Basic Pursuits

If you know it's bad, don't eat it
Readers Digest just published a piece called 4 Most Harmful Ingredients in Packaged Foods.

Leading the list of slow-acting poisons are trans fats and refined grains. Trans fats clog up your arteries. Refined grains play hell with your blood sugar.

Following closely are salt and high fructose corn syrup. About high fructose corn syrup the article points out, "Research is beginning to suggest that this liquid sweetener may upset
the human metabolism, raising the risk for heart disease and diabetes." Whether you buy this early research or not, too much of any kind of sugar, cane, glucose, whatever, certainly upsets human metabolism.

If you don't know what's in it, don't eat it
A few months ago, I got this idea to put together a list of frozen prepared dinners that were low in calories and high in nutrition and publish it on this blog. I thought busy people could use that information. So I went to the store and bought a sampling of half dozen offerings. But there was very little nutritional information on the box. I wanted to report the complete nutritional potential of these convenience foods.

So I called Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice to ask for a complete nutritional profile. Both said essentially the same thing: drop dead. We reveal all the information that the government requires and that was all I was going to get.

I thought, "Damn. They want me to buy and eat their product, yet won't tell me what's in it."

So more than ever I knew that the right path to best nutrition is real food that I process myself. Luckily, grocery stores still have plenty of real food.