By Janet Thompson
Recently, I was in Costco wearing my Make America Healthy Again hat when an employee cleaning the floors and I kept passing each other in the aisles. He eventually approached me and said, “I’ve been thinking about your hat. When was America ever healthy?” He was in his thirties and I thought to myself he probably grew up eating fast food and processed foods so prevalent today. I responded, “I think when my grandmother made everything from scratch.” He nodded and agreed.
Then it hit me that I’m now a grandmother. Like many women today, I’ve worked all my adult life with little time for making homemade bread, spaghetti sauce, yummy bakery products, or raising chickens like my grandmother who stayed home and raised seven children. However, since my first career was as a Registered Dietitian, I’ve always tried to avoid processed foods, eat fresh organic, and read labels.
Processed and ready-made foods started becoming popular in the 1960’s when more moms went to work and were trying to get dinner on the table quickly for the family after a long workday. The FDA started approving many additives and preservatives that really didn’t have a history of being tested for safety. Today, most of them are still being used with many more added and at the same time there’s been a dramatic increase in childhood obesity and diabetes, breast cancer even in young women, colon cancer, and chronic diseases in children and adults. Could it be that we’ve been a human experiment?
Processed foods are more convenient and less expensive than fresh, but at what price to our bodies God designed to consume real whole food? By definition, processed food is altered in some way from its natural state. Processed foods have been treated with additive chemicals to enhance color, flavor, and increase shelf life. They’re moneymakers for manufacturers’ who aren’t always willing to monitor themselves and their lobbyists have more control than scientists and doctors over what’s considered healthy for consumption by the FDA.
Until now.
The new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is putting a spotlight on what Americans eat. He says, “Food is medicine and we’re poisoning ourselves with ultra-processed foods. Studies show increased anxiety and depression related to food, not to mention obesity. By changing your diet, you can lose some of those diagnoses. People should be able to make their own informed choices.”
WebMD Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Whyte echoes the Secretary of HHS. “Food really is medicine,” he said. “It’s as powerful as a prescription drug. It impacts every system of your body. … There’s so much food that we consume that’s processed and, even more concerning, ultraprocessed. … I’m concerned about how long some of these foods last. What’s in them that’s allowing them to stay in your pantry for a couple of years?”
In the May/June 2024 Christian Living Magazine issue, I wrote a Nutrition Nook article on reading labels. I want to update that information here with a few more things to look for in food label ingredients. You might pay a little bit more for clean food, but better than spending less for something that could cause expensive health issues later and might actually be poison.
America has 10,000 inflammation-causing food additives that are illegal in other countries. Think about that. McDonald’s French fries in Europe have three ingredients; in the U.S. they have 17 ingredients. That’s crazy.
These dyes are commonly found in breakfast cereals, soft drinks, dairy products, candy, jellies, packaged pudding, Jell-O, even condiments and canned foods. I actually saw red dye added to meat, and I’m sure you’ve seen salmon with the sticker “color added.” It’s safe to assume that these dyes are on the ingredient lists for thousands of products.
Manufacturers use these dyes made out of crude oil because they’re cheap. Yet, they make some of the same products healthier for other countries, which ban dyes. For example, Fruit Loops are colored with carrot and beet juice in other countries, but Fruit Loops in America use six colored dyes. Food dyes are tied to ADHD, cancer, learning disorders, and neurological issues.
Other dangerous food additives added to enhance addicting flavor and texture are sodium nitrate, sodium phosphate, corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, aspartame, caramel color, trans fats, monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, BHA, evaporated cane juice, modified food starch, guar gum, and carrageenan.
I want to talk about carrageenan specifically because I’m a 3x breast cancer survivor and just diagnosed with microscopic colitis. Carrageenan (E407 & E407a), a thickening agent in dairy alternatives, deli meats, and plant-based products, was linked to 32% higher risk of breast cancer and also linked to colitis and inflammation. I don’t eat those products, but then I started doing more research and discovered that carrageenan is in many foods that you would never expect. For example: dairy whipping cream, canned whipping cream, cottage cheese, protein drinks, yogurt, Costco rotisserie chicken, packaged pulled pork, peanut butter, and so much more.
I was shocked, especially with the Costco chicken until I discovered that carrageenan gives chicken an appealing appearance, making it look fuller, plumper, and more succulent…just like those chickens you grab from Costco and take home for a quick dinner.
When I started looking closely at the ingredient label from most cottage cheese brands, this long list of italicized additives is typical: cultured nonfat milk, milk, whey, salt, cornstarch, mono and diglycerides, carrageenan, locust bean gum, guar gum, phosphate, monopotassium phosphate, cream, natural and artificial flavor. Compare those sixteen ingredients with “Daisy” brand’s three ingredients: Cultured skim milk, cream, salt. That’s all that should be in cottage cheese. Remember that they list ingredients in order from the highest to the least content.
While I was at Walmart buying cottage cheese, an elderly woman came up to buy a carton. As she picked up one of the brands, I asked if I could show her the difference in the ingredients. When she saw only three ingredients in Daisy brand compared to a long list in others, she said, “I can pay a dollar more for a healthier brand. Thank you for showing me this.”
Avoid processed, boxed, quick, just add water products, pre-packaged, and precooked meals. Shop at local farmer’s markets, do frozen if you can’t do fresh, but fresh is best. Be your own chef. Cook your own meals so you know what you’re eating. There’s no comparison between homemade like my grandmother used to make and prepackaged, but we’ve become accustomed to settling for less.
It does take a little longer shopping to read all the ingredients, especially when they intentionally make the print small. If there’s more than 5 ingredients, or an additive or ingredient you can’t pronounce, you probably shouldn’t buy that product anyway. The manufacturers are hoping you won’t bother to notice and just pick up the cheapest one. But once you’ve determined a healthy brand of foods you typically buy, you’ll be able to quickly select that one and avoid all the others. As the little lady at Walmart so wisely said, spending a little extra for a healthier food to save your health in the end is a bargain.
Food is the fuel that keeps your body running. Just like you wouldn’t put the wrong gas or oil into your car engine that you want to last a few years, be wise about the fuel you put into your own body that you hope will last you for 90 or 100 years.
Mark Hyman, M.D., says, “Cancer is complex and multifactorial, but one thing is certain: the food we eat plays a massive role in shaping our long-term health. Cutting out ultra-processed foods and focusing on whole, nutrient-dense foods is one of the most powerful steps you can take to reduce disease risk.”
Recipe: You may not be a cottage cheese eater. I’m not either. But I’ve discovered many fun, healthy recipes where you can’t even tell it’s made with cottage cheese, which adds extra protein and calcium to food. But make sure you don’t buy one with more than three whole food ingredients. I’m sharing an easy recipe here. Here’s a tip. If you put cottage cheese in the blender or food processor and blend on high, it becomes a creamy texture like sour cream and you’d never know it’s cottage cheese.
High Protein Avocado Sandwich Bread
1 ripe avocado, peeled, pitted, and mashed
½ cup cottage cheese (read the label)
¼ cup cheese of choice
1 egg
Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Make four round circles on a parchment lined baking sheet and flatten to about ¼ inch thick. Top with Everything But the Bagel Seasoning or your choice of seasoning. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes or until firm and brown around the edges. Assemble into a sandwich with choice of fillings.
Janet Thompson, award-winning Christian speaker, freelance author, and author of 20 books, is also the founder, director, and God’s servant of Woman to Woman Mentoring Ministry and About His Work Ministries. Her passion and focus is mentoring the next generation. Her tag line is, “Sharing Life Experiences and God’s Faithfulness.” She has a BS in Food Administration, MBA, and Master of Arts in Christian Leadership. Check out her books and sign up for her free weekly online blog and monthly newsletter at womantowomanmentoring.com. Join her on www.facebook.com/Janetthompson.authorspeaker, LinkedIn, Pinterest, X, and Instagram.
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