Horrors in our Food

I know this is not a new thing and I haven't just discovered something that no one else has, but in my quest for our family to eat as healthy as we can, I have spent the last month researching for myself how bad a lot of 'foods' are. Coke for instance, will dissolve nails in a couple of days, and clean the concrete well too![:0]
Soy is a big cover-up (they can't afford for the truth to really come out as its a $3 billion industry in USA).
And even 'normal' foods like flour and sugar are really highly processed and bleached.
As a family we are well down the track of eating mainly whole foods, and have already minimmised artificial additives like flavor/color/enhancers/numbers/preservatives. The next thing I want to do is make cleaning solutions (from vinegar/washing soda/baking soda/alcohol etc and soap (this weeks project)
I am looking into Stevia, which is a herb used for sugar replacement, and will find out which commercial sugar is in its rawest form (I think brown?). I know its not raw sugar, even though the name implies.
Does anyone else have any strong feelings on whats in our food?
And it is so funny that the Food Bill appears to be targeting fresh and whole foods, never mind what comes in a can or packet from China!

The solvent abilities of Coca cola are often mentioned, but this is a result of the acidic contents of any soft drink, and most fruit juices for that matter. A lot of what we eat is acidic, and this is not inherently a bad thing.
The problem with soft drink (apart from the absence of any significant nutritional value[])is more to do with the balance of ingredients. There is a high proportion of sugar.
If you want to read more on the ingredients, here is a good starting point.

I heard the same story about coke 20 years ago so thought I would try it. 3 months later the nail was still intact and had only changed colour to black. Water does the same thing to nails. I do get concerned about what is in our foods, especially processed and packaged foods. I think the additives and chemicals they add has a lot to do with the food intollerances and allergies we have today.

thevarneys;405328 wrote: .......
Does anyone else have any strong feelings on whats in our food?
And it is so funny that the Food Bill appears to be targeting fresh and whole foods, never mind what comes in a can or packet from China!

'Food safety' classes raw milk as a dangerous and potentially toxic substance but not so Coca Cola :rolleyes: If you want to educate yourself on the realities of the food industry that supplies our nutrition get yourself a copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Although written from an American viewpoint including the dominance of corn, HFCS and industrial meat production much of the information contained in this book can easily be related to our present and projected situation.

"1/4 of what you eat keeps you alive and 3/4 of what you eat keeps your doctor alive", from the DVD Food Matters Very enlightening, and available from our webstore (link below)

Stevia grows quite easily, especially up your way. I actually cut out all sugar, and that should also include the sugars from carbohydrates which are hard for the body to process. That means I dont do baking any more, dont buy buscuits, eat all those yummy sweet things I used to like.
There must be good organic shops up your way? Otherwise I think chantals in Hastings or Ceres warhouse in auckland mail orders organic around the country. But you really need to get like minded together and buy in bulk to make it worthwhile

wow, I don't know that I could go so far as to give up home baking, but had been looking into stevia. I try to avoid MSG in packaged foods and am doing what I can to ensure my children eat whole foods but sometimes its a matter of priorities and doing the best you can to achieve the end result.

I hear all the information and in the end I could let it make me feel as guilty as anything for bringing my children up on the "wrong" food etc, but at the end of the day I can only do my best. I've always read about the whole coke thing but I like the fact that I can drink "zero" not put on weight and still comply with societies "ideal".

I'm really into using baking soda and vinegar as cleaning methods...although I did just lose $600 in bond because I used it mixed with water to clean carpet and something went horribly wrong!

The only bleaching of flour that is done in NZ is to flour that is specifically designed to be used in sponges, and then it is only to destroy the gluten.
No bleaches are used in white sugar made in NZ. There is no need to with cane sugar, and it adds an unnecessary cost.
Potatoes have so many toxins in them that if they were not natural they would have been considered unsuitable for humans to eat. Have you ever wondered why there is a Rua variety but not a Toru nor a Wha. These were removed because the solanin level in them was too high for humans to handle.
Apples have estrogens in them.
One of the reasons that humans can get enough energy from their food to be more clever than other animals is because they have learnt how to process (ie cook) their food. Without that innovation we would be too busy searching for enough food to be worried about it's chemistry.
Raw cows milk has been proven to be extremely dangerous to some human children, mainly from bacterial errors. Until cows can be farmed and milked in sterile conditions, these risks will always exist. So until then (presumably they will be farmed in cages, by themselves, and fed pasteurised food), reducing the risk is warranted for most of the population.
So, don't believe any of that nonsense unless you have fully checked the risks, both chemically and microscopically.

The average life expectancy in 1200 AD was 30 years of age. They didn't have highly processed food back then ...

What about the likes of Homebrand flour? We had one bag (or more, I hadn't even thought to check!) recently, which has put me off entirely (we don't usually use non-organic flours, but were out of flour, and there was no organic flour to be had just before the hols)... which read something like 'packaged in NZ from imported ingredients'... would that have been bleached? Not that I'll ever buy it again, I'm just curious.

Well said LongRidge, though I must correct your first statement, it is the opposite, if bleaching is done, it is for flours destined for bread making and it is done to help develop gluten. Flours used for sponge making are selected on their low gluten content. This is analysed prior to the grain being milled.

As usual, I'm sitting in the middle of the road on the fence with this (how's that for mixed metaphors!). I grow what I can without spraying and we eat pretty well, with most of our meals made from scratch. But every now and then we have takeaways or the kids have something highly processed (canned spaghetti - yak, I can't stand the stuff, but I buy a big tin for them perhaps three or four times a year).

I do check labels and buy the lowest sugar varieties (eg for tomato sauce and baked beans) which happily tend to be the cheapest. But we do switch between white and grain bread, the kids have a cup of soda stream or fruit juice once or twice a day - but mostly water.

We are a healthy bunch, the kids active and skinny. When I grew up, my mum spent many hours agonising about our food and I refuse to do the same - moderation in everything and all that.

As for stevia, I bought some seeds from Kings Seeds to try and found it too sweet so neglected it, yet it keeps popping up all over the place! I have some growing in one of my potted tomatoes at the moment. Easy to grow for those who care to.

I am not the type of person (IMHO ) to be sucked into 'fads' and propaganda, but do like to read both sides of the argument, and use common sense and wisdom to weigh up what I have learnt. Therefore I am opening a page to find out about life expectancy in early AD as we speak[].
I do think though, the simple adage of mainly eating what foods your grandmother would recognise, is good common sense.
A lot of foods have naturally occurring phytoestrogens in, which apparently help to keep everything in balance, but if you eat enormous quantities of a particular food (which may have a naturally occurring, safe in small amounts ingredient) then things might get out of balance, like the phytoestrogens in soy when people consume soy milk.
I am pretty sure more kids will be having health issues from 'modern processed' food than from raw cows milk. Kids just didnt have the same health issues 100 years ago that they have now - ADHD, ADD, ASD, Diabetes, Obesity etc. I think the main differences between then and now is diet and lifestyle.

Also check out the dirty dozen - the 12 fruit/veges with the most pesticides in. It is for USA but could be similar here, as we import their stuff. Apples were the top of the list......

Organix - youtube doesn't work on dialup - but will look when I am somewhere with broadband. I have also been reading about HFCS[:0]

I am pretty sure more kids will be having health issues from 'modern processed' food than from raw cows milk. Kids just didnt have the same health issues 100 years ago that they have now - ADHD, ADD, ASD, Diabetes, Obesity etc. I think the main differences between then and now is diet and lifestyle.[/quote]

i am not 100% convinced of this to be honest.. the list of 'kid' problems above werent even recognised 100 years ago ( many not even 50 years ago ) .. so whilst we consider it a 'modern lifestyle problem' i dont believe these things are anything new.. we have just recently identified them and given them a name..i think we have had the same levels of asthma and diabetes ( for example ) as we have always had..but alot of the sufferers were sickly and died.. it was just put down to being a sickly kid..and so many children died under the age of 5.. it was just an accepted occurance ..
( ok a little earlier than 100 years ago.... definately victorian and earlier )