READ THY LABEL

"He who knows not and
knows not he knows not
: he is afool-shun him."

DARIUS, the PERSIAN.
Spectator, 11 Aug, 1894

Now that we know all about good and bad fats, good and bad cholesterol, good and bad omegas, all we need to do is avoid the bad things in our food to prolong our lives. It is. however, easier said than done. First, what is good for health may not taste good and even if we develop a taste for it, we cannot be assured that we are getting what we asked for. Sounds confusing? Well, it is, and then some.

The food industry regulations in America are in such state of chaos that it is all but impossible to make an intelligent selection of food based on the information available to the consumer. On the one hand there is the processed food manufacturer who is trying to push a lot of sugar, chemical additives, saturated fat and poor quality proteins under the cloak of a confusing label and on the other hand there is the health food industry which is inviting you to eat bushes and berries.

If in the midst of all this the consumer gets confused, that is precisely the goal of the marketing geniuses. Do you really believe that five-year-old Mikey knows which cereal is good for him and unless you buy it immediately he will throw a temper tantrum in the middle of the grocery store aisle? Or how about an eighteen-year-old who insists on organically grown vegetables laced with raw manure at three times the price for an identical product grown normally and available in your neighborhood grocery store?

In a nutshell, the consumer is in big trouble when it comes to roper nutrition, mainly because he is poorly informed about what he is eating. But it is not entirely the fault of the food industry. Few consumers bother to read and understand the labels on their food products. Therefore, guarantees of proper nutrition must begin with attempts to "read thy label."

The U.S. government has enacted regulations by which all packaged foods must display labels with complete information about their contents. The contents must be listed in the decreasing order of their quantity in the package. You can estimate the quantity of a specific ingredient from the position it appears in the list. But beware of the language used on the labels. This is very carefully, and often very cleverly, designed by people who have spent their lifetime studying rhetoric and jargon. For example, a clever label begins with the following statement: "May contain one or more of . followed by a long list of vegetable oils, animal fats, lard, etc. Most consumers pick up the first few words quickly and assume that this Product is probably made of vegetable oil while, in fact, it may be made mostly of saturated fat. it is easy to understand why such deceptions are necessary from a manufacturer's view point. Given, a long list of possible ingredients he will choose saturated fat, which is the cheapest and gives the longest shelf life to products.

THE COCONUT CONNECTION

An excellent example of deceptive labeling is that of nondairy creamers, where the label clearly reads " may contain one or more of the following . . . coconut oil, safflower oil, etc." Nondairy cream are full of coconut oil, which is cheep and helps improve the taste and appearance of the product. But coconut oil is also one of the richest sources of saturated fat. So whenever you come across a statement Iike, "may contain one or more . . ." assume the worst.

Coconut oil and meat are extremely harmful and should always be avoided. The most convincing evidence to support this recommendation was unveiled at the November 1986 meeting of the American Heart Association held in Dallas. Dr. Harry Davis reported that monkeys fed a diet high in coconut oil had over 79 percent of their heart arteries blocked. Other monkeys fed lower levels of coconut oil experienced almost one-half the incidence of coronary artery disease. Here again the use of fish oil helped reduce the deleterious effect of Coconut oil diet. The plaques found in the arteries of monkeys fed fish oil appeared less likely to cause heart attack than the plaque seen in monkeys who were given no fish oil.

Coconut is perhaps the most widely used component of packaged foods, You may touch these foods,, but only with a 10.'foot pole,

POLYUNSATURATEDORJUSTUNSATURATED

When it comes to reporting how much saturated fat there is in a product, the industry does a superb job of confusing the whole issue. Do you know how much saturated fat is present in margarine boldly labeled, "Made from 100 percent corn oil?"

When it comes to shortening or margarine, the following principles should be kept in mind:

Not all shortening is of vegetable origin,
Not all vegetable shortening is unsaturated,
Not all unsaturated shortening is polyunsaturated
Not all polyunsaturated shortening is good for health.

TABLE 9.1
POLYUNSATURATED To SATURATED RATIO OF SHORTENINGS

Note that except for coconut or palm oil, all animal fats have much higher saturated fat content. The vegetable oils high in polyunsaturated components are quite cheap: why not use sunflower or safflower oil for your daily cooking? Remember, only the P/S ratio tells you the amount of polyunsaturated fat in a product. Insist on finding out the polyunsaturated fat content and not the total unsaturated fat in your foods. If the P/S information is not listed on the label, chances are it is high in saturated fat. If you are still not sure, write to the manufacturer of your favorite product.

THE CASE AGAINSTMARGARINE

Food labels on margarine and similar artificially processed foods like imitation whipped cream are always deceptive. Their singular purpose is to pass Off saturated fat as unsaturated fat by labeling it, "partially hydrogenated," which means that the fat in the product has been chemically changed to make it more saturated. Hydrogenation of vegetable oils results in raising the melting point of oil, giving it a solid consistency.

The degree of hydrogenation determines how solid the product turns out to be but rarely does any label state the extent of hydrogenation. Instead, they all call it "partial" hydrogenation, which may include anything up to 99 percent, without being legally deceptive. SO if you see a label saying the product is made of 100 percent vegetable oil, but partially hydrogenated, assume you are getting a lot of saturated fat.

The chemical process of converting unsaturated oils into saturated fat involves the use of highly reactive metallic catalysts, whose residues may be found in the finished product. These residues are highly reactive and can be injurious to health.

It should be remembered that saturated fat is cheap and stable, since saturation removes the unsaturation sites which react with oxygen to make oils rancid or foul smelling. But the process of hydrogenation defeats the purpose of using a polyunsaturated oil. You do not get the same effect of lowering body fats from margarine as you get from polyunsaturated vegetable oils. The saturated fat consumed as margarine has ch aracteristies similar to the fat in butter or lard.

Using margarine, however, creates a situation which is much more hazardous than the use of natural saturated fats. The process of artificial saturation changes the physical and chemical nature of oils (appendix A-8) so that they are not easily used by the body for energy purposes; they elevate blood cholesterol and triglycerides and accumulate in heart muscles and weaken them. Therefore, the use of margarine not only loads you up with saturated fat but in a form which is alien to the body and can be more dangerous than natural fat.

The case against margarine and all other imitation dairy products is a strong one. When you use butter, you know what you are getting into or what is getting into you, but when you use margarine you are at the mercy of a chemist. Butter has only twice as much saturated fat as margarine so why not use butter but cut the quantities you use in half.

THE HOLY COW

Milk and dairy products contribute more fat to our body than all other sources put together. The health hazards of cow's milk are enough to fill a book but we will review them briefly here. Milk is a mixture of lactose, fat and casein (table 9.2) all of which cause heart disease or disturbances of the gastrointestinal tract. However, the possible contaminants in milk make it doubly undesirable. The fat soluble nature of milk makes it an ideal storage tank for all the cow eats, inhales or produces as refuse in her body. The problem with milk is that it reflects the nature of our environment in a more concentrated form. if our air is not clean, our, milk supply won't be. Our environment, and, as a result fodder, is often heavily contaminated and we get it all back when we drink milk. The common contaminants of milk are pesticides, herbicides, carcinogens, antibiotics, hormones, fertilizers, etc. If this were a man-made product, would you buy it? The vitamins and minerals in the milk can easily be obtained from alternate sources, so why expose your body to heart disease, cancer and a variety of other complications?

TABLE 9.2
COMPOSITION OF MILK

There is a direct correlation worldwide between per capita milk consumption and the risk of diseases from the chemical and microbiologic contamination in milk. Other hazards of milk are allergies and intolerance due to lactose and proteins in milk.

Milk substitutes, with the same beneficial properties and less objectionable properties are casein hydrolysates, soy formulas and goat and ewe milk. Selection of an appropriate alternate must be based on caloric and growth requirements.

Combining milk and peanut butter, a common lunch for millions of American children, is also very dangerous. The peanut butter is full of arachidonic acid, omega-6 fatty acid, which directly converts to the PGS which cause all the problems of the arteries and heart. On top of that, the milk adds fat, which increases blockage of arteries, increases the number of fat cells in the body and stores carcinogenic chemicals. There can be no more devastating combination of foods for children.

THE FINAL COMMANDMENT

There is really only one goal in selecting foods; to avoid all types of fats where possible. Currently, we take 50 percent of all of our calories as fats, a figure which can easily be cut in half without sacrificing the greasy taste we cherish so much. We can start by becoming intelligent readers of our food labels.