Sodium = 24%

Can any foodstuff where almost a quarter of its weight is Sodium be any good for anybody. I am not talking about a bag of potato chips, by the way. This is on the back of a pack of Presidents Choice Mediterranean Chicken.

Apart from having salt added, it has these too..

• Sodium lactate has a mild saline taste. It may be used in shampoo products and other similar items such as liquid soaps as it is an effective moisturiser.
• Sodium diacetate, usually in combination with lactates, is widely used by the meat packing industry as an excellent anti-microbial preservative. Vinegar taste on potato chips or tacos can be achieved by adding 0.1% sodium diacetate.

As an added treat for Type 2 Diabetics, it also has Dextrose added.

• Dextrose, commonly called glucose, d-glucose, or blood sugar, occurs naturally in food, and is moderately sweet. It is a monosaccharide (basic unit of carbohydrates, C₆H₁₂0₆) and has a high glycemic index (digested carbohydrates ability to raise blood glucose levels, also called Gl) ranking at 100.

On the front of the pack, it states that there are no added nitrites. Is this because two other Sodium compounds have been found which do the same job. The two compounds above have been passed as safe, but then so have nitrites.

Loblaws will think that I have it in for them, but I don’t. All processed foodstuff is the same, and all manufacturers will be looking for a way to re-word the labelling such that it appears to be better for us.

I can never see a time when North America or the UK will ever stop charging a premium for healthy food. If I won the lottery, I would scarper back to Spain where people still eat decent stuff and one has to pay a premium to buy the crap that kills us..

Informative but deceitful..

This is the state of food labelling in Canada.

I watched CBC’s Marketplace last night. It was all about lousy labelling. You know the type, full of health claims, little logos which suggest a healthy option. They had 10 products tested, and the #1 culprit was a meat product.

Maple Leaf’s ‘Natural Selections’ came under fire over wording on the front of the packaging. There is an ingredient on the front which seems innocuous enough called ‘cultured celery extract’ which is………….. NITRITES.

It urns out that there is as much nitrite in Natural Selections as there is in the cheaper Maple Leaf cold cuts, so how can it be healthier?

Maple Leaf and most other food producers know that the average shopper will be caught out by false or deceitful claims if the right kind of wording and logos are applied to the front of the packaging. Even the colour of the packaging can make a difference.

But wait.. Is it entirely the fault of the food producers? Well, the deceit is for sure, but not the food stuff or what is added to make it last in packaging.

If you give families the choice of a grocery store which always has a good choice of food stuffs always available regardless of the time of day, or run the gauntlet of having to shop in maybe five different small specialized stores but not always get what is required, they will choose the large grocery store almost every time.

The ONLY way to package processed food stuffs or any foodstuffs such that they last is to add PRESERVATIVES.

Foodstuff manufacturers try to ensure that their products will still look like foodstuffs when the package is opened. The manufacturers do their best to keep it properly before shipping, the shipping people do their best to keep it properly before delivery to stores, stores do their bets to store and display properly before it is sold, but after it is sold, there is no telling what will happen to it.

There are so many shoppers who are ill-informed about how to store foodstuffs. It is amazing that more people aren’t poisoned daily.

Food is bought at the beginning of a shopping trip and then left in a vehicle for an unspecified amount of time while other store types are visited, but if these people are challenged, 99% will say that it should be ok. When the foodstuff finally makes it back home, it may sit around for a while, and when it is finally put away, stuff that shouldn’t be put in a refrigerator often will be, and stuff not suitable for freezing will be put in the freezer. All of the people will expect the foodstuff to still look and taste like it would if it was absolutely fresh.

It is the way that people want to shop and sheer ignorance and unwillingness to learn how to store food properly that forces food manufacturers to add ingredients which will give us all cancer long term.

In North America, there is no way to turn back the clock. The entire food process is so entrenched, and all of the small food retailers who did have the knowledge and skills are gone.

To anybody reading this from outside of North America, take note. If you don’t want to subject your family to medical conditions which may terminate lives early, don’t buy processed food. Stay loyal to the small corner store which still sells preservative free food.

Avoid processed meats, mass produced bread in polythene bags, anything with health claims all over it. Instead of buying ready prepared meals, make them up yourself. It can be fun, and is much better for you. 

Is it real?

I don’t know about you, but I really detest polythene packed sliced white bread. It may be a miracle of mass production, and it may contain all of the ingredients which go to making bread, but bread it most definitely isn’t.

I recently ate a couple of slices of Dempster’s Smart16, and like almost all other white sliced loaves, it had a distinctive taste which I did not recognize as being bread. I sometimes think that eating the wrapper would be more beneficial.

The manufacturing process includes ‘bleaching’ which is what accounts for the aftertaste for many people. See here..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_bleaching_agent

This is an interesting website too.. http://www.womenfitness.net/ugly_truths.htm

Should anybody be eating this stuff? I don’t think so. When I was a kid, we didn’t have bread like the above. It was all baked locally and for the most part was a pleasure to eat. Modern white sliced bread is just a convenience, and in my opinion an unpleasant convenience at that.

Wholemeal bread is not much better either when produced in the same way. If you are going to eat bread, try to buy locally baked. Many major grocery stores in Canada make their own, and the difference in taste and texture is night and day.

Do your kids a favour and stop giving them the crappy stuff. It is only marginally cheaper and will save your kids developing health problems later in life which will cost them more than just money.

Note that while I have mentioned the Dempster name, ALL mass produced bread is made to the same standards, and should be avoided at all costs. As long as people buy this stuff, the manufacturers will have no problem supplying it. They don’t care as long as they make money.

Bad news on the health front..

The preponderance with pre-packaged, reconstituted products in North America is alarming, and it is no wonder that so many have health issues.

I have recently been diagnosed as being a diabetic type 2, and I blame it on the food that I have been eating for the last eight years. Before coming to Canada, I ate a southern European diet, almost all fresh and no crap like pizza, burgers and other reconstituted junk.

In all of my travels, apart from the UK where many have adopted the North American fast food way, I have never come across so many people with so many health issues.

Everything in North America has to be fast, not just at pizza and burger joints, but also in preparation at the food processing plants.

If you want a healthy life, make a stand and stop buying anything which has been reconstituted from mechanically recovered processes.

I watched a bit of Jamie Oliver’s program on TV and watched as US school boards took legal action to prevent the guy even being allowed in school cafeterias, let alone the kitchens. Absolutely deplorable on all counts..

I know that the word ‘conspiracy’ is a dirty word in the US, but I really do think that there is a conspiracy between the food producers and health providers. Nobody seems to be willing to change, and resistance is put up because nobody wants to lose out financially.

Get your heads out the sand, people. Your governments do NOT care. Food producers do NOT care. Health providers thrive on your illnesses and diseases.

Health is entirely in your hands, and never forget it.

More on ‘Cold cuts’..

As discussed in another post, cold cuts sold in packages have an excessive amount of preservatives in them. Look on the packs.

OK, so maybe you think that getting cold cuts from the deli counter of your favoured grocery store will be better. Think again, because it is a false assumption.

Metro deli counters sell cold cuts which do not have the harsh taste of the packaged stuff. I assume that there is some preservative in them, but just not as much.

This is NOT true of Loblaws deli counter. They have TWO variants for sale. The cheaper shaved cold cuts are every bit as bad as the packaged hams, chicken, turkey etc. If you want nitrate free cold cuts, you have to pay between 80c to a dollar more for the more brightly labelled meats.

None of the items on a deli counter have labels showing what is in them, and NEVER assume that they are better for you. Ask to taste a piece first before committing to buying.

Fish.. Is it safe to eat?

I bought a pack of frozen Basa fish recently. To be honest, I had no idea what type of fish Basa was, but I knew that it was not part of the Cod family. While I was bread crumbing, the consistency was slightly rubbery, so I looked it up on the Internet.

Yikes. Malachite Green, human excreta, industrial waste, was their nothing to which these fish were not subjected? Naughty Asians for making those poor old Basa eat nasty stuff. You almost put me off eating any of the pack at all, and I am not sure that I will ever buy more.

The above made me read up on fish generally, and this is part of what I found.

http://ottawa.ca/residents/health/living/nutrition/healthy_eating/fish_facts_en.html

http://www.intraspec.ca/fish.php

http://www.fas.usda.gov/ffpd/Newsroom/Articles/Catfish__Basa_5-07.pdf

http://www.epi.state.nc.us/epi/fish/safefish.html

http://www.iaglr.org/scipolicy/issues/contamseds.php

Yikes. Canada and the USA are no better. Both countries seem more interested in how it affects the economy more than how it affects health, but why wouldn’t they?

With all of the testing that can be done, we can learn what is good and bad, but don’t kid yourself that  pollution of environments is anything new. The industrial Victorians didn’t give a hoot what they let out into water tables, rivers  and oceans. I doubt that  fish has been safe for the last two hundred years and more.

So, does fish pass my ‘safe’ test?  The jury is out presently. Land based farm animal diets puts them in the ‘suspicious’ category too.

What is a foodie like me to do? Ignore all of the warnings, or go hungry for days at a time? Maybe if I over cook everything, that will help. If it doesn’t, I will end up in an obituary list in the local newspaper.

Yikes..   

CPAP sucks..

Well, actually blows, but you know what I mean. For those who don’t know, CPAP = Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, is the gold standard for the treatment of Sleep Apnea, and it is administered via a machine which pumps air through a humidifier into a mask which has to be strapped to one’s face.

Sounds like torture? You betcha.

Modern CPAP machines are very quiet, so noise is not the issue, but the mask and tube? There are two types of mask, nose only nose or ‘nose and mouth’.

The nose only mask pressurises when you turn on the main box, and you can feel the pressure too. Although breathing out is slightly harder than without, it is not as bad as one might imagine. However, open your mouth and you feel a sudden gush of air from your nose into your mouth, and if you close your mouth quickly, your cheeks puff up like a hamster.

Coughing produces similar results, and can wake you up, which is totally the opposite of what the machine should be achieving.

Anybody who suffers with claustrophobia should not use the nose and mouth mask. It is horrid, but only slightly worse than the other one.

I sleep with one hand under my face, and always have done. The tube gets caught up sometimes, and the mask moves. Air rushes into my eyes generally which, surprise surprise, wakes me up.

If you suffer with a blocked nose, CPAP is useless. If you suffer with claustrophobia as I do, it is distressing. I used to look forward to getting to sleep. Now I wait and wait until I am really tired.

It is easy to see why most give up on these infernal torture machines. They are not nice.

There are other ways to get over sleep apnea and, at the next meeting, I will discuss the problem with the sleep study doctor. I will never ever get used to CPAP.