Project Real Food: A SAD state.

Many refer to the diet common in America as the SAD diet.  It stands for Standard American Diet.  I say it's pretty dang fitting.  Sad, indeed, America.  Now something I feel the need to make clear is how much I don't blame the average American.  The truth is, until very recently, information about how truly damaging our food is to our bodies just hasn't been readily available, talked about or made public knowledge.  I love to quote Maya Angelou whenever I get the chance, and this is one such chance.  When you know better, you do better.

So, here's my forewarning: this whole Project Real Foods?  It's about enlightening myself because I'm ready to know better so that I can do better.  If you aren't ready to make changes, wait until you are to follow along.  Because one thing I've learned is that guilt is a horrible weight that can really suffocate a person, and there is something to be said for ignorance.  I mean that sincerely.  No snarkiness here.  If you aren't ready to know about this stuff, don't read it.  I don't want to make anyone feel guilty or inferior.  You aren't!  We all have things that are important to us and we all have our own lives with our own to-do lists. I don't know what yours looks like and I don't know how much time or money you have, so I'm not here to judge you if you aren't ready for this yet.  I'm afraid that some of the things I post about during this PRF can come across as judgmental or holier-than-thou.  That is not my intention.  So please, take all of that into consideration as you decide to continue (or stop!) reading along with Project Real Foods.  Okay, g'day now.  :)

PROCESSED FOODS!  Ew.  The mere act of typing those words out makes my stomach turn a little.  It was a sad day when I learned about processed foods some 3.5 years ago.  What could be better than fast, easy, delicious food?  It used to be practically all my husband and I ate.  Let me tell ya, these days, as a mom to three kids three and under, I am all about the convenience.  Processed foods don't get to be part of my life anymore, though.  I've learned too much and I have three sensitive kids (allergies+eczema+potential asthma).

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Grocery shoppers examining colorful packages bearing long lists of hard-to-pronounce ingredients might take comfort in the belief that those substances were deemed safe by the government.

They might also believe that some federal agency must, at least, be notified when a new substance enters the U.S. food supply.

But that’s not the case.

Over the past 15 years, the vast majority of new ingredients added to U.S. food never received a safety determination from the government. And since 1958, at least 1,000 legally entered the food supply without the knowledge of government officials, according to the Pew Health Group.

Whoa.  For awhile now, I've described the U.S. as a country that deems things safe until proven otherwise.  As a mother, that doesn't sit well with me.  But by and large, it is how we operate.  Call me crazy, but requiring that a chemical be proven safe before sending it out into our environment to be eaten, breathed in, slathered on our bodies or consumed by our children seems much more logical to me.

The FDA has admitted that they have transferred a majority of responsibility for testing these chemicals onto the food manufacturers themselves.  Let's think it through: we're telling a company, whose bottom line depends on the deemed "safety" of a chemical that will allow them to make food taste better or last longer, that the power to deem it safe is in their hands?  In my opinion, that is asking for trouble.  It almost makes it hard to blame these manufacturers when we set them up like this.  We're practically dangling carrots over here.

In many other countries, they practice what is known as the precautionary principle.  In summary, "The precautionary principle or precautionary approach states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action."

In the U.K., for example, their food regulatory agency has asked manufacturers to pull artificial dyes from foods in stores and restaurants.  A court in Brazil ordered that Nestle label products that are genetically modified.  The growth hormone rBST is banned in Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and in the 27 countries of the European Union.

Let's think, for a moment, about BPA.  A chemical that was once considered safe (until proven otherwise) is now banned entirely in Canada and the EU, Canada and the U.S. have banned the use of BPA in baby bottles.  Or teflon.  I'll never forget, as a child, when my mom told me she'd never buy teflon products.  She'd stick with what's been proven to work for hundreds of years, she said, not some new, manmade product that she was convinced would flake off and cause cancer.  Turns out her gut instinct was exactly right.  In an attempt to make things easier, more convenient or cheaper, we often ruin them and in the end, cause more harm than good.  This, and my faith in God, are the single biggest reasons I stick with what God gave us whenever possible.  I like things straight from nature (God).  There are advances we've made that have been incredible, please don't get me wrong.  Medicine?  Amazing.  The way we have been able to extend our lives through the use of modern medicine is incredible and I don't take that for granted for a second.

"I can confidently tell you there is no other area of food law in the developed world that is so badly regulated as this corner of the U.S. food system," said Professor James T. O'Reilly, author of many books on topics such as government regulation, safety, labor and environmental issues.

Another great example of the problems with our current system is Johnson & Johnson.  Years ago, health and environmental groups began pressuring J&J to remove chemicals from the products they sell in the U.S. that are concerning and not used in the same products elsewhere.  They actually removed chemicals from their products to sell a safer version in other countries, where those chemicals are banned, but they kept on producing the products containing the more concerning chemicals to sell in the U.S.  Does that make you a little angry?  It does me.  After being pressured for years, they finally announced their plans to phase out the dangerous chemicals by 2015.  Here's what I think about that:

• Why wait until 2015?  Other countries have deemed these chemicals unsafe, but Johnson & Johnson apparently isn't concerned about that.  They'll keep selling you their harmful products until 2015.  So as not to harm their profits as much?  I admittedly have no idea, but I don't really like it.


• If I was a manufacturer and I discovered concern about a chemical I was using, I would not remove that chemical from some of my products while still using it in the countries where it's still allowed.  My conscience would not allow me to do that, so it's troubling to me that a large corporation can't be bothered with that sort of concern for the safety of its consumers.


• They'll replace it with something "safer."  Safer?  For now?  I mean, really, today it's BPA, tomorrow it's something new.  So plastic bottles don't have BPA in them.  Tomorrow, we'll discover that the new chemical we're using is just as dangerous, if not more so.  Isn't that how it typically works?  People make jokes about it, like, what's the point?  Tomorrow it will just be something new!  I would agree.  But rather than just throw your hands up and give up, we could just get back to basics.  Why not use glass bottles?  After all, we've been doing that forever and a day.  They're cheap and they have a proven track record of safety.  So, Johnson & Johnson is going to remove the chemicals that some countries have determined are unsafe for human consumption and replace them with new ones.  Chances are, those new chemicals will at some point be proven unsafe, too.  This is why I've started switching over almost every last product in our home to homemade ones instead.  They're made with things like water and vinegar and essential oils and olive oil and so on.  Things that God gave us.

For more than a decade, almost all processed foods in the United States — cereals, snack foods, salad dressings — have contained ingredients from plants whose DNA was manipulated in a laboratory.  Almost all.  While the jury is still out on the safety of genetically modified foods, I am cautiously treading in that arena.  Like I mentioned above, I don't agree with a "safe until proven otherwise" mindset at all.  I haven't done much research on GMOs.  It's one of my goals in Project Real Food, in fact, so I'll have more to report later, but knowing that I tend to adopt a "dangerous until proven safe" mindset and that I trust things from God the most, that's enough for me, at this very moment, to avoid GMOs at all cost.  And since they're in almost every processed food on the market and products containing GMOs are not required to be labeled, not consuming processed foods is the easiest way for me to avoid a lot of GMOs.