Food Manipulation At Its Worst - Avoiding Processed Foods
I can't believe it.
In fact I was so shocked that I had to tell you about it immediately.
I was at the supermarket yesterday picking up a few essentials and remembered that I was out of sultanas.
Sultanas pack a pretty big carb punch and are perfect for after an intense workout.
Normally I would try to get the organic ones, but being in a large, multi national, profit first supermarket they don't seem to have quality high on the agenda.
The next best option was the 'natural' sultanas which are what you would think they were, sultanas.
Being a bargain hunter, I needed to know that I was getting the best deal.
So I headed over to the 'cooking' aisle and had a look at the other sultana options.
To my surprise there were some other 'natural' sultanas there and one packet claimed that there was 'No Added Vegetable Oil' and 99% fat free.
More marketing hype I thought to myself, why would there be vegetable oil in sultanas, and why wouldn't a fruit be fat free? Then I had a look a the other product the same company had on the shelf and checked the ingredients.
This is what shocked me.
The ingredients were sultanas and vegetable oil.
Vegetable oils aren't that great at the best of times, being a product of over processing and I can only assume that the manufacturer was using the cheapest, nastiest vegetable oil to get the job done.
Now apparently this process is to help stop the sultanas sticking together.
Apparently this must be a big problem.
Why else would you take a perfectly good food and taint it with unnecessary, poor quality processed oil? Not good enough.
The same thing happens with peanut butter.
To make peanut butter all you need to do is get some peanuts and grind them to your desired consistency.
But if you look at most peanut butters in the super market you will see that they also contain sugar, salt and vegetable oil.
Why? Because the manufacturers press the peanut oil out and sell it for a premium (its a high quality oil) and replace it with the cheap and nasty vegetable oil.
So what is the take home story from my little rant? There's a few things.
1.
Read food labels.
2.
Don't take anything for granted - assume nothing 3.
Don't be fooled into thinking that big business puts your health before profits.
Be careful out there!
In fact I was so shocked that I had to tell you about it immediately.
I was at the supermarket yesterday picking up a few essentials and remembered that I was out of sultanas.
Sultanas pack a pretty big carb punch and are perfect for after an intense workout.
Normally I would try to get the organic ones, but being in a large, multi national, profit first supermarket they don't seem to have quality high on the agenda.
The next best option was the 'natural' sultanas which are what you would think they were, sultanas.
Being a bargain hunter, I needed to know that I was getting the best deal.
So I headed over to the 'cooking' aisle and had a look at the other sultana options.
To my surprise there were some other 'natural' sultanas there and one packet claimed that there was 'No Added Vegetable Oil' and 99% fat free.
More marketing hype I thought to myself, why would there be vegetable oil in sultanas, and why wouldn't a fruit be fat free? Then I had a look a the other product the same company had on the shelf and checked the ingredients.
This is what shocked me.
The ingredients were sultanas and vegetable oil.
Vegetable oils aren't that great at the best of times, being a product of over processing and I can only assume that the manufacturer was using the cheapest, nastiest vegetable oil to get the job done.
Now apparently this process is to help stop the sultanas sticking together.
Apparently this must be a big problem.
Why else would you take a perfectly good food and taint it with unnecessary, poor quality processed oil? Not good enough.
The same thing happens with peanut butter.
To make peanut butter all you need to do is get some peanuts and grind them to your desired consistency.
But if you look at most peanut butters in the super market you will see that they also contain sugar, salt and vegetable oil.
Why? Because the manufacturers press the peanut oil out and sell it for a premium (its a high quality oil) and replace it with the cheap and nasty vegetable oil.
So what is the take home story from my little rant? There's a few things.
1.
Read food labels.
2.
Don't take anything for granted - assume nothing 3.
Don't be fooled into thinking that big business puts your health before profits.
Be careful out there!