FoodRxD

Keep it real

An easy way to decide if a food is a little too processed to eat, is to work backwards along the production line.  If there are more than a couple of steps in the process of getting this food on your plate from its point of origin, you probably should just say no.

An example is chicken nuggets. The makers of these things try to convince you that its just chicken and breadcrumbs, but there is a bit more to it than that.

Basically, the entire chicken is smashed and pressed through a sieve—bones, eyes, guts, and all.  It comes out looking like a chicken snofreeze.  Yes that is chicken in the above picture.........Wonder if the Mr. Whippy ice cream trucks will be selling it this summer........?

It is then washed with ammonia, artificially flavoured to mask the ammonia, and dyed with artificial color.

This is the final ingredient list:

White boneless chicken, water, food starch-modified, salt, seasoning (autolyzed yeast extract, salt, wheat starch, natural flavoring (botanical source), safflower oil, dextrose, citric acid, rosemary), sodium phosphates, seasoning (canola oil, mono- and diglycerides, extractives of rosemary). Battered and breaded with: water, enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, food starch-modified, salt, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium lactate), spices, wheat starch, whey, corn starch. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent

I don't know about you, but that is a few too many steps in the process.  How about this instead:

Take a real live chicken, kill it, cook it, eat it..............

A Dietitians Food Journal

This is an actual photo of award winning dietitians..........what is wrong with this picture.......?

A useful tool you might want to use if geting serious about calculating food intake is FITDAY. The free tracker allows you to input foods and it tells you how the carb, protein and fat breakdown.  Just don't pay too much attention to the 'helpful' articles.....

I read an article titled 'One Day in the Life of a Pro' highlighting the diet of a dietitian, and this was what they ate, with their reasoning in italics and my response in bold. This is part of the reason why our nation is so overweight....... If the 'experts' can't make their own advice work, how are you guys supposed to do it?

Fiber One cereal with skim milk
Fresh blueberries

Fiber One cereal is high in fiber which helps prevent high cholesterol and constipation. There are many fiber-rich cereals to choose from that are great in taste with added benefits of vitamins and minerals. Most people need 25-35 grams of fiber daily which can be difficult to do when eating only fruits and vegetables. No it's not difficult at all!  Are they seriously suggesting that we can't get enough without resorting to high tech breakfast cereal?! And believe it or not, if you are avoiding processed grain products you don't even need that much fibre. Plus I'm happy to get my vitamins and minerals from real food, not synthetically. Of course, I've got nothing against the blueberries....

If I'm not hungry early in the morning, I bring fruit or dry cereal with me for a quick snack later on in the morning. A typical, carbohydrate rich snack that will have you in an insulin coma at your desk by 11am.  Check out the Primal Sandwich video for a better option, or at least keep a bag of raw nuts, jerky, canned tuna etc in your desk for emergencies.

2 slices of pork tenderloin, seasoned with pepper and mustard
Salad with vinaigrette

For lunch, I usually bring leftovers from home. In addition to saving me money, leftovers help me with portion control. At dinner the previous night, I make just enough so that each person can have two meals.This is actually decent advice :) Although she mentioned avoiding oil in the dressing. No, no, no people! You need some fat in there for energy, a tablespoon of olive oil will do the trick. or throw some avocado into the salad.

Dinner
Steamed white rice
Vegetable stir-fry with ground turkey

I'm tired by the end of the work day so I try to make dinner as simple as possible. I always use ground turkey instead of ground beef because it is lower in fat. Simple doesn't need to mean it can't be good. Dump the rice, add more veggies, and throw in some coconut milk or raw nuts/almond butter for a delicious, low carb meal, with good fat. Dietitians know that we need fat in our diets, but have such a phobia about eating it, a complete paradox that does my head in. Beef or pork mince would go just as well here.

It's simple; eat meat, veggies, some fruit, nuts and seeds, little starch, no sugar. Do that and YOU will be the pro.

Frankenfood

The word used in the title first sprang up from watchdog groups, in reference to genetically modified foods.  But as far as I'm concerned it should refer to any food that has been invented, oversweetened, or excessively processed.

Margarine is my most hated Frankenfood.  Now we've all seen the wild claims on TV about their amazing ability to virtually vaccuum out your clogged arteries and save you from a fatal heart attack.  But don't you think it's pretty far fetched that spreading something on your toast can help you avoid the most common cause of death? 

Especially when, despite the pictures of pretty flowers, cows and sunshine on the label, there is nothing at all natural about this product..........

Margerines are generally made from vegetable oils, most commonly sunflower, soya, canola and palm oil. The oils are refined to remove impurities before being hydrogenated. This process artifically "saturates", or hardens oils into solid fat making them more suitable for food processing. Oil is hydrogenated by mixing it with fine particles of nickel (a catalyst) heating it to 180 degrees celcius and pumping hydrogen gas through it under high pressure.

After filtering the nickel out again, the oil is bleached and deodorised. As it cools the hydrogenated oil turns into a waxy fat, which can be minced into pellets for blending into any recipes needing solid `dry' fat. The hydrogenated `hardened' fat is then mixed with oil to form a product with the desired texture. Antioxidants prevent the polyunsaturated fatty acids in margarine from going rancid.

So after reading that, do you really think there is much wrong with a little grass fed, made from milk, salt and nothing else, despite the rap it gets for saturated fat (which we all know is ok anyway), actually is almost a third monounsaturated, good ol fashioned, what your grandmama used to eat, BUTTER!?!?

Healthy eating is about real food, not chemistry experiments.  Don't believe health claims when you are shopping.  In fact if there is a label on any food saying it will do something good for you, just don't buy it.