One of my greatest passions is health and fitness. I try my best to feed my family healthy and live out a healthy active lifestyle in front of my them. In this society it is really difficult to keep eating healthy and natural foods. Most of the meat and dairy industry is filled with hormones and steroids, most of our produce is filled with pesticides and fertilizers, and our boxed, cans and frozen foods are processed to the point of almost being completely artificial. So what are we to do about this cheap nasty food? My solution is taking one day a month to drive to a special store in the big city to buy good, natural food. I take time to stop by a produce stand here in town and get locally, naturally grown produce. I have found this solution to be inexpensive, just more time consuming. I have done several posts before on label reading. One of my major label “poison” ingredient is partially-hydrogenated oils. It is found in many foods. This ingredient is called trans fat to the consumer. So how do companies label their food on the front in big eye-catching letters, “NO TRANS FAT”, yet looking at the ingredient list the number two or three ingredient is partially hydrogenated ______ oil. The answer is, the company has lied to you. Yes, they have lied, thinking you are dumb, and they got your money in exchange for nasty trans fat. How have they lied? The government has made laws on food nutrition labels, these laws protect us and most of them are very beneficial. One regulation they have put on these companies is that if it has less then one gram, they can put a zero. So if it has .9 grams per serving, they can put a 0. What these genius companies have done, rather than taking the nasty oils out, have lowered their serving size on the labels to reduce the amount of these oils per serving to just below 1 gram per serving. For example, if whip cream had 1.5 grams of trans fat per 2 teaspoons before this law, they could reduce the portion size to one teaspoon, then it only has .75 per serving, so they can put a zero on the label since it now has below 1 gram per serving. They only changed the label, not the food. They can put on the front “NO TRANS FAT”, when really it should read, “TRANS FAT IS IN THIS PRODUCT!”
So what is the big deal about this trans fat anyway? Well, it is a big deal. A few years ago you probably remember a law suit against McDonald’s for a person being obese. Actually, this law suit helped you and I, and all who eat at restaurants. They were using cheap, man-made oils (made in a laboratory) that our bodies cannot use and store naturally. Since it was not a natural vegetable oil, peanut oil, or other natural oil, our bodies store it as trash and it is almost impossible to get your body rid of it. After this lawsuit, restaurants have to use natural oils now. This is why places such as Chick-fil-A have prided themselves for using peanut oil. Although fat is still very much present in fried foods, a natural oil is used, stored, and excreted naturally.
So next time you are shopping for the most important thing you will ever buy- food- then please read your labels carefully. Cheap food usually produces expensive results. The results are weight gain, fatigue, and even more serious side effects. When I dated Josh, my husband, he loved cars. He drove expensive mustangs and muscle cars. He taught me to use only synthetic oil in my oil changes. After we married, he required it. It costs about double a normal oil change, but the clean synthetic oil keeps your engine clean, free and running nicely. In the long run we save money because it causes the engine to run longer and more efficient. Why would we ever treat our bodies differently. If we feed our children and ourselves better foods, we will save money and heartache in the long run.
I just found out a couple of days ago that my coffee caramel machiatto creamer has this junk in it. Bummer. It is found in a lot of dairy product: margarine, ice cream, whip cream, and more! It is now against the law for a restaurant to cook with it.
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