Real Food vs Fake Food

[wosnes]

I found this on my Wednesday morning blog-read:
http://lifespotlight.com/health/2009/03 ... ake-foods/

This, linked to in the comments, is also pretty interesting:
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/200 ... -make.html

[Nichole]

The ingredient lists was a real eye-opener!

I eat a lot of fake food, particularly at lunch, because I never know what to pack for lunch that is healthy. I am getting better, though!! For instance, I've been using those pre-made pizza crusts to make our Friday pizzas but this Friday I am going to try my hand at making whole grain dough with whole grain flour. Wish me luck!

Also, the last two days I haven't been using Splenda in my coffee, but some real sugar instead. It's tasted A LOT better and is more satisfying. Splenda was starting to taste bad to me and the research about Splenda has been bothering me, so I don't know if that taste change is mental or not.

[wosnes]

The ingredient lists was a real eye-opener!

I eat a lot of fake food, particularly at lunch, because I never know what to pack for lunch that is healthy. I am getting better, though!! For instance, I've been using those pre-made pizza crusts to make our Friday pizzas but this Friday I am going to try my hand at making whole grain dough with whole grain flour. Wish me luck!

Good luck! Pizza is one of the few things I won't make. I think it's done much better at a pizzeria with their hotter ovens. I think it tastes terrible with whole grain flour.

I read an article a few years ago about hummus and making pita. It was written by a woman whose family was of Middle Eastern origin. In it, some older relative stated that pita should never be made with whole grain flour because the taste was too "strong" for hummus. That's how I feel about pizza crust. The whole grain taste is too strong for the toppings.

I think we're entirely too focused on "healthy" eating. I find it interesting that our experts are telling us to eat whole grains and avoid the white stuff while Asians still eat copious quantities of white rice, the French still eat bread made from white flour, and the Italians are eating pasta and bread made from white flour. They do, however, eat other whole grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes and have a balance in what they eat. Until our foods were introduced to them, they were all slimmer and healthier than we are -- or have been for some decades.

[Nichole]

This is the recipe I'm using, it's got really great reviews:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Amazing-Wh ... etail.aspx

My husband and I love homemade pizza! Especially the price!! I season it with pizza seasoning and minced garlic and use part-skim mozerella. I add tomato slices to the top of mine, mmm!

[Too solid flesh]

Fascinating, particularly the link to a food timeline, which was created by a librarian, too, Reinhard! Thank you, Wosnes.

[wosnes]

I just don't think home ovens can get hot enough to do the job properly. I'd much rather pay for a pizza now and then. We used to eat pizza every Friday night, but now it's probably less often than once every couple of months.

While I'm here...I'm all for healthy eating, but I think the definition of what's healthy has gotten completely out of line. We've paid too much attention to studies, research and every diet plan and theory that comes down the pike (No-S excepted, of course!) and not enough to tradition and common sense.

While I believe that there are a few things that can't be made properly at home (pizza, for instance), for the most part if we cook at home using real ingredients, we'll be fine.

[Nichole]

Hmmm we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I just love cooking! And pizza's no exception. I've been happy with the taste so far.

[apomerantz]

Thanks for sharing the article. I found it fascinating reading (especially the hot dog part!). I must say that it seemed a little over the top about the Egg Beaters though. It's 99% egg whites with very little else. Of course an animal (rat)eating ONLY egg whites vs. whole eggs is going to look bad. There's very few calories in egg whites!! You could probably starve yourself nicely on an egg white diet. The yolk has great nutrition and fat - - definitely more life sustaining.

I personally have no issue with eating whole eggs, but I really think there are so many other "fake" foods that are a zillion times worse than Egg Beaters . . .

[Mavilu]

450 F is all you need to bake pizza, a commercial oven with a higher temp will just produce your pizza faster...like 10 minutes faster and you can always get a baking stone that will absorb heat like nothing else, unfortunately though, they are wickedly expensive.
I make pizza and focaccia routinely without much trouble, just recently I bought a perforated pan pizza to get that heat circulating better and it has been producing crunchy crusts that could rival any independent corner pizza store (it won't even compare to chain store pizza).

That said, although the first "pizzas" where made of crudely ground wheat, nowadays whole wheat pizza dough is a big no-no for most purists.
I say, as long as some of your grains are whole, you are good to go.

Very nice article Wosnes; I still remember my confusion upon first seeing Egg Beaters at the supermarket, upon arriving to the U.S. and my husband's inability to explain the concept to me in a sensical way, I think in this case, just like in the case of most everything the advice to follow is "to follow the money" as my husband puts it and then decide what is good for you as opposed to what is good for the companies that make these things.
Which leads me to the nitrities in vegetables; I have completed a bunch of nutritional courses at the local college and not once I have come across that particular piece of information, not a single entry on the textbooks; I wonder if we could follow the money from the fact that that crucial info is all but absent in the textbooks.
And does that mean that well intentioned students and proffesionals in the Nutrition profession are taught faulty information dictated by business interests?.
It's sad to even think about it, isn't it?.

[Thalia]

I also think it's a little misleading to label the eggs and milk and bacon you pick up from the local supermarket in the plastic wrap as "real food," because those animals have been fed and doctored up with some horrible stuff -- it's not exactly like you went out and hunted a buffalo.

Although even the nastiest Tyson packaged chicken parts are probably more similar to food than turkey bacon is.

[wosnes]

Which leads me to the nitrities in vegetables; I have completed a bunch of nutritional courses at the local college and not once I have come across that particular piece of information, not a single entry on the textbooks; I wonder if we could follow the money from the fact that that crucial info is all but absent in the textbooks.

http://yourtotalhealth.ivillage.com/are ... child.html

http://www.applegatefarms.com/resources ... rites.aspx

http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Meetings/ ... itrite.pdf

And does that mean that well intentioned students and proffesionals in the Nutrition profession are taught faulty information dictated by business interests?.
It's sad to even think about it, isn't it?.

I'm positive that some -- heck, maybe most -- of the information is being dictated by business interests and powerful lobbyists. It just depends on what point someone wants to teach or prove. It's not a lot different than the medical profession being highly influenced by the pharmaceutical companies. Just Big Food instead of Big Pharma.

I suspect that a lot of the information being taught is faulty because it's based on faulty research -- it's the nature of the scientific beast.

BAD SCIENCE
But if nutritionism leads to a kind of false consciousness in the mind of the eater, the ideology can just as easily mislead the scientist. Most nutritional science involves studying one nutrient at a time, an approach that even nutritionists who do it will tell you is deeply flawed. “The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science,†points out Marion Nestle, the New York University nutritionist, “is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet and the diet out of the context of lifestyle.â€

If nutritional scientists know this, why do they do it anyway? Because a nutrient bias is built into the way science is done: scientists need individual variables they can isolate. Yet even the simplest food is a hopelessly complex thing to study, a virtual wilderness of chemical compounds, many of which exist in complex and dynamic relation to one another, and all of which together are in the process of changing from one state to another. So if you’re a nutritional scientist, you do the only thing you can do, given the tools at your disposal: break the thing down into its component parts and study those one by one, even if that means ignoring complex interactions and contexts, as well as the fact that the whole may be more than, or just different from, the sum of its parts. This is what we mean by reductionist science...

...(the danger of) taking a nutrient out of the context of food; as Nestle suggests, scientists make a second, related error when they study the food out of the context of the diet. We don’t eat just one thing, and when we are eating any one thing, we’re not eating another. We also eat foods in combinations and in orders that can affect how they’re absorbed. Drink coffee with your steak, and your body won’t be able to fully absorb the iron in the meat. The trace of limestone in the corn tortilla unlocks essential amino acids in the corn that would otherwise remain unavailable. Some of those compounds in that sprig of thyme may well affect my digestion of the dish I add it to, helping to break down one compound or possibly stimulate production of an enzyme to detoxify another. We have barely begun to understand the relationships among foods in a cuisine.

[reinhard]

I've always found the idea of fake foods so aesthetically repulsive that I've never been tempted to resort for them for "health" reasons -- nice to see confirmation that my aesthetic sense jives (at least to a degree) with nutritional reality.

The only one of these I'm guilty of resorting to is turkey bacon -- NOT out of "health" reasons, but because we keep kinda sorta kosher at home. Alas, besides being made of who knows what, turkey bacon also can't hold a candle to the real thing in terms of taste. Beef bacon is not a bad substitute, though. Have to remember to get that more often.

Thanks, wosnes!

Reinhard

[CriticalMass]

Wosnes,

I'm not sure why white flour gets a free pass from the "fake food" stigma. From an anecdotal standpoint I'm sure there are plenty of skinny and healthy people that eat turkey bacon and eggbeaters. And others still who have legitimate concerns related to controlling their cholesterol. And if you look hard enough you will find some fat French and Italian people.

I generally agree that less processed foods are better. This is one of the reasons I think whole grain flour is better than white flour, which has been bleached and almost entirely denatured such that one of its few remaining nutritional merits is calories (which is an important quality, we should not forget)

And I don't think white rice has been denatured to the extent that white flour has been.

[Nichole]

I haven't used whole grain flour before, but I have this week. I made that whole wheat pizza crust the other day and will be using it tonight. Can't wait to see how it turns out!!!

[MysteryLover]

Thanks Wosnes for sharing the links. I am really trying hard to stay away from fake/processed foods as much as possible. The food that gets to me the most is coffee creamer. Have you ever looked at the ingredient list?? I use real light cream and enjoy it more for almost the same amount of calories and fat grams as the artificial stuff. In case anyone wants to check out another blog site, I sometimes follow this one: AlmostFit.com . The guy writing it has lost a bunch of weight just by switching to 'real' food.

[wosnes]

Thanks Wosnes for sharing the links. I am really trying hard to stay away from fake/processed foods as much as possible. The food that gets to me the most is coffee creamer. Have you ever looked at the ingredient list?? I use real light cream and enjoy it more for almost the same amount of calories and fat grams as the artificial stuff. In case anyone wants to check out another blog site, I sometimes follow this one: AlmostFit.com . The guy writing it has lost a bunch of weight just by switching to 'real' food.

How about Cool Whip? Gack!

I'm even wary of reduced-fat dairy products. My "rule" is that if the ingredients list of the reduced-fat product is the same as the full-fat product, it's okay. If they've added things to improve taste/texture, it's off limits and I'll just the full-fat version in smaller amounts less often.

[MysteryLover]

Ewww. I totally agree with the Cool Whip! I've never liked that stuff. It looks and tastes so artificial. WW was big on pushing the ff and lf Cool Whip, so I did use it back when I was on that diet. I'm so glad to be able to eat real foods without the guilt. I just enjoyed freshed whipped cream with sliced strawberries last week- yum!

[vmsurbat]

Ewww. I totally agree with the Cool Whip! I've never liked that stuff. It looks and tastes so artificial. WW was big on pushing the ff and lf Cool Whip, so I did use it back when I was on that diet. I'm so glad to be able to eat real foods without the guilt. I just enjoyed freshed whipped cream with sliced strawberries last week- yum!

I worked with a man who was the son of the main chemist who developed Cool Whip. His father would bring home containers marked A, B, C and let his kids taste the various concoctions. Of course, at the time, the kids loved it.

Guess what. The man I knew suffered a *major* heart attack at age 28 (he was very fit--ran marathons), and his attack totally mystified his doctors. He (the man) is convinced that all that fake food did it to him. After meeting him and hearing his story (I was around when he ran his first post-heart attack marathon--a very emotional event for all who knew him), I've never been able to eat Cool Whip or any fake whipped topping. I go for the real stuff every time (but only on an S day )

[Nichole]

I don't even know what the 'real' alternative to cool whip is!

[gratefuldeb67]

Real whipped cream made of cream, not hydrogenated corn syrup.

[Nichole]

Real whipped cream made of cream, not hydrogenated corn syrup.

So you guys just eat heavy whipping cream?

[Spudd]

Real whipped cream made of cream, not hydrogenated corn syrup.

So you guys just eat heavy whipping cream?

Whipped, not whipping. You can buy it in a spray can already whipped, or you can buy whipping cream and whip it yourself using a mixer. Personally, I opt for the spray can every time.

[Thalia]

Sure, I eat whipped cream -- why not? Not that often, but you can't have pumpkin pie without a dollop of whipped cream!

Cool Whip doesn't even taste like food. It's like some kind of polymer. Even on Weight Watchers, I didn't eat it (I didn't eat whipped cream either, I just suffered) -- and I ate some HORRIBLE things on Weight Watchers. Fat-free cheese, anyone? Fat-free mayonnaise? SF, FF, Jell-O instant puddling?

[gratefuldeb67]

Real whipped cream made of cream, not hydrogenated corn syrup.

So you guys just eat heavy whipping cream?

Well it has to have sugar in it too!
But the difference is that Cool Whip is all artificial ingredients and is made out of hydrogenated corn syrup, in place of real cream.

Get a small thing of heavy whipping cream, put a touch of vanilla extract and add some sugar, and wisk it all in a bowl till it's whipped cream!
Yum!!
But that's definitely an S!

[VintageGeek]

Moderately on-topic comment.

I was discussing the concept of "health food" with a trusted friend yesterday, and he was (as usual) giving me crap for being a vegetarian. We talked about the pesticides used in growing fresh produce, and the chemicals used in the processing of "fake" meats. While these are good points, I was unconvinced that I needed to overhaul my diet simply to placate the ick he was feeling over my "phoney baloney" sandwich.

We did stumble upon an interesting concept, though. We first considered the possibility that foods we consider to be "healthy," such as fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains, might only be good for us because it's what our ancestors ate. Our bodies may have adapted and evolved to accommodate this diet, making it the necessary sustaining diet for human beings. We know that our bodies have already developed certain "immunities" because of our popular diets. For instance, the lactose tolerance we were probably never meant to have wouldn't have simply occurred if we weren't guzzling down cow's milk like it was going out of style.

If this were even a little bit true, then it might also be true that, eventually, if our diets become saturated with enough nitrates and aspartame and other such chemicals, our bodies might adapt and evolve to accommodate that new diet, and that Cool Whip, SF FF Jell-O, and Doritos may very well become the "health foods" of the future.

I'm not an anatomy geek (as I've mentioned before), so there are probably a zillion little processes that I'm completely missing here, but I do know that the body is capable of things we can't even dream of.

It's a stretch, I know, but might make for an interesting niche sci-fi story or something.

[Mavilu]

Real whipped cream made of cream, not hydrogenated corn syrup.

So you guys just eat heavy whipping cream?

I'm a fan of "if you don't use it, you lose it" and I'm aware of the million ways in which we don't move as we used to, therefore I buy heavy cream and I whip it by hand in the old fashioned way until is fit to be called whipped cream, that way, I used some calories making my dessert, which to me is only fair, so, the answer to your question is a resounding yes.

[gratefuldeb67]

Hahah have you ever seen Woody Allen's "Sleeper"???

The scene where they are reviving him after 200 years of being in a cryogenic freeze, and the doctors tell him he should think of his health and start smoking cigarettes and eating red meat, and when he questions them about those being bad for you, they say that it's been discovered that people were wrong about them all along and they are considered very healthy! LOL

I don't think Doritos and Cool whip will ever fall under any health food category but yeah, our bodies are definitely equipped to adapt quite well to *a lot* of stuff.

ps.. Why does your "friend" knock you for being vegetarian???

Debs

[wosnes]

I don't think Doritos and Cool whip will ever fall under any health food category but yeah, our bodies are definitely equipped to adapt quite well to *a lot* of stuff.

I'm not sure if they really "adapt" to it, or are just capable of taking a lot of abuse.

[gratefuldeb67]

Yeah well, adapting to changes in diet was what I was responding to from Vintage's post before.. I agree that it's abusive to our bodies to consume lots of crap. But I just meant that in general, people do have an amazing capacity to adapt to all kinds of stuff, whether it's good or bad for us.
That being capable of a lot of abuse, is a kind of adaptation I think.

[JoyceC]

But I've heard the argument against humans drinking milk because cow milk is for calves and so on.
The proteins in cow's milk are "built" for what a calf needs and humans have adapted to drinking it because it seems consumable for many.
I drink it in things like coffee or tea but I don't just drink it by itself or with meals.
I have a cousin who always drank milk with his meals and he has always been very thin.
I guess that just like many other things you have to experiment with what works for you in addition to whether you like eating certain foods or not.

[connorcream]

Thanks for posting this. I have been thinking about real food and I do find myself being satisfied with home cooked food. The biggest ingredient a large "healthy" chain restaurant adds to its food is white sugar. Foods that you wouldn't even think something sweet was in it.

[noni]

Digressing back to the homemade pizza: I would have a problem when baking me pizza in which the cheese would get golden on top. Don't like that. I asked my pizza man about it and he said to put the pizza in a preheated 500 degree oven (yes, 500 degrees) for 10 minutes on the bottom rack. I have done this numerous times and it's the best pizza I ever made. The dough is cooked through and golden on the bottom and the cheese is melted and stays yellow.

But he still gets my business

[bonnieUK]

Thanks for sharing these

I've never been keen on the idea of fake foods, the only one I've been guilty of is margarine, becuase of a dairy intolerance. However, I've discovered that I can tolerate butter in small amounts, so have stopped buying margarine altogether.

I do also eat "fake meats" but try to opt for those with less ingredients, e.g. tofu, or plain quorn pieces (ingredients are just quorn, free range egg white and possibly some seasoning I think).

As for eggs, I personally think it would be better to focus on feeding the chickens better food than altering the final product to make it "healthier".

Speaking of eggs, I work at a University where some scientists (egg-heads? ) found that people who ate 2 whole eggs for breakfast every day had healthy cholesterol levels.

[wosnes]

I've never been keen on the idea of fake foods, the only one I've been guilty of is margarine, becuase of a dairy intolerance. However, I've discovered that I can tolerate butter in small amounts, so have stopped buying margarine altogether.

I do also eat "fake meats" but try to opt for those with less ingredients, e.g. tofu, or plain quorn pieces (ingredients are just quorn, free range egg white and possibly some seasoning I think).

As I've been reading the comments (all 2,523 of them!) at the Well blog entry where Pollan asks us for our food rules, a number of people have responded with some variation of "in theory, can I make this at home?" When I look at the ingredients list of any food, are the ingredients something that I would or could have in my kitchen? And, are the ingredients something I could grow or make or does it require a laboratory to discover, create or develop it?

For example, in theory, we could make butter at home and we could make olive oil or peanut oil, and we could render lard, but we couldn't make canola oil, vegetable shortening, margarine or the various butter-like spreads.

I can make bread with flour, water, salt, and yeast as ingredients, but if xanthum gum is one of the ingredients, I can't make it. I can make cookies, but I probably couldn't make Oreos. I can make potato chips, but I don't think I could make Pringles. I could make cheese, but I couldn't make Velveeta. I could raise a cow and milk it -- and make cheese and so on from the milk, but I'm not sure I could make fat-reduced products.

One person said they couldn't make quorn. I've seen quorn products, but really don't know how it's made or whether or not, in theory, it could be made at home.

[bonnieUK]

One person said they couldn't make quorn. I've seen quorn products, but really don't know how it's made or whether or not, in theory, it could be made at home.

That is an interesting one! I've looked at the quorn website, and also exchanged emails with the quorn company in the past as I was curious how they make their product. From what I gather, quorn is a fungus which is high in protein, most quorn products contain too many additives for my liking, but I don't mind the plain quorn pieces (with the fewest ingredients).

More quorn info here: http://www.quorn.co.uk/CMSPage.aspx?ssbid=6

I'd definitely say it's a gray area in terms of whether you could make it at home, unless you have a degree in fungus cultivation or accidentally grow some in your compost bin

As I don't eat meat I find it preferable to some other fake meats out there though (which often contain a very long list of ingredients)

p.s. I emailed them a while back to ask why they add egg white to their products and they said they find egg white to be the best "binding" ingredient.

[wosnes]

As I don't eat meat I find it preferable to some other fake meats out there though (which often contain a very long list of ingredients)

Another thing folks said couldn't be made at home was TVP or anything made with TVP. I'm sure some of the soy things couldn't be made at home, either.

When I was eating vegetarian or vegan (for health reasons) I tried to avoid meat substitutes. It just didn't make sense to me to omit meat, then eat meat substitutes. I did eat a few, until I read the ingredients list. Then I decided I'd be better off eating the real thing rather than the substitute! Part of the problem, for me, were the ingredients used to make something taste like it's animal counterpart.