Processed Food And The 100 Mile Diet

Several readers have written in about the 100 mile diet, and in my search for more info I found this rather frightening piece published on Kindred – one family, one world.

The Frightening Stuff And Why You May Choose To Eat Local

“The giant food corporations have one mission: selling more food and beverage products to consumers. Succeeding with that mission depends on keeping consumers in the dark on certain issues such as the presence of cancer-causing chemicals found in popular food products.

Here are eight things the food corporations, whose products dominate grocery-store shelves, absolutely do not want you to know.

1. The ingredients listed on the label aren’t the only things in the food.
Cancer-causing chemicals such as acrylamides may be formed in the food during high-heat processing, yet there’s no requirement to list them on the label. Residues of solvents, pesticides and other chemicals may also be present, but also do not have to be listed.

2. Monosodium glutamate (MSG), which is added to thousands of food and grocery products through a dozen different innocent-sounding ingredients, imbalances endocrine system function, disabling normal appetite regulation and causing consumers to keep eating more food. This chemical not only contributes to nationwide obesity, it also helps food companies boost repeat business. MSG is routinely hidden in foods in these ingredients: yeast extract, torula yeast, hydrolysed vegetable protein and autolysed yeast. Thousands of common grocery products contain one or more of these chemical taste enhancers, including nearly all ‘vegetarian’ foods such as veggie burgers
(read labels to check).

3. So-called ADHD in children is caused almost entirely by the consumption of processed food ingredients such as artificial colours and refined carbohydrates. Eighty per cent of so-called ADHD children who are taken off processed foods are cured of ADHD in two weeks.

4. The chemical sweetener aspartame, when exposed to warm temperatures for only a few hours, begins to break down into chemicals like formaldehyde and formic acid. Formaldehyde is a potent nerve toxin and causes damage to the eyes, brain and entire nervous system. Aspartame has been strongly linked to migraines, seizures, blurred vision and many other nervous system problems.

5. Most food dips (like guacamole dip) are made with hydrogenated oils, artificial colours and monosodium glutamate. Many guacamole dips don’t even contain avocados.

6. Plastic food packaging is a potent health hazard. Scientists now know that plastics routinely seep the chemical bisphenol A into the food, where it is eaten by consumers. Cooking in plastic containers multiplies the level of exposure. Bisphenol is a hormone disruptor and can cause breast formation in men and severe hormonal imbalances in women. It may also encourage hormone-related cancers such as prostate cancer and breast cancer.

7. Most grocery products that make loud health claims on their packaging are, in reality, nutritionally worthless (like meal replacement shakes, instant chocolate milk, etc.).

8. Food manufacturers actually ‘buy’ shelf space and position at grocery stores. That’s why the most profitable foods (and hence, the ones with the lowest quality ingredients) are the most visible on aisle-end caps, checkout lanes and eye-level shelves throughout the store. The effect of all this is to provide in-store marketing and visibility to the very foods and beverages that promote obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and other degenerative conditions now ravaging consumers around the world.
With thanks to News Target www.newstarget.com, xtracted from a piece by Mike Adams“.

Some books – The 100 Mile Diet

Canadians Alisa Smith and J B McKinnon have written about a year of eating local. It all began with a ‘memorable feast’ when stranded in their off-the-grid summer cottage in the Canadian wilderness, this pair of Canadians turned to the land around them, caught a trout, picked mushrooms in the forest, and mulled apples from an abandoned orchard with rose hips in wine. Every ingredient had a story, a direct line they could trace from the soil to their forks…was it possible to eat this way in their everyday lives?

AND
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – Our Year Of Seasonal Eating
by American novelist Barbara Kingsolver.

“As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain…Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel…

This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air.”