Doggone Crazy!

Michele John, certified Genesis Coach

I used to read labels to see how many calories were in a particular food, because I was dieting and I needed to count every calorie that was consumed in a given day.  Now my world is about reading labels for the content of what the particular product has in it.  I read labels to figure out whether a food choice is creating health for me or if it will de-generate my health.

I remember very distinctly this past June listening to Sheri and David talking about some “new” name given to some form of junk sweetener.  I became intrigued by that, as I guess I never really thought much about how hard the big food industry works to keep us consumers in the dark on just what exactly it is we are eating.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine asked me about a new “protein powder” designed for weight loss.  Well, the first ingredient was a decent blend of whey and plant proteins.  The next ingredient was “Fiber blend”. I thought, hmmm, what is that?  I asked the company for their nutritional data and found out that it is a blend of three ingredients.  The first is Fibersol-2.  It is made by ADM (a top producer of GMO corn) and basically it is renaming of Maltodextrin, which is a corn sugar.  The next ingredient is guar gum.  Guar gum is commonly made from corn as that is a cheap way to produce this thickening agent.  The final ingredient in the blend was CitriSweet.   CitriSweet is “CitriSweet is a unique blend of Oligofructose, Fructose, and Roxlor’s proprietary sweetening system using Natural Flavors and Citrus Extracts. CitriSweet is 10 times as sweet as sugar.” Basically, their fiber blend, while it did offer up a decent amount of fiber in this product, it was basically a “new” sweetener.

I like my protein powder to be just that, protein powder.  I like my nut butters to be 100% nuts, not hydrogenated oils, sugar and other ingredients including sardines (yep, check out Jif’s Omega3 product).  I choose to not buy the pretend foods that are being massed produced and instead opt for real, whole, nutrient dense foods.  That seems doggone sane to me!