ARE YOU ON A DIET OF LIES?

CAUTION: This article contains graphic descriptions of the dangers that lurk in our pantries and refrigerators and on our plates. Fresh produce doused with weedkillers. High sugar levels in “healthy foods”. Beverages and children’s foods laced carcinogens. Stabilizers associated with intestinal inflammation. Genetically modified foods added as “fillers”. Read, and be afraid. Be very afraid. And then do something about it.

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

Many of us begin the year with a resolve to eat healthy and get active after the excesses of the festive season.

Less fat. Less sugar. Less salt. Moderate exercise.

It seems simple enough and eminently doable.

But by the time February rolls around, most of us are wondering what on earth we were thinking when we resolved to eat better, exercise more, watch less television, stay off social media... The goals seem so unachievable.

Specially the “eat better” part.

There are the obvious hurdles:

Drawing up a sensible grocery list and then sticking to it.

Working with fresh ingredients and making meals from scratch.

Consuming healthy quantities.

Rinse and repeat.

And then there’s the not-so-obvious hurdle, of not knowing just what, exactly, is “good” for us.

The truly committed read labels, avoid saturated fats and calculate calories. But what if in occasional indulgences or the very foods we turn to as “healthy” lurks danger?

Because we continue to hear of a super healthy person felled by a heart attack or a fitness freak developing diabetes or some other chronic condition.

A few years ago, alarmed at reading reports of high sugar levels in breakfast cereals, I briefly considered making my own granola. Channelling my grandmother who used to feed us heaping bowls of dalia on winter mornings, I made a list. Oats, almonds, dates, raisins, dried apricots, maybe? Sweetened with honey or maple syrup. Then doubts arose about safety of these ingredients. Were any genetically modified? Or doused with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides? I ditched the idea and turned to the occasional bowl of ragi porridge to feel virtuous.

In Feeding You Lies, Vani Hari reads between the lines on labels and deciphers terminology food manufacturers hide behind, exposing the chemicals in our food.

I thought of myself as a pretty savvy consumer/shopper.

But did I skip past produce marked organic because of the price factor? Guilty.

Buy sports drinks for my sons for their baseball practice or tae-kwon-do lessons? Guilty.

Pack fruit-filled cookies in their lunch box? Guilty.

Pick up sugar substitutes for a cousin visiting from India after he was diagnosed with diabetes? Guilty.

In Hari’s book, I was doing it all wrong.

She is a New York Times’ best-selling author described as “one of the most popular voices on nutrition” by The Atlantic and one of the 30 Most Influential People on the Internet by Time magazine. For anyone jumping from diet to diet and everyone sick of contradictory health advice, Hari blows the lid off the lies we’ve been fed about nutrient values, effects on our health and the very science we base our food choices on.

How nutrition research is manipulated by food company-funded experts.

How fake news is generated by Big Food.

How to spot food marketing hoaxes that persuade us to buy junk food disguised as health food.

The tricks food companies use to make their foods addictive.

Why labels like “all natural” and “non-GMO” aren’t what they seem and how to identify the healthiest food.

Reading labels “like they’re best-sellers”, she has notched up a remarkable number of successes in her campaign to set the facts straight.

A fast food restaurant chain agreed to remove a chemical following a petition she started.

Another began using antibiotic-free chicken at her urging.

A coffee chain dropped caramel colouring from their drinks.

A major food corporation decided to remove artificial food dies from kids’ mac and cheese products after she “stormed their headquarters with over 200,000 petitions”.

She reveals that “experts” – including academics and scientists – holding forth on the safety of certain foods or touting the benefits of others are often on paid assignments for major food corporations. And that prominent consumer advocacy organizations receive funding “from a who’s who list of Big Food and Chemical companies.”

You see, the public is often trusting of information that comes from credentialled experts who appear to be completely independent and separate from industry, such as academics at publicly funded universities. That’s why Big Food and Chemical regularly work with university scientists behind closed doors to spread misinformation about food and nutrition, dispute activists, repeat industry talking points, and generally manipulate the public.

Paid advocacy, fake news, slanted news, she uncovers it all.

I recall a little one showing me what he called a “happy heart” on the paper bag his fast food treat came in. I was a tad surprised to see the heart association’s endorsement, but didn’t pay too much attention.

I should have.

Hari writes of companies making processed foods that essentially pay thousands of dollars to use the seal. And that according to an article published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Big Soda has helped fund nearly 100 medical and public health organizations. “These are groups that are supposed to support public health. Many of these organizations have a direct mission to fight obesity, yet they have taken money from soda companies.”

Many sodas are also addictive, specially those that are caffeinated, she writes. Yikes!

She points to articles by dietitians extolling the virtues of smaller cans of fizzy drinks, some even going so far as to label them healthy treats. Or that while a popular pop sold in Europe with its stringent food regulations is coloured with beta carotene, a natural colour derived from carrots and other plants, a different version of the same pop sold across north America is artificially coloured with a petroleum-based dye, Yellow#5.

Reading that most dairy foods are laced with hormones, chemicals and other toxins, I pat myself on the back for switching to plant-based “milk”. That was prompted by another book, Sonia Faruqi’s Project Animal Farm about the inhumane conditions on factory farms. But a little later in her book, Hari informs readers that many such milk substitutes contain carrageenan, associated with cancer and intestinal inflammation, as a stabilizer. A short walk to the refrigerator allays those fears – the brand we use is safe. However, a shock awaits me when I read, just for fun, the label on the yoghurt container. There it is, in plain print. Carageenan. What’s a person to do?

 In the section titled Health-wrecking chemicals in low-calorie diet plans, she turns her investigative lens on so-called best ranking diets.

While slashing your calories using an out-of-the-box diet program full of low-calorie shakes, bars, and packaged meals might help you lose weight in the short term, it can be detrimental to your long-term goals. This is because the ingredients the diet industry is packaging up contain risky additives that you would never cook with at home and promote an addiction to processed foods that can carry on for years.

She also takes on the gluten-free diet.

When someone on a gluten-free diet loses weight, it’s likely because they stopped eating processed high calorie foods such as pizza, crackers and breads.

“It’s not the gluten that is holding you back – it’s the processed foods.” And if that doesn’t convince you, this might. In gluten-free products you might be consuming lots of tapioca starch, rice starch, rice flour, brown rice syrup, corn and soy, added sugar and xanthum gum.

What young parents will find particularly scary is Hari’s take on claims found on countless children’s treats: Made With Real Fruit.

“This just means that the ‘real fruit’ is in the form of fruit juice concentrate – which is boiled down fruit turned into a super sugary syrup,” she writes. “It could also include more sugar like high fructose corn syrup and be spiked with artificial flavours and dyes. Meanwhile the big bold marketing claim on the front of the package ‘Made With Real Fruit’ makes you feel like you are buying something somewhat healthy and helping your child get their recommended servings of produce per day. Don’t be fooled. This is nothing like grabbing an apple from the counter or some berries from the refrigerator.  These products are essentially fruit by-products with everything healthy stripped out of them.”

Hari shares her family’s harrowing experience when her father, who has Type 2 diabetes, became sick from the “sugar-free” meal replacement shakes and snacks.

“My father had been admitted to the hospital. The diabetes had begun affecting his brain. He couldn’t think straight and lost control of his actions. These issues were caused by the fact that his blood sugar was wildly out of control, having clocked in at more than 300 for months. Normal is around 98.”

It didn’t make sense. Until she read the labels. Those shakes might be sugar-free, but they were chock full of man-made chemicals.

Their very long list of ingredients reads like a list of the greatest hits of additives to avoid:

Cellulose, which can disrupt our gut bacteria and cause inflammation. Powdered cellulose, an additive made from shredded wood is also used as a coating on pre-shredded cheese to keep it from sticking together, she reveals.

GMO soy fibre

GMO soy protein

GMO maltodextrin

And so on.

A visit to the endocrinologist confirmed that his “diabetic” food could also increase blood sugar. In fact, as she points out, it can be a double whammy because it provides a false sense of security, causing people to consume more. These sugar-free products are being promoted as guilt-free treats.

The good news is that after her father went off the sugar-free and other processed diabetic food, his blood sugar normalized and brain function returned to normal.

Yes, his might have been an extreme reaction – after all, we all know someone who consumes the very same or similar products and is doing just fine, their diabetes symptoms under control – and yet the fear remains. What if it were not such a rare case?

When in doubt, cut it out, is an old journalism adage, advising deadline-bound reporters and editors to delete something they are not 100 per cent sure of or can’t confirm.

Hari has similar advice for shoppers.

Flip it over when the front of the package carries misleading claims.

Two examples of what this simple step can reveal.

“Off the block” shredded cheese is nothing like the cheese you’d shred at home as it contains the above-mentioned cellulose powder.

Ginger ale that claims to be made from real ginger is actually made with “natural flavours” derived from ginger.

And so, of course, Hari tells us why these don’t belong in a real food diet.

Diacetyl, used to give buttery flavour to microwave popcorn, has been linked to lung disease among employees at production facilities.

Her sleuthing also uncovers the culprits in a treat many of us perceive as healthy – the blueberry muffin.

In some brands, the muffins contain no fruit. The ingredients list “blueberry flavoured bits” which were made of sugar, wheat flour, natural and artificial flavours, Blue #2 and Red #40.

Sugar and blue dye are cheaper than real berries, as she concludes.

In the chapter titled Weed killer for dinner, Hari clarifies at the start that she is not against biotechnology, nor against all GMO foods.

“However, what I am strongly against are the chemicals that go hand-in-hand with genetically modified crops,” she writes.

A common weed killer has been found in popular processed foods like breakfast cereals and cookies.

She quotes a study conducted by the Canadian government that found that out of 3188 food products, glyphosate was found in nearly 30 per cent, including grain products and baby foods.

The appendix includes a list of ingredients to avoid at all costs. While many require a reading of labels to discover, two common ones are canola oil and stevia extract.

But aren’t those promoted as healthy?

She herself used to buy quarts of canola oil, Hari confesses. But this oil goes through intense processing with chemical solvents, steamers, neutralizers, de-waxers, bleach and deodorizers before it ends up in the bottle. Most canola crops in North America are genetically engineered to be resistant to herbicides.

And stevia extract is not the same as whole stevia leaf. The extract is highly processed using chemicals some of which are known carcinogens.

It’s not all gloom and doom, though.

We’ve made progress, she notes. “It’s clear that the major trends are towards foods that are organic, natural, and healthy. These trends aren’t an accident. They exist because we’ve taught people about the dangers of food that’s loaded up with dyes, weed killer, fake sugars, artificial flavours and countless other additives that have no business being in our kitchen.”

But can we let ours guards down?

Perhaps not just yet.

As in the case of the colouring used in pop, fries sold in the UK are made with potatoes, oil, dextrose and salt. In the US, Hari reveals, the same food chain adds sodium acid pyrophosphate and the anti-foaming agent dimethylpolysiloxane.

We have a ways to go before we are safe from ingredients whose names we have difficulty wrapping our tongues around.

Vani Hari is a brave investigator and activist who is not afraid to name names.

She guides readers through a 48-Hour Toxin Takedown to rid their pantries and bodies of harmful chemicals and provides a blueprint for living without preservatives, artificial sweeteners, additives, food dyes, or fillers by eating foods that truly nourish and support health.

To become better informed about your food choices, pick up a copy of Feeding You Lies.

And while you’re at it, perhaps also a copy of Vani Hari’s Food Babe Kitchen (click here to see her recipes).

CLEAN OR DIRTY?

In Feeding You Lies, Vani Hari provides a list of fruits and vegetables that have been found to have the most pesticide residues and those with the least, helping you decide which you should probably purchase organic versions of even if you can’t go all-organic.

The Dirty Dozen list includes strawberries, spinach, apples, potatoes and tomatoes.

The Clean 15 includes pineapples, cabbage, onions, mangoes and eggplants.