The Black Liszt

Ingredients: Whole Foods Sneaks in Sugar

You really do have to read and understand the ingredients list of any food you buy. Even places like Whole Foods need to be carefully checked. Yes, the same Whole Foods that charges "whole paycheck" prices to supposedly only sell food that's good for you.

The Whole Foods brand Olives

Whole Foods is a grocery store with a huge selection of products produced by others. Whole Foods also has its own brand of products, some with standard packaging and some that are custom-packed. Someone I know went shopping there the other day and bought some Whole Foods olives, intrigued by what olives with "tangerine and chilis" would taste like.

After getting them home, my friend opened up the package and tried a couple of the olives. Yuck, what's this? These taste outrageously sweet! These are supposed to be flavored hot and with citrus! What's going on? At that point she took a closer look at the label:

Surprise! The third ingredient after olives and water is "cane sugar." More sugar than oil, more than vinegar, more than tangerines, more than red pepper and more than salt.

This being Whole Foods, the ingredient of salt isn't just any old salt, it's supposedly "sea salt," which sounds like it's better for you somehow. And the sugar isn't any old sugar, it's "cane sugar" -- oh, right from sugar cane, it's "natural," right?

Sugar is a Big Problem

Most people like sugar, which is part of why deserts can taste so good. The trouble is that people who make food only care that you like it and want to buy more of it; they mostly don't care whether the food is healthy for you to eat. Regardless of what they say. Therefore, sugar of one kind or another is added to an astounding range and variety of foods, including ones that are "supposed" to be sweet.

Even the CDC, the well-funded government organization whose whole purpose is to keep us healthy, agrees that sugar is a problem.

Weight gain and obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Is that all? In the section on obesity, the CDC admits that obesity itself is a serious problem:

This being the CDC, all they do is admit that obesity is "associated with" those fatal things and nowhere do they spell out the curse of sugar added to foods and the need to read the ingredients. The picture above shows obviously sweet cupcakes, while much of the problem is with foods that aren't obviously sweet.

Getting information about sugar

You may have noticed my use of phrases expressing cynicism about the CDC. Although the statements I've excerpted above are true, they have appeared on the CDC after decades of being studiously ignored by this corrupt agency. This is because the CDC has long practice in putting its authority and the patina of "science" behind what various powerful pressure groups want to advance their own interests.

Sadly, like with so many other things, it's up to each person to look out for him/her self. In this case, it's pretty simple: moderate your ingestion of sugar in any form; avoid buying and eating packaged food that has any form of sugar added to it; for this purpose, trust only the small-print list of ingredients.

Conclusion

You can't depend on the idea that a "health oriented" store will only sell you healthy food. You can't depend on how a food product is labelled. You have to take control of your own health, which means taking control of what you eat, which means taking care about the ingredients of the food you buy. It's not too hard, it doesn't take much extra effort, and the payback in terms of length and quality of life are more than worth it.

Ingredients and Truth

What's inside the food I'm eating or the substance I'm putting in my body? As I hope we all know, two of the most important factors in health and sickness are WHAT and HOW MUCH we ingest. You would think that paying attention to what we ingest and its varying impacts, good and bad, would be front and center in research and education. Yes, we're told to have a "healthy" diet. We're told some things about what that means. Sadly, a great deal of what we're told is wrong, and even worse, few people pay attention to the actual SUBSTANCE, i.e. the ingredients, of what we eat.

Even though lists of ingredients are printed on food packages in tiny print, how many people read them and make informed decisions based on what they read? Based on the incredible and growing fraction of people in our society who are overweight, I think it's fair to guess that the number of people who make such judgements for themselves is minuscule and, unlike their bodies, shrinking.

A Lesson about Reading the Ingredients by the Dentist

I went to the dentist last week for a periodic cleaning and exam. At the end the hygienist prepared the little plastic bag she gives patients containing a toothbrush, paste, and floss. They are freebies by the manufacturers hoping to win new customers. The hygienist added an extra box of a different toothpaste, saying that my gums bled quite a bit and I should try this toothpaste that reduces gum bleeding.

OK, I thought. I had a couple minutes waiting for the X-ray and for the dentist to come examine me, so I examined the box.

See the red streak on the bottom, drawing your attention to "Helps prevent bleeding gums?" My next thought was "I wonder how it pulls that off?" Yes, I know, I'm a nerd, but that really was my next thought. So I turned to the ingredients. Here they are:

My curiosity was immediately piqued. Just one active ingredient! And it's fluoride, the thing common to all toothpastes. 0.454%. Pretty exact amount. It's purpose is stated to be "Anticavity, Antigingivitus." Nothing about bleeding!

Let's look at the other box, the one with the "regular" toothpaste. Let's see what's different about the ingredients. Maybe there's a different amount of fluoride?

Wow. Exactly the same active ingredient, the same in every detail. But the purposes! The same animosity towards cavities and gum rot, but somehow in this toothpaste the fluoride has a new, added purpose: fighting hypersensitivity! I wonder if that's accomplished by putting the fluoride through extra training or something to give it a new purpose in life? What's that about?

Let's look at the front of the box:

Things are getting clear. The normal toothpaste is called Sensodyne, supposedly to attack sensitivity. With fluoride. Same active ingredient.

It's clear, number one, that our wonderful regulators don't care how products are described or sold, so long as the universally-ignored ingredients list in tiny print is accurate.

Oh, wait! Maybe I'm being too hasty! I'd better check the so-called "inactive" ingredients. Maybe one of them is the key thing that makes the difference.

Here we are for Sensodyne:

And the corresponding information for the terrific product that helps prevent bleeding:

A careful check shows that the two products have the same, the identical blankety-blank ingredients!

I'm a complete, total pain in the neck, I know, so I mentioned this politely as a question to my dentist and hygienist. They had no explanation. Oh, the hygienist said, it's what the salesperson said.

I've had many different dentists over the years as I've lived in different places. I've always gotten the little bag of freebies at the end. Has there been an uprising in the dental professional community about this decades-long lying and misrepresentation? If you've heard of it, please let me know.

Conclusion

The big companies making toothpaste and other things you put in your mouth depend on their ability to lie about the virtues of what they're selling and get away with it. They know through experience that no one pays attention to ingredients and that the relevant professionals ignore the issue if they're even aware of it.

The example I've given is trivial. It's just toothpaste and whatever you pick is unlikely to hurt you. But things that you put in your mouth and then swallow or breathe in are a whole different matter. The trouble is that exactly the same blatant lying goes on with food products as I've illustrated here with toothpaste. It would stop if the government made it stop. But it won't. It's the government, after all, the same government that continues to dish out misinformation about nutrition.

It will only stop when consumers rise up and act: start paying attention to ingredients and stop buying products with ingredients that are bad for them. Do schools teach this? I would say that schools spend 10X more time on sex education and political indoctrination than they do on teaching kids what ingredients mean and how to select and control what they eat -- except that implies that the amount time spent on that is greater than zero, which it probably isn't in most cases.

I will return to this health-essential issue in future posts.