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finding out about food
By heather | March 10, 2010
For a while now, one of the topics on my mind has been food. Not recipes or yummy-delicious treats, but what actually goes in our food and how it affects us. I’ve written before about my disgust with Splenda, so I’m not sure why I’m continually surprised by the research and reading I’ve been doing lately.
I grew up with an adopted brother. The “adopted” part is important, because my parents didn’t know the child they were getting was born to an alcoholic mother, who abused her body and his the entire time she was pregnant. He came to our family when he was 6 months old, sickly and weak, and nearly died before his first birthday. A few years later, he was diagnosed as hyperactive with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome along with a laundry list of other things, including violent behavior and aggression.
One of the suggestions our pediatrician gave my mom was the Feingold Diet and we followed it to the letter. No artificial colors, flavors, mint, or chocolate. As a kid, I hated never having Kool-Aid in our fridge, and used to love going to visit friends who ate mac n’ cheese from a blue box. But as much as I resented having to follow the diet, to say the difference in my brother’s behavior was noticeable would be an understatement. When he ate anything artificial, he went absolutely crazy with rage – kicking people and walls, screaming, and looking like he couldn’t contain the anger that shook his body. To even write about this is difficult, because most people who know me in my adult life don’t even know he exists. It’s always been easier to be an only child when people ask, rather than explain the complicated relationship that I still haven’t fully accepted.
Several months ago, I noticed Alex having the same out of control reactions to little things. My mom was the one who first pointed out that his worst behavior came right after a treat of some sort: a lollipop or a candy apple. It made me physically sick to think that my child had the same behavioral reaction to artificial colors. How was this possible? I exercised and ate organic, healthy food while I was pregnant, and now I was going to have to go through the same drill that my mom used to, explaining politely that , “No, he doesn’t want/can’t eat those yellow crackers/birthday cake/bright red popsicle” to the other moms. Even more disturbing to me though, was the thought of Emily Kate growing up witnessing the cycle of violent behavior, frustration, and rage that I grew up with, so to reject something that I knew worked seemed stupid, despite hating the idea of it.
I started reading. I read a book on the Feingold Diet, and I read The Unhealthy Truth. I convinced my husband that the majority of our grocery shopping had to be at Trader Joe’s. (TJ’s products don’t have any artificial colors or flavors.) Then I started noticing articles popping up everywhere – on growth horomones and high-fructose corn syrup, on pesticides and antibiotics. All of a sudden it seems like our society is starting to realize that how unhealthy we are is directly proportionate to how much we’ve messed up our food. A simplistic summary is to say that everything from allergies to obesity to behavior has a root cause in what we eat because our bodies don’t know how to process all the crap that we put in our food.
Yesterday one of my friends on facebook posted a link to this article on MSNBC. This is a decent introduction to what I’m talking about, but it focuses more on why we’re fat, rather than why we’re unhealthy. At least it’s a start. The bottom line is we all need to wake up and stop trusting that just because a corporation or the government says that something is healthy and safe doesn’t mean it is. When animals get high doses of antibiotics, we do too when we eat them. Genetically modified corn hasn’t been modified to be healthier, it has been modified to be resistant to pests – which means it has pesticides in it’s genes. We have no idea what artificial horomones in milk and meat are doing to our endocrine systems. Stop feeding your kids colored goldfish crackers. Don’t cook with Splenda or mix it into smoothies like the commercial tells you to – why does your smoothie need sugar anyway?
This post isn’t preaching about being all organic or vegetarian, but an encouragement to be more aware and make simple changes where you can and where you see the need. There is so much we don’t know about “food technology” but the evidence is growing that it isn’t the best thing for us. So why not become educated?
Topics: food | 6 Comments »
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March 10th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
I love that you are writing about this!
We get our fare share of sugars and fats — but there are very few processed foods in our house. It’s been that way for more than 10 years (5 of which we were also vegetarian). Whole food — no low fat food, not low or high or rich or not rich or whatever — foods are what is important. We started doing these things largely because many of the articles we read in my epidemiology courses were about toxicity in chemicals and hormones, especially regarding our food and water. The FDA is too small and underfunded to test things themselves — they rely on the companies that make them to show that they are safe… which is why we have things that are unsafe readily available in our environments.
Obesity isn’t about fatty foods necessarily. It’s about processed food, toxic foods, detachment from whole food, and the class, expense, and availability issues that all go into that equation. For us to “fix” obesity, we have to unravel all of the complex things that put us there in the first place. It takes a heck of a lot of effort to eat well… even for us, with a Whole Foods 100 steps away and a paycheck that can stretch to accommodate it.
Anyway. Great post!
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March 10th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
I have seen more and more people posting about the direct, obvious correlation between food coloring/additives and their kids’ behavior. It seems so obvious when you think about it, but I think that many of us have been operating under the false assumption that the FDA wouldn’t let us eat things that are literally poisonous. It’s an eye opener. We’ve been avoiding most of the processed stuff for a few years now, but I’ve only recently become aware of how many products have food coloring in them (for example – yogurt. Ack!)
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March 11th, 2010 at 9:50 am
I’m concerned with the growth hormones put in milk since we have two young girls. Right now I buy milk that the producer doesn’t use “artificial” growth hormone in. If I were to contemplate the issue more I’m sure I would wholeheartedly switch to organic milk. We aren’t huge processed food eaters but I’ll admit to buying the goldfish because they are a good car snack. (They are expensive though).
What also concerns me is the cost of organic and healthy foods. It’s hard for my cheap mind to balance the cost versus the possible risks, especially when I haven’t witnessed any side effects directly related to what we’re eating. The good thing though is that “they” also say a restricted calorie diet is better in the long run than eating a lot of food. SO, if I buy organic and we eat 75% less of what we’re eating now it will all balance out in the end and we’ll still be healthier.
Thank you for bringing this to my mind again. I think about it every once in a while but then other things get in the way. I’ve become more aware of what we eat because of all the couponing that I do now and I would love to eat healthier and still save money.
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