting forever," says Slavin. "I think
from a consumer standpoint, for people to say, 'Well, I don't want
processed foods,' they're going to have to learn how to cook, be willing
to shop regularly, learn how to store foods. It's going to be this huge
paradigm shift before we can get away from the processing that everybody is used to. As long
as convenience is such a leading force in people's lives, processed
foods have to be there. People expect it, they want it. Are they willing
to put more time and more money into less-processed foods? It's a
big decision."
Slavin chooses her foods judiciously at the supermarket, and Cordain
says he has eaten mostly "real" foods for the past 15 years and believes
that others can follow his example. "The strategy I have is that less
than 15 percent of your diet should be processed foods," he says. "The
balance is real foods -- seafood, lean meats, fresh fruits and
vegetables -- and you'll be in great shape, healthwise."
Enriched White Bread vs....
White Bread, Ingredients: Enriched wheat flour [flour, barley malt,
ferrous sulfate (iron), B vitamins (niacin, thiamine mononitrate (B1),
riboflavin (B2), folic acid)], water, high-fructose corn syrup, butter.
Contains 2% or less of: salt, whey, partially hydrogenated soybean and
cottonseed oil, yeast, soy flour, wheat gluten, ethoxylated mono and
diglycerides, mono and diglycerides, calcium sulfate, nonfat milk, soy
fiber, natural and artificial flavors, dicalcium phosphate, ammonium
phosphate, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, alpha amylase,
calcium iodate, calcium dioxide), datem, monocalcium phosphate,
cellulose gum, guar gum, yeast nutrient (ammonium sulfate), calcium
carbonate, enzymes, vinegar, calcium propionate (to retain freshness).
1 slice: Calories: 80; Total Fat: 1 g; Protein: 2 g; Total Carbohydrate:
14 g; Fiber: 0 g; Sodium: 200 mg.
Artisan Whole-Wheat Bread Ingredients: Organic whole wheat flour, water,
honey, wheat gluten, pressed canola oil, sea salt, yeast, ascorbic acid.
1 slice: Calories: 101; Total Fat: 0.8 g; Protein: 5.4 g; Total
Carbohydrate: 21.8 g; Fiber: 3.3 g; Sodium: 138.1 mg.
Shopping Smart
* Look for foods around the perimeter of the supermarket: fresh and
frozen produce, fish, meats, dairy products.
* Opt for preserved foods in pouches or small cans, like tuna, salmon,
crab and shrimp, which need less heat during processing so fewer
nutrients are lost.
* Choose frozen vegetables over canned "they retain most of their
nutrients. Canned tomatoes, however, are a good buy because the heat
from cooking helps to release beneficial nutrients like lycopene.
* Make sure the first ingredient in a bread or grain-related food begins
with "whole."
* Avoid foods with "partially hydrogenated oil" in the ingredient list
and choose low-salt varieties of canned, frozen and boxed foods.
* Focus on foods with fewer ingredients: "In many instances, fewer
ingredients "and ones that people recognize "suggest that the food is
closer to its natural form," says Richard Bell, who researches eating
behavior for Tufts University, Harvard University and the U.S. Army. "If
you are going to get applesauce, and you have choices, choose the one
that says, Ingredients: Apples, water.'"
Is It Still Cheese?
Leave a slice of American cheese on a windowsill and after weeks it will
dry, darken in color and curl. But rarely will it mold. Individually
wrapped orange cheese slices melt smoothly on burgers and taste great
straight from the package, but in most cases these soft slivers of
heaven aren't technically "cheese" at all. More likely, they fall under
the title of "pasteurized process cheese," "pasteurized process cheese
product" or "pasteurized process cheese food."
Regular cheese, like Cheddar, for example, is made by heating milk,
stirring in enzymes and cultures, separating the curds from the whey,
salting and knitting the curds into a block or wheel to age. Pasteurized
process cheese, on the other hand, is a mixture of already-made cheeses
that are reheated, blended together, pasteurized and mixed with an
emulsifier to provide a uniform texture, mild taste, smooth mouth-feel
and the consistent melt that many people love.
Food technologists can lower the fat and then add flavor back in or
create a variety of textures and tastes. Often, these "light" cheeses
have less fat and fewer calories than regular cheese because they
contain less actual cheese, more moisture and other additions. But with
up to 20 ingredients, not to mention layers of extra processing, this
"cheese" is far from its milky roots.
A small piece of true cheese offers much more flavor and satisfaction
than a larger serving of processed cheese, which is why you don't need
as much, says Max McCalman, author of Cheese, A Connoisseur's Guide to
the World's Best. "If I'm hungry I'll eat the fake stuff if that's all I
have, but even my daughter's dog knows the difference: he's thrilled to
eat the rinds of real cheese, but if it's a processed cheese slice he
often won't finish it."
Just Juice?
Way back when, juice used to be simple -- you squeezed a piece of fruit
and drank what squirted out. Now, with everything from natural organic
nectars to fruity-sounding "nutraceutical" drinks crowding the shelves,
taste and nutrition have become much more complicated.
Take fruit punch with 10 percent real fruit juice: the first three
ingredients in one brand are water, high-fructose corn syrup and sugar -- 90 percent of the total product.
The first three ingredients in a 100-percent juice brand, on the other
hand, are apple, grape and passion-fruit juices. Natural flavors (to
replace the taste lost during pasteurization), ascorbic acid (vitamin C)
and citric acid (to maintain a shelf-stable pH) may round out the list.
The 100-percent juice packs a punch of heart-healthy potassium, absent
in the 10-percent version.
Of course the best choice for health is to enjoy the whole fruit, which
gives you beneficial fiber and myriad other nutrients otherwise tossed
out with the pulp.
Futuristic Menus
What wild incarnations will food take over the next half century? We
asked a number of experts, from food scientists to industry trend
watchers, what their great-grandchildren might be eating in the year
2050.
Anthony Pometto: NASA Food Director
"In this era of bioterrorism there will be a trend toward long-shelf-life
products and natural antimicrobial extracts from plants.
"Dinner in 2050 might include: a glass of red winea -- it has a long shelf
life, can be stored at room temperature and is good for you -- and
lasagna that's been irradiated for safety purposes and packed into a
heatable pouch. I'll place the pouch into the microwave, hit a button,
open it up, and it will taste like Mom's. And there'll be a salad that
has been treated with some antimicrobial, antibacterial dip that gives
it a long shelf life. For dessert, you might have rum-raisin bread with
plum extract. Plum extract will save the world: it's a fat substitute,
it's full of antioxidants and it's antimicrobial because of its phenolic
compounds."
Anthony Pometto, Director, NASA Food Technology Commercial Space Center,
Iowa State University
====
Irena Chalmers: Cookbook Author
"Artisanal breads and cheeses are here to stay, but all fish in the year
2050 will come from farms. Commercial fishing will become illegal until
stocks of overexploited species recover.
"We will be able to go to a restaurant at any time of day and ask for an
organic, low-cholesterol egg. Fries will become "health" foods made from
new varieties of nutrient-dense potatoes that are sizzled in
good-for-you oils. Fruits and vegetables will last longer and contain
more nutrients. The chewable, brightly colored stems will contain vaccines and pharmaceuticals.
"Food will be cooked using light instead of gas or electricity.
Home-cooking will become a hobby like knitting or skiing. The most
coveted invitation will be for a home-cooked meal."
Irena Chalmers, author of The Great Food Almanac and Irena Chalmers'
All-Time Favorites
====
Brian Wansink: Food- Marketing Scholar
"The meal of the future will be much lower in calories, but flavor
enhancers will make the experience more satiating and thus more
satisfying. Those higher-energy-density foods that we have not
successfully reduced in calories will use fat blockers, which will
enable us to eat a gooey, frosted cinnamon roll without it being
absorbed. My guess would be that technology will prevent these foods
from being broken down into molecules that are small enough to be
absorbed."
Brian Wansink, Ph.D., Director, Cornell University's Food & Brand Lab,
which focuses on the psychology behind what people eat
====
Karen Caplan: Frieda's Specialty Produce
In the year 2050, after each person has a DNA test upon birth and their
"high risk" attributes have been identified, they will have a "menu" for
life created. More of us will live past 100. We will choose between
eating real foods (like 10 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a
day), fish (mostly cultivated) and food specifically bred to be high in
our needed nutrients, and the choice of drinking a liquid-only diet
(containing those same nutrients, calories and flavors) or supplements
that will fulfill our dietary and health needs. Much of our food will be
genetically modified or bred for specific attributes (mostly
nutritional), and the "specialty foods" will be those that are not
modified!
"There will still be a few hundred million 'old timers' who will choose
to randomly eat old-fashioned foods like those we eat today.
Karen Caplan, President, Frieda's, Inc., a specialty-produce company
====
Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together
To prevent widespread nutrient deficiencies caused by a national diet
dominated by refined goods, the FDA requires that many, but not all of
the nutrients removed during refinement be added back, a process called
"enrichment." Iron, thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2) and niacin (B3), all
lost in the making of refined flour, are replaced with synthetic
versions at the end of the manufacturing process. Other lost nutrients
that we're aware of, such as magnesium, zinc, vitamin E and selenium,
are not replaced.
"Fortification," on the other hand, occurs when nutrients not naturally
found in a particular food are added to that food. Some fortification,
such as the addition of folic acid to cereals and other grain products,
or vitamins A and D to milk, is mandatory because a nutrient shortfall
has been identified as a public-health problem. Other fortifications,
such as the addition of calcium to orange juice, iodine to salt, or
multiple vitamins and minerals to breakfast cereals, are optional.
A Suspect Nugget
Dinosaurs. Stars. Tiny drumsticks. Breaded, formed chicken nuggets come
in all shapes and sizes and are almost universally loved by kids, but
most varieties barely resemble meat at all and consumers might be
surprised to discover what's in them.
Generally, two types of "nugget" sit in your grocer's freezer: whole
meat and formed. Whole meat is just what it sounds like -- chunks of
chicken that are usually battered, breaded, fried and frozen. Formed
products, on the other hand, contain chicken "trimmings" -- the meat left
over or cut from larger whole pieces. This meat is not necessarily
inferior, it is just too small, miscut or doesn't look as pretty as the
whole chicken breast you'd buy to make Chicken Parmesan. The trimmings
are finely chopped and mixed with a solution of water, salt and
phosphates that binds them into a sticky paste and adds juiciness. A
forming machine molds the paste into whatever shape manufacturers -- or
kids -- want, and the resulting nugget is dusted, battered, breaded,
deep-fat-fried and frozen.
Some processed nuggets can have almost double the calories, five times
the fat, and six and a half times the sodium as an equal amount of
regular skinless chicken breast.
- Sylvia M. Geiger, M.S., R.D.
Related Links:
•
Futuristic Menus
•
Nutrition Watch
This news arrived on: 04/17/2007
Copyright © 2008 ArcaMax Publishing, Inc., and its licensors. All rights reserved.
