Eating Right....

So I found that eating right can be so difficult. Which shouldn't be so surprising because if it was easy everyone would be doing it. But you'd think the food companies would want us all to eat right and live long prosperous lives instead of manufacturing a bunch of food with no nutritional value and potentially harmful additives.  I mean if we're all dead, who's going to eat the food?

Let's take Doritos for example. No doubt there are million of these cheesy tortilla chips being gobbled tonight as people watch the Super Bowl. I couldn't help but share a little tidbit about this snack.








I was at a meeting on Friday at work where we were given lunch. I opened my lunch box and found a bag of Doritos in there to my horror. I wanted to trade them for something else and found an abandoned bag of Kettle Chips. So I flipped it over and read the ingredient list. There was three things listed. Potato, vegetable oil and sea salt.  I flipped over the bag of Doritos and found a list of over and there was over 20 ingredients listed, half of which I couldn't pronounce. But the one that stood out to me was the MSG.

Monosodium Glutamate (a.k.a. MSG, “hydrolyzed vegetable protein,” Accent, natural meat tenderizer, and Aginomoto)–: This chemical is added to many fast- and commercial foods due to its’ addictive effect on our bodies.  According to TruthInLabeling.org, the FDA refuses to label MSG as the neurotoxic, endocrine disrupting, processed free glutamic acid that it is.  Although Glutamate is produced naturally by our bodies, MSG in its’ commercial form is a chemically grown substance, and is used to enhance flavors and make us unable to “eat just one”.   Ingredients are listed in order of highest proportion.  The fact that this ingredient is 8th in the list means that there is just slightly more wheat flour than MSG in Doritos.

 A neruotoxin is in our potato chips? For those who don't know what a neurotoxin is, in the words of Joe Clark "It kills your brain cell son, it kills your brain cells."  Yes people Doritos are killing our brain cells. And the FDA refuses to label it as so?? That doesn't surprise me. Unless there's a lawsuit or people are dropping dead left and right the FDA usually is slow to act on the public's behalf.  Peanut butter salmonella poisoning ring a bell?

But it's not only potato chips that carry this ingredient. If you're Caribbean you've had the spice called "Maggie" or bouillon cubes, the Latino seasoning Goya Sazon®, Lawry's® seasoning salt.  Those all have MSG in them. 

And don't get me started on artificial coloring!! Yellow #5. ( another ingredient in Doritos) What the heck is that? And why is it in everything?Artificial colorings, another thing added to our foods so that we don't know what we're eating is not really what we think it is.

Remember those 25 cent juices we used to buy at the corner stores. You couldn't even call by flavor, you just knew them by the color. And noticed how the colors always seemed so bright. that's because those "juices" are filled with industrial waste, otherwise known as artificial food coloring. I haven't seen one those things in a long time until I saw a friend of mine feeding that crap to her toddler. I cringed in horror as I watched the little girl  gulped that electric blue concoction down. I told the mother that she should not be feeding her daughter that crap. I think she was slightly offended or embarrassed but I thought as we got older and wiser we realized that stuff just isn't good for us and we should not be feeding our children that stuff. 
I saw some colored soda pop that was brightly colored ( next to the organic aisle ironically) at Publix and out of curiosity I picked it up to read the ingredient list. The one I picked up for a "Pineapple flavored" soda.
Out of all the 9 or so ingredients listed take one guess which one was NOT.

If you guessed Pineapple then you're right.

Rule of thumb to help you make better food choices first if you can't pronounce the ingredients then you don't need to eat it. Second the cheaper it is, the more processed and filled with artificial crap, which will lead you back to number 1. And third, which is a rule that I take to heart, is a saying I got from Jillian Michael.  If it didn't have a mother or came from the ground then you shouldn't eat it.  The more natural and close to the earth the food is the better it is for you.

So those of you still munching on Doritos put them down. Those who already ate half the bag, throw the rest in garbage NOW!