I completely agree that it’s simply a matter of common sense to avoid processed food, and as you mentioned, much of what we’ve been told about nutrition goes against this.

Congratulations on your weight loss and I hope your improved diet continues to serve you well! If you still find cooking to be inconvenient, consider cooking meals in bulk so that you don’t have to cook every day. It may be harder to do for a full family, but it can save a great deal of time and make it much easier to follow a healthy diet.

By the way, diglycerides are simply fat molecules with two fatty acids molecules attached to a single glycerol molecule. Monoglycerides have only one fatty acid molecule. The fat naturally found in food tends to be in the triglyceride form, but is broken down into diglycerides and monoglycerides during digestion. Monoglycerides and diglycerides are often used in processed foods to help incompatible ingredients such as oil and water blend together. They’re probably not much of a concern, but considering that they’re often synthetically made when used as food additives and that they generally don’t exist naturally in food, it’s probably best to avoid them.

This was when I started to read labels and was horrified at the crap the food companies are putting in our food! Just one example is I switched to an organic peanut butter. The ingredients are organic peanuts, sea salt, and honey. The Jiff brand I had been buying contains (copy and pasted from the website): PEANUTS AND SUGAR. MOLASSES FULLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS (GRAPESEED AND SOYBEAN), MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, SALT. I don’t even know what a diglyceride is and I was feeding it to my kids. I don’t want to even go into what is in a box of hamburger helper. Certain brands of apple sauce and yogurt have high fructose corn syrup in it.

It’s a huge problem what we have been taught about nutrition. We have been taught to look at the labels for low fat snacks, never reading the ingredients. Margarine (with all of the processed crap) was better that butter. Avocados are full of fat. Red meat is unhealthy and we should eat chicken (loaded with pesticide residues, antibiotics and hormones of course).

My family has lost over 134 lbs combined and my youngest is now in the overweight category instead of obese. The ONLY change we have made is eliminating the processed foods.

Yes, e-waste is definitely a concern, especially with how rapidly technology becomes outdated. However, waste in general is a problem as well. Too many people simply buy things that they don’t really need. Check out The Story of Stuff. There are some points to it that I think are flawed, but I think the overall concept is very real and it’s a powerful video. I definitely plan on writing about this topic in the future.

I didn’t know that glossy screens have the potential to be more dangerous. Thanks for sharing the link!

I was very focused on the personal computers area. It is great I did not request yet for an iPhone from my dad! I do not really use cellphones!

Whatever it is, the less unneeded gadgets, the less stress on you and earth: you save a lot on e-waste! E-waste is a problem. Those who do not appreciate the value of not being materialistic will continually get enticed to Apple’s products!

If you can, write an article about e-waste. Fits Natural Bias! I do not know much about e-waste! How fast technology improves contributes to this problem.

Many people let their materialism take control of them, so in the end Apple only gets a very small amount of blame!

Bit by bit materialism is losing its grip on me.

I realized many businesses are very dependent on the behavior of consumers! They do everything they can to deceive to change the behavior.

A cousin of mine told me as a joke: ‘Maybe you can make a company better than Apple’ [laughs]
We can!

This another example of it is not always “all or nothing” as well…

They are mostly proprietary on the music side.

One thing I hate about apple with their personal computers: glossy screens, the glare is not good for eye health. They glossed their iMac offerings since August 2007.

Here is a site you might enjoy outlining the disadvantages of glossy screens.

I have commented on that site.

Bottom line: Despite all the shortcomings, at least they innovate. They can still do much much better!
As they said at the start of 2007, “the first 30 years is just the beginning”.

This is a pretty major tangent, but I’m not sure I agree with you about Apple. I think they are very proprietary in nature which is not putting the consumer first. It was only recently that they started selling music through Itunes in the standard MP3 format. Prior to that, they only sold it in their own proprietary M4A format which is very difficult to use in non Apple devices. Similarly, the memory in the iPhone is internal, so if you want to increase its capacity, you have to buy a new one. For this reason, I bought a G1 instead because it uses a removable SD card. I have a friend who had significant issues with the battery of an expensive high capacity iPod. Through his research, he found it to be a common problem and was told by Apple that the batteries, which are not meant to be replaceable, are only designed to last a few years. I think that’s pretty ridiculous considering the cost of their devices.

I do consider Apple to be a reputable company, but I don’t think that they’re values are any better than those of the companies that are pushing unhealthy processed foods on us. And for anyone who thinks that Apple’s products don’t affect our health, think again! According to the EWG’s report on cell phone radiation, the two most recent iPhone models are among the highest producers of radiation which makes them more of a risk for causing brain tumors.

On a more interesting and health related note, here’s a great video of Bill Maher talking about health and the pharmaceutical industry.

I found that the most of the big entities look directly on profit (reactive approach, short-sighted) and fail to look deeper (proactive, laser focus sight, sustainability).

I take Apple, Inc. as an example, by truly valuing the consumer most of the time and being passionate about what they should do to help consumers enjoy their products, they earned many fans. That is looking indirectly into profits. They sense the power of consumers. I feel I became creative as a side effect.

Compared to:
Microsoft which short-sightedly looks directly into profits, fail to make consumers truly enjoy their products. They forget the power of consumers, so they treat ordinary users like criminals: license keys galore for windows. They are just obsessed with controlling everything!

Here is blog you might enjoy:
RoughlyDrafted Magazine

I would like to add to Bill Maher’s quote:
The [reactive and obsessive approach to] profit [and control] motive poisons everything!

Robin – I think gardening is a great way to get high quality food for less money, but more importantly, it’s a great way to connect with nature and understand the importance of sustainability. I really look forward to starting a vegetable and fruit garden when the time is right.

The natural health market is growing rapidly which is inspiring many large companies to get involved. As such, I totally agree that it’s still possible to make bad decisions in a health food store. I’ve been trying to explain to my wife for several years that organic sugar is still sugar. Despite what you say about Whole Foods, be happy that you have one! We have nothing of the sort. Fortunately, there’s at least one small local health food store that’s pretty good.

Kelly – I’m glad you liked the phrase. I hope it will help more people to realize that good health is about more than taking supplements, and that using them to chase symptoms is not much better than relying on prescription medications.

I love this phrase, “Supplements are secondary” – what a simple way to help people understand that food is first and most important.

Thanks for joining in on Real Food Wednesday!

Kelly

If you can… grow as much as you can of your own food, freeze it, dry it, can it, whatever, and fill you bellies with good raw organic veggies all summer. Use lots of organic compost in your garden and grow it all organically, or support local organic farmers by buying directly from them, most of them are more than willing to sell to anyone.

Also, just because a person shops in the a health food stores does NOT mean you are getting healthy food. Since our local Wild Oats (which was bad enough) was bought out by Wholefoods, it seems you can’t buy anything without sugar in it. So read your labels. make your own soups from scratch. It only takes 10 minutes to chop veggies, throw some beans in and herbs and let the soup simmer while you do something else.

It you want to get healthy you have to get smart and be proactive about what you eat.

Great Job Vin.

Andrea – Thank you for sharing my website and helping to spread awareness. I truly appreciate it and am happy to have assisted in your effort to help your friends.

Stephen – Yes, even organic food tends to be less nutritious than foods grown 50 to 100 years ago. It’s one of many reasons why modern agriculture needs to adapt more sustainable methods. I’m actually surprised that the USDA would publish such data. If you happen to remember where it was, I’d love to know and check it out.

meatlessmama – The “Smart Choice” program is an excellent example of the food industry’s influence and why it’s bad. The green check mark on the packaging of foods like Froot Loops that’s meant to symbolizes a “smart choice” just goes to show that you can’t trust labeling. Kellog’s has even gone as far as including Froot Loops as part of their “Fuel for School” program suggesting that it’s a good breakfast choice for school children. Ridiculous!

ægil – Common sense is often a beautiful thing.