I have mentioned briefly in my post health is not a size about how the the rage of today is the garbage of tomorrow and this is very true for diet fads. This “garbage” has been spread by the food industry to earn big bucks. So, let me elaborate on that.
Have you ever heard of a farmers going for food conferences, sending free food samples to people, sending out surveys, hosting lunch or dinner parties, advertise their products on the television/radio/internet or print books telling about the latest inventions in processing food? No! Farmers don’t do this, but the food industry does and because they have the evil power and money to do this, we are drawn towards what’s out there instead of what’s good for us! Farmers simply provide us food in its purest form which is full of nutrients. Buy local, eat local and promote local.
All that matters to the food industry is maximum profit. This industry is not shy of compromising our health for its own financial benefits. Everything that we see on the shelves of the supermarkets which is packed in fancy packets, are all processed foods. Once you know the processes that they go through to look so fancy, you will not want to eat them! These foods are processed at big facilities where they go through high temperature treatments that kills the nutritional value of the food but has tonnes of artificial flavours which are highly addictive and preservatives which if eaten regularly can cause many health problems specially hormonal problems.
As a part of one of my papers during my study, I went on a field trip to a seafood processing factory. When I saw the process the seafood goes through, I was really taken aback! A big Load of high heat treated and machine cleaned fish is just dumped in huge vats, churned and mixed with addictive flavourings and preservatives (lots of refined sugars and sodium), made into fillets, fingers, patties, bites, dipped in a heavily addictive batter, fried in not the best quality oil, snap frozen, packed and off to the supermarket it goes! And this fish is good to use for one whole year! Can you use the fresh fish that you buy for a year? No! You need to cook it the same day or else it goes off. This happens because the fish still has the nutrients and water that it should and those nutrients cause the bacteria to multiply (bacteria feeds off the fish nutrients) and hence spoil the food. But because there are no nutrients in the processed frozen, no bacteria will grow. So all you are eating is plain calories (full of sugar and sodium) with zero nutrient value and that is what is widening your waist line. The health star rating on such foods is a gimmick! Do you think you want eat this kind of food and most importantly give this kind of food to your growing kids who need nutrition?
I was talking to a friend who owns a vegetable shop and buys apples fresh and directly from an orchard owner and sells them at $1/kg when in season, but people are reluctant to buy it because the apples are not all shiny and beautiful. But the same apples are bought by an apple company from the orchard when they are not ripe, put through a cleaning process that potentially destroys its nutrients, ripened artificially, and then waxed and sold after about 10-15 days of harvesting, at the supermarket for $4/kg, everyone wants to buy it even though the price is so high! Who is benefiting? Well, those bigger companies are. These companies buy the produce from the farmers at a very low price and sell them to people for a huge profits and the poor farmer just gets pennies out of it even though he/she is the one who has done all the hard work! This is the story of almost each and every food product that you see on the supermarket shelves. Majority of them are processed which destroy the nutrients, thus making the shelf life longer as the bacteria won’t multiply as they don’t get the nutrients to multiply and all you are paying for is just empty Calories!
But in saying that, since our lives are so busy (Food industry takes undue advantage of our busy lives), many times we have no choice and must buy something off the shelves, in that case read the labels and choose the food with the least amount of ingredients and has natural preservatives but don’t make it a habit to buy these foods because anything and everything can be made at home from scratch.
Health is not a size
