Processed "Health" Food

This is intended to be a consumer warning. Many products on the market available today claim to be healthy, using buzzwords and phrases such as “Low-fat,” “No sugar,” “Cholesterol Free,” “Whole Grain,” “Paleo,” and the newest member to the foray, “Gluten-Free.” Under normal healthy circumstances, some of these phrases are how you should be eating in the first place. However, because they are healthy concepts that people assume are good for them, marketing experts capitalize on these notions and find ways to make otherwise nutritionally poor foods sound healthy.

Take the Paleolithic Diet for example. The paleo craze took off several years ago and while the “true” definition of what the Paleo diet varies slightly between individuals, the general consensus is pretty consistent; the premise is simple, only eat foods that our ancestors (Paleolithic) were able to find. Our Paleolithic ancestors were classified as hunters and gatherers, which means their diet consisted of think nuts, seeds, copious amounts of seasonal fruits and vegetables, and wild game such as fish and other hunted animals. Absent from this list are many legumes, dairy and grains; because these categories of food did not exist before the practice of farming. And with the image of the average modern adult compared to the image of a Paleolithic era adult, it’s not a surprise as to why so many people gravitated towards this diet.

But not everyone is willing to give up their sweet tooth and other dietary cravings that have put them in trouble in the first place. So, in order keep their cookies and desserts, people have devised ways to modify foods that were only available in the Paleolithic era in an attempt to keep consuming poor food choices that got them into trouble in the first place. And by a careful wording and manipulated philosophy, anything well intentioned and can become just as damaging. The following example demonstrates my point.

This is the ingredients list from a bag of Chips Ahoy chocolate chips cookies, some not so delicious ingredients listed. Most people will not have the majority of these ingredients in their pantry.

The second image takes a look at the list of ingredients from a “paleo” chocolate chip cookie. Of these 14 ingredients, I can make 9 if given the original source fruit, hand tools, alcohol and a lot of time: macadamia meal, monk fruit extract, orange pulp, coconut flour, chocolate, vanilla extract, turmeric tapioca, and sea salt. I could make palm and coconut oils by hand, but a food processor vast improves the speed and quantity produced. Erythritol, baking soda and xantham gum cannot be produced in my kitchen (not safely or without industrial chemicals.) The ingredients I could make by hand, would take hours to weeks to produce, and no cookie is worth that kind of effort.

If something like this was to be attempted in a Paleolithic era, that person very like would have not survived long, because the calories required to produce such a trivial piece of foods greatly exceeds the calories it would provide, leading to exhaustion, starvation and death. A piece of fruit and some nuts would have filled the desire for energy with a touch of sweetness. And this is where the profits come from preying on the uneducated or uninformed.

This is only one example found with a 10 second Google search, out of many more. So, just because something is touted as being healthy or uses any number of health buzzwords, you should still take the extra few seconds to skim the ingredients list if you really are concerned about what you put into your body.

In Health, 

Dr. Sean McKnight