Part 6: The Frozen Section and Center Aisles

Part 6: The Frozen Section and Center Aisles Based on the book “What to Eat” by Marion Nestle

Researchers who work for the frozen food industry have looked into the hearts and minds of supermarket shoppers. Their profound insight: you want hot food on the table no more than 5 minutes after you begin preparing it and never more than 20. Frozen food companies dream up all kinds of prepared meals to grant this wish. Frozen fruits and veggies, however, are vastly underrated. At best they are picked at peak ripeness, flash frozen, and more or less ready to eat whenever you want them. You may have to perform some cooking tricks to compensate for the way freezing changes the texture, but in the dead of winter the frozen fruits and veggies are going to be of higher quality than your fresh ones. By law the ingredients of packaged foods must be listed in order by weight the one present in the greatest amount is listed first. For frozen fruits and veggies with single ingredients what you see is what you get. Freezing has practically no effect on the nutritional value of fresh produce. It does not change the number of calories, the amount of protein, fiber, carbs, fat, or minerals. As a general rule, the more that happens to a fruit or veggie between the time it is harvested and the time you eat it the more nutrients it is likely to lose. Whole fruits are a better nutritional bet than juices and fresh juices are better than frozen. When you see a juice labeled pulp free look for another option. The remaining aisles are devoted to foods in boxes, cans, bags, and bottles. Along with smaller sections containing such things like condiments, juices, cooking oils, baking supplies, health foods, canned fish, fruit, and veggies, entire aisles devoted to soda, to snack foods, to cookies and candies, and to cereal. Foods in the center aisles are highly profitable. And why not? They are made with the cheapest ingredients, advertised with the biggest budgets, and manufactured by some of the largest food corporations in the world. These companies pay slotting fees for that center aisle space, but make up for that expense in sales. You contribute to their income and that of the store everytime you move a product from shelf to shopping cart and pay for it at the register. Let’s talk about unprocessed, lightly processed, and ultra processed foods. Lightly processed foods use methods like aging, drying, freezing, canning, and cooking which do change foods, but they cause little loss of nutritional value, if any, and often make the nutrients more bioavailable to the body. More extreme processing methods add or subtract components of the food and cause significant changes in nutrient content. Frozen foods can be lightly or significantly processed. Frozen fruits and veggies look much like their fresh counterparts and are more or less nutritionally intact, but others like frozen meals and pastries are highly processed and much changed nutritionally. Ultra processing does three things to foods: 1. diminishes the nutritional value of basic ingredients, 2. adds calories from fats and sugars, and 3. disguises the loss of taste and texture with salt, artificial colors and flavors and other additives. Canned foods also can be lightly or heavily processed, their principal additives are salt and sugars. The nutrient composition of a food depends on several factors: how much water it contains, the more water in a food the more dilute its nutrients; the solubility of nutrients in water, some of our vitamins and minerals are water soluble so if you throw out the water you throw out those nutrients; the extent of processing, the more that is done to a food between harvest and eating the lower its nutritional content including heat, light, air, and storage; what gets added, your salts and sugars. Remember that raw carrots may have more nutrients than canned carrots but canned carrots are still worth eating if you cannot get anything better.

Part 5: Fish and Seafood

Part 5: Fish and Seafood Based on the book “What to Eat” by Marion Nestle

To make an intelligent choice of fish at the supermarket, you have to know more than you could possibly imagine about nutrition, fish toxicology, and the life cycle and ecology of fish–what kind of fish is it, what it eats, where it was caught, and whether it was farmed or wild. If you are at all concerned about environmental issues, you will also want to know how it was caught and raised and whether its stocks are sustainable. As a group, fish are excellent sources of protein, vitamins, and minerals. Their fats are largely unsaturated and are especially rich in omega 3s, particularly EPA and DHA. These omega 3s show up in the brain and are believed critical to the normal development of the nervous system. Fish are the best source of omega 3s and practically all health authorities advise pregnant women to eat fish 1-2x per week. More than that, some research suggests that EPA and DHA might prevent the blood clots and irregular heartbeats that often lead to heart attacks or strokes. The fish committee does not say how you are supposed to know which fish are rich in EPA and DHA nor does it offer much help with figuring out which fish are high or moderate in mercury. Another question is whether fish oil supplements are as effective as fish. Supplements are often problematic because they are basically unregulated, but tests of omega 3 supplements indicate most are fine and contain what they say they do. Fish are good to eat for their nutritional value and especially for their content of omega 3s. However, all seafood is contaminated with methylmercury, a toxic substance that is dangerous for developing fetuses especially during the early months of pregnancy. The amounts of methylmercury in fish vary widely and it is a good idea to avoid eating the most contaminated kinds. Unfortunately, figuring out how to follow advice about methylmercury is your problem to solve. You have to remember which fish are high in methylmercury so you can avoid them. Methylmercury, unlike lead, does not stay in the body for long. Its half-life is just 2-3 months meaning that if you start now to reduce the amount of methylmercury you eat half will be gone in a few months and then half of what's left in another few months and most will be gone in a year or so along with any risks it might pose. You have to keep track of the amount of fish you eat in a week or a month, and you have to decide whose information is more believable, the FDA, EPA, the Tuna Foundation, or the EWG. How important is it to eat omega 3s from fish? Fish are the best sources of omega 3s, but the amounts of EPA and DHA in 3 oz of fish vary from .1g in cod to a gram or more in fish like anchovies, herring, mackerel, tuna, and salmon. The richest source being caviar. Most american fish are relatively low in omega 3s, but fortunately it only takes a small amount of EPA and DHA to produce benefits. Fish are not the only sources of omega 3s. Chicken and eggs naturally have small amounts of EPA and DHA. Plants contain omega 3s in the form of ALA which converts to EPA and DHA. The better plant sources are flax and flax oil. You can also get omega 3s by taking fish oil supplements or DHA from algae. It helps to keep omega 3s and fish in perspective. Omega 3s may be good for the heart, but so are other nutrients, vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and fiber in veggies, nuts and seeds. Fish are excellent sources of many nutrients, but you can also get these from other foods. Fish are not essential requirements of a healthful diet and there is no compelling reason to eat it if you don't want to. If you are going to follow heart healthy advice to eat two servings of fish per week, you will need to know more than you ever wanted to know about the diets of fish as well as your own. Did the fish eat the other fish? If so, they might have methylmercury, but also more than their share of other dilemma inducing pollutants, PCBs, and other related toxic chemicals. The PCBs in fish cause the same type of dilemma as the one involving omega 3s and methylmercury, but with one unpleasant addition: all fish have PCBs, but farmed fish, those fed fish feed and fish oil, have more. This is because farmed fish need proteins and fats to grow and they grow better when those nutrients come from fish feed and fish oils, but these feeds contain high concentrations of PCBs. All fish are contaminated with PCBs and similar chemicals that are best avoided. These chemicals are organic hydrocarbons usually with chlorine or bromine attached. They include especially nasty agricultural pesticides and dioxins from industrial wastes and emissions. Although most of these chemicals have been discontinued or banned for years they persist in the environment and thoroughly pollute streams, lakes, and oceans. At high levels of exposure, such as those experienced by victims of industrial accidents, they cause severe problems with skin, reproduction, development, and behavior. A safe level of intake is not really known. The amount of PCBs in fish seem harmless but the word most often used to describe their effects is uncertain. When you eat fatty fish like albacore tuna, herring, or mackerel, precisely the ones highest in omega 3s, you also get a relatively high dose of PCBs. Fish oil supplements would have even higher amounts but luckily these are cleaned up (refined) to eliminate most of these toxins. According to the Coastal alliance for Aquaculture Reform: farmed salmon are raised like cattle in feedlots. They are confined in pools of antibiotics, pesticides, chemicals, and wastes which then spill the equivalent of raw sewage into local waters. If the fish escape, which they do on occasion, they can end up in the wrong ocean, compete for resources, and spread diseases like sea lice to wild fish and when they mate with wild fish change the genetic basis of the population and reduce biodiversity. This group insists that you are much better off eating wild salmon for reasons of safety, health, and environmental protection. Farmed fish are less active fish, they have 2x the fat and more than 2x the amount of saturated fat of their wild counterparts. Their omega 3 content depends entirely on what they are fed and varies by species and by farm. In captivity on fish farms salmon eat the equivalent of dog food: first small and then larger pellets of fish meal and fish oil, soy protein, wheat, and vitamins and minerals. The pellets also contain meat and bone meal made from the rendered leftover meat, blood, and bones of cows, pigs, and other animals. Wild salmon are a gorgeous pink because the fish eat marine krill. Farmed salmon are not, they are fed pellets and in turn are a grayish brown color. Research in the industry tells us two things about salmon: the darker the color of pink the more likely you are to buy it and if the salmon is gray you won't buy it at all. So salmon farmers resort to cosmetics. They add dyes to the feed pellets knowing that the farmed salmon can easily absorb the color and their flesh will turn just as pink as wild salmon. Farmed fish are not the only fish that get cosmetic treatment. Wild tuna steaks which are naturally red tend to turn brown when exposed to air or when frozen, so seafood companies spray them with carbon monoxide to keep this from happening. These observations caused the researchers to draw three conclusions: 1. consumption of farmed atlantic salmon may pose risks that detract from the beneficial effects of fish consumption, 2. The importance of labeling salmon as farmed is important, as is 3. identifying the country of origin. The vast majority of farm raised atlantic salmon should be consumed at one meal or less per month. Knowing what fish to eat then means knowing: where the fish comes from, whether it's farmed or wild, where it is on the food chain, whether it is listed in a state advisory, and how much fat it contains. Once you have this information you can avoid the fish likely to be most heavily contaminated with PCBs. On this basis you will want to avoid farm raised fish from Europe, farmed fish fed lots of fish meal and fish oils, the ones listed on state advisories, and the larger and fattier species such as those highest in methylmercury. Organic on seafood means the same as natural on meat, however the seller chooses to define it. The three fish guide producers belong to the alliance and so do a long list of other environmental and food advocacy and professional associations. These are listed at www.seafoodchoices.com. Under the auspices of the alliance the three groups got together and now produce a single guide that addresses health as well as environmental concerns. They call the unified guide the fish list. This guide simplifies seafood choices into green (enjoy) and red (avoid).

Part 4: Fats, Meats, and Eggs

Part 4: Fats, Meats, and Eggs Based on the book “What to Eat” by Marion Nestle

Food fats that are largely saturated tend to be solid at room temp, beef fat for example. In contrast, soy fat which is largely polyunsaturated is a liquid oil and rather unstable. If left around long enough polyunsaturated oils become rancid and smell and taste bad. Hydrogenation fixes those problems; it makes the fat more solid and resistant to chemical damage. With partial hydrogenation, nearly half the polyunsaturated fatty acids remain; the rest are converted to monounsaturated or saturated fatty acids. It is not good to have more saturated fatty acids because these raise blood cholesterol levels, but partial hydrogenation creates another additional problem which are trans fats. Trans fats are not normal. They behave a lot like saturated fatty acids in the body where they can raise cholesterol levels and increase the risk of heart disease. These are what we need to watch out for in our plant-based fats/butters. Health claims on foods are allowed by the FDA with context and plant-based butters have them plastered all over. If you actually read those claims, you may just figure out that the other things you eat are more important for reducing your cholesterol level than plant-based butters and that these will only help lower cholesterol if everything else you eat is low in saturated fats and trans fats and you get plenty of exercise. Let’s chat about meat. The meat you see in the grocery store is usually more or less ready to cook refrigerated cases of prepackaged steaks, chops, hamburger, chickens, whole and separated, pork chops, bacon, lunch meats, and miscellaneous ready to cook breaded and sauced animal parts. Custom, convenience, taste, and price, not nutrition, are the main selling points. What about organic vs natural meats? We see meats labeled with no antibiotics, no added hormones, no animal by products in feed, and grassfed. These are practices designed to improve the health and safety of the animals you eat, and they are required for meats labeled organic. Some companies have these claims but are not certified organic with the USDA seal of approval. Instead, they are what the companies call natural. They are not organic. The statements tell you that the meat comes from animals that may have been treated better than conventionally raised animals, but the missing organic seal is a sign that the animals were not necessarily raised to organic standards. No rules require natural animals to be fed organically grown grain, to be allowed freedom of movement and access to the outdoors, to be raised without using antibiotics, hormones, or other animal drugs, or to be inspected for adherence to such practices. If the producers of natural meats follow such practices, they do so voluntarily. The appropriate use of “natural” applied to all fresh meat with only 3 restrictions: 1. The meat must have no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives, 2. The meat must be processed only minimally (ground but not cooked), and 3. The companies had to define what they meant by natural on the package labels. Even the best natural meat is not the same as organic meat. Producers who want their meats certified as organic have to adhere to a stringent criterion that producers of natural meats do not. Natural meat producers can pick and choose among desirable raising practices, but organic has to adhere to all of them. Organic meat producers must be verified by inspection through accredited agencies, something natural does not need. This is why organic meats are much higher in price. Natural is on the honor system. With so many issues to be evaluated and balanced against one another the choice of meat and poultry seems especially complicated. When price is no object, this is the hierarchy: 1. Certified organic because the rules make sense and production is monitored by regular inspections that hold growers accountable for their practices, 2. Natural when it is very near organic claims, 3. Everything else. So, what about eggs? There are three separate certifying systems to convince you that hens are well treated: USDA certified organic, certified humane raised and handled, and united egg producers certified. Certified organic is the most familiar and the best regulated. If you see the certified organic seal on an egg carton it means the eggs come from hens that eat organic feed, are allowed access to the outdoors and sunlight, and are inspected to make sure the rules are followed. Humane certification requires some of the same things as organic certification but less restrictive about what the animals are fed. Hens have to be fed a nutritious diet without antibiotics or hormones and be raised with shelter, resting areas, sufficient space, and the ability to engage in natural behaviors. It attests to how the hens are treated but is less concerned with what they are fed. Color is easy, there are only 2 choices: white and brown. The color of an eggshell is determined by genetics. Some kinds of chickens lay white eggs, others brown. Color is the only difference; the nutritional contents are the same. The grades AA, A, or B refer to cosmetic differences; the nutritional value is the same. From a nutritional standpoint, eggs are eggs. Turning eggs into a designer food (adding in things) is a great way to get you to pay more for them, but there are less expensive and easier ways to get the vitamins and minerals added into them from other foods. If you don't care about how the eggs are produced, buy the cheapest ones you can find. The shell color makes no nutritional difference. If you do care about how the hens are treated, buy certified humane, and if you care about what they are fed buy organic.

Part 3: Dairy

Part 3:  Dairy Based on the book “What to Eat” by Marion Nestle

The dairy section is almost always hard to get to and not accidentally. Stores normally put these foods in remote places against the back walls. This makes it easier for their employees to stock the refrigerated cases, but the more important reason is to force you to walk past shelves of other products on your way there and to pick up a few impulse buys along the way. Trying to study the effects of dairy foods on health is especially difficult for one reason: the dairy industry is large and united and is diligent in exerting influence over anything that might affect production, marketing, and sales. Most Americans eat dairy foods and the industry sells more than 20 billion worth of milk a year. Furthermore, dairy farms are located in all 50 states and every state has 2 senators who eagerly accept campaign contributions from dairy donors and can be expected to listen attentively when called upon for assistance. As a result, dairy producers are largely exempt from the usual free market rules of supply and demand. For decades dairy producers have been protected by a system of government price supports and marketing payments so entrenched and so incomprehensible to anyone other than a lobbyist that any attempt to get rid of the system is doomed from the start. The result is that as a consumer, you pay for dairy in at least 3 ways: directly at the supermarket, indirectly through taxes that support subsidies to farmers who raise dairy cows, and also indirectly through tax supported subsidies to the producers of commodities like corn and soybeans that are used for cattle feed. The dairy council works hard to encourage nutritionists and federal agencies to take actions favorable to the industry. It supports advice to increase calcium intake. It supports efforts to encourage lactose intolerant/sensitive people to consume as much dairy food as they can tolerate. It opposes advice to restrict dietary fat (from animals). It strongly opposes advice to substitute soy products for milk. And of course it promotes advice to eat more dairy foods. Such efforts are often successful, particularly when it comes to federal recommendations about diet and health. Dairy foods are complex fixtures; they have some components that promote calcium retention and others that promote its excretion. The amount of calcium needed to balance losses is hard to know. Bones are not just made of calcium they are built on a protein scaffold and need practically all of the other required nutrients. When studies examine the effects of one nutrient at a time they show that some nutrients, like  magnesium, potassium, vitamin d, and lactose, promote calcium retention. Others like protein, phosphorus, and sodium promote calcium excretion. So calcium retention and the strength of your bones may depend much more on everything else you are eating and how active you are than on how much calcium you take in. Lactose is the sugar in milk and an 8oz glass of milk contains about 1 tablespoon of lactose. Lactose is a double sugar made of glucose and galactose linked together. Double sugars are too big to be absorbed into your body from the intestinal tract. To use lactose, your body has to split the link between glucose and galactose and release the single sugars that are easily absorbed. The enzyme that does the splitting is called lactase. By age 5 most children stop making lactase since it is no longer needed to ingest and digest breastmilk. Evolutionally, there is no longer a need. This is why so many people become lactose intolerant as they age. Overall, the fact that so much milk is produced and by such a strong industry cannot help but raise suspicions that commerce rather than health gets the last word in the dairy debates. The author takes on the current state of science that if milk does increase health risks these have to be small. The science also suggests that if there are health benefits to milk those too are small. Milk is just food. There isn't anything special about it. Cow's milk is not necessary and it is not perfect (for humans) but it's also not a poison. Yes, it is high in fat and saturated fat but you can just choose non-fat. You can also take lactaid if you still want to have dairy without the consequences. Yes, milk is sometimes produced in ways that are hard on cows, using hormones and other substances that you would avoid, but the dairy industry has even found a way for you to deal with those unattractive production issues: buy organic. You do not have to drink milk to be healthy, but if you like drinking it you can do so and also stay healthy. Then we have another dairy product, yogurt. With yogurt, the predominant flavor is sweet. Sweet sells and nearly all yogurts are sweetened in the most artificially imaginative ways: anything you could dream up they have a flavor for it. Yogurts are sweetened with added sugar, but also with honey, molasses, lactose, fructose, fruit concentrate, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, fructose syrup, high fructose syrup, aspartame, and other artificial sweeteners. As part of the health theme, you can get yogurt sugared and flavored with every conceivable choice of fruit. Some fruit flavored yogurts actually have fruit in them, but most have more sugar than fruit and many have no fruit in them at all just fruit juice concentrates, added colors to make them look fruitier and thickeners like flour, cornstarch, pectin, and carrageenan to hold them together. Yogurt has performed a marketing miracle, a fast selling dairy dessert with the aura of a health food. Yogurt's healthful mystique depends on its bacteria. For most foods, ensuring safety and palatability means getting rid of bad bacteria, but each of those little yogurt containers is supposed to have hundreds of millions of good bacteria, all alive, active, and ready to multiply as soon as the temperature warms up. The mere thought makes you want to add sugar. The starting point for yogurt is milk that is first pasteurized to kill off unwanted bacteria. Into it go two or more kinds of friendly bacteria of the lacto and bifidus species. Yogurt makers refer to these bacteria as cultures because they are cultured–cultivated, fed, and grown–on nutrients in the milk. Whatever the type, all of these bacteria go to work fermenting the nutrients in milk while producing lactic acid and other substances that curdle and flavor it. Most of the lactose gets used up which is why yogurt is tolerable to many people who otherwise cannot eat dairy products.

Part 2: Produce

Part 2: Produce Based on the book “What to Eat” by Marion Nestle

What is fresh? Fresh is relative. The FDA says “fresh” foods have to be raw, never frozen, or heated, and with no added preservatives. But even “fresh” fruits and veggies are often subjected to processing before they reach the grocery store shelf. In grocery store  terms “fresh” refers to food that spoils faster than others. It does not mean foods were picked earlier that day or even that week. You will want to know where your produce comes from. Knowing this lets you make some guesses about freshness, taste, and nutritional value. The flavor of fruits and veggies certainly depends on freshness, but it also depends on the variety and the production methods. Grocery store raspberries are a case in point. At a pick your own, varieties burst with flavor but also burst when picked. Driscoll raspberries are bred for perfect berry architecture and the ability to withstand thousands of food miles and are picked before they are fully ripe. They look and taste like raspberries but the flavor lacks the intensity and complexity of eating them freshly picked (or a few days prior). Commercial growers consider taste as only one desirable characteristic among others such as shape, size, firmness, color, and resistance to pests. Shelf labels for packaged foods tells you the price and cost per weight or volume. When it comes to produce, however, you practically have to do a cost-benefit analysis before you can buy something as simple as a head of lettuce. On a per pound basis, the precut salad cost 4x as much as the intact heads. Is the convenience of not having to clean and chop lettuce worth that much? Maybe, but it would be nice to know the actual cost before you buy. What about organic produce? The most attractive feature of organics to the food industry is this: customers are willing to pay more for organic foods. It is easy to understand why any big food company would want to get into this business, but it doesn’t always mean better. Then we have that suspicious wax on fruits and veggies, it's normally coated in food safe wax to maintain freshness and is common in citrus fruits, apples, peppers, cucumbers and the like to replace the natural waxes that get washed off in processing. One type used is carnauba wax from palm trees better known as the wax used on your car and for polishing furniture. Wax retains the water in fruits and veggies and protects it against bruising, prevents mold growth, and extends the time that fruits and veggies last on the shelf without spoiling. From the point of view of the grocery store, the high shine gloss makes produce look fresh and attractive. Here is the deal: if you eat any fruits and veggies at all you get nutrients you cannot get easily from other foods. These foods are loaded with substances that do good things for health. Fruits and veggies are the main sources of Vitamin C, folate, and beta carotene, and they provide half the fiber in American diets (the other half come from grains). They also contain varying phytonutrients, the chemicals in plants that singly and together protect against disease. The author concludes that all fruits and veggies have something good about them, even though some have more of one good thing and others have more of another. That is why we nutritionists are always telling you to eat a variety of foods. It's the mix that is most beneficial and most protective. But produce is so expensive! Well, it is not the absolute cost of produce that seems so high but its cost per calorie. You get a lot more calories for the price of hamburgers and french fries than you do for carrots, not least because the government subsidizes the production of corn and soybeans, the basis of cheap corn sweeteners and vegetable oil. Marketing is an important barrier. American food and beverage producers spend 36 billion annually to advertise and market their products but practically none of this goes to promote fruits and veggies, a few million a year compared to the tens of hundreds of millions used to promote any soft drink, candy bar, or cereal. The companies that grow fruits and veggies get about 18 cents of every food dollar you spend on them. The other 82 cents goes to everyone else in the game: the companies that store, truck, package, display, promote, and sell produce. What's more there is no easy way for the companies to add value to fruits and veggies and so increase their profit margin. Tomatoes are tomatoes no matter their brand. From a health perspective fruits and veggies are good to eat whether they are organic or not. If the price of organics is a barrier go ahead and keep buying conventional produce instead. Conventionally grown produce offers plenty of health benefits to people. Does price matter? Of course it does! The price of organics is more of a political choice. When you choose organics you are voting with your fork for a planet with fewer pesticides, richer soil, and cleaner water supplies—all better in the long run. When you choose locally grown produce you are voting for conservation of fuel resources and economic viability of local communities along with freshness and better taste. Once you consider such things the choices in the produce section are much easier to make. The priorities are: 1. Organic and locally grown, 2. Organic, 3. Conventional and locally grown, 4. Conventional.

Part 1: The Grocery Store

Part 1: The Grocery Store Based on the book “What to Eat” by Marion Nestle

The grocery store as we know it can be a very overwhelming place with an overabundance of products. This overabundance leaves food companies with three options: 1. They can make fewer products or smaller portions and raise prices, 2. They can entice you to buy their products instead of their competitors, or 3. They can get you to eat more of what they sell. Competition for your food dollars has led food companies to develop marketing strategies that help them to sell more food and encourage you to eat more, strategies that encourage you to eat more food whether or not you need it include: convenience: if a food is easier to take with you and eat, you will eat more, ubiquity: the more places food is available, the more food you will eat, proximity: if a food is close at hand, you will eat more of it than if it is harder to get, frequency: the more times a day you eat the more you will eat, variety: the more foods that are available, the more you will eat (buffet syndrome), larger portions: the more food in front of you the more you will eat, and low prices: the cheaper the food, the more you will eat. An astonishing 300,000 plus edible products are for sale in the US and any large grocery store might display as many as 40,000 of them. The big companies that own most grocery stores want you to do as much searching as you can tolerate which is why the aisles are long and everything you actually need seems to be at the other end of the store. You are forced to go past thousands of other products on your way to get what you need. Grocery stores say they are in the business of offering choice. Perhaps but they do everything possible to make the choice theirs not yours. If you belong to a grocery store's discount shoppers club the store gains your loyalty, but gets to track your personal buying habits in exchange. This research tells food retailers how to lay out the stores, where to put specific products, how to position products on shelves, and how to set prices and advertise products. Grocery stores want to expose you to the largest possible number of items you can stand to see without annoying you so much that you run screaming from the store. Grocery store design follows fundamental rules, all of them based firmly on extensive research: place the highest selling food departments in the parts of the store that get the greatest flow of traffic—the perishables like meat, produce, dairy, and frozen foods generate the most sales so you put them against the back and side walls, use the aisle nearest the entrance for items that sell especially well on impulse or look or smell enticing–produce, flowers, or freshly baked bread–these must be the first things customers are to see in front or immediately to the left or right, use displays at the ends of aisles for high profit heavily advertised items likely to be bought on impulse, devote as much shelf space as possible to brands that generate frequent sales, the more shelf space they occupy the better they sell, place high profit center aisle food items sixty inches above the floor where they are seen easily by adults with or without eyeglasses, place store brands immediately to the right of those high traffic items so that the name brands attract more shoppers to the store brands too, avoid using islands–these make people bump into each other and want to move on–keep the traffic moving but slowly, do not create gaps in the aisles that allow customers to cross over to the next one unless aisles are so long that shoppers complain–if shoppers escape mid aisle they will miss seeing half the products along that route. The grocery store is an intense real estate market where every product competes fiercely against every other for precious space. You can see the products most easily at eye level, at the ends of aisles, and at the checkout counters, these areas are prime real estate. Which products get the prime space? The ones that are most profitable for the store. The stores create demand by putting some products where you cannot miss them. What about Walmart? If a food company wants its products to be in Walmart it has to offer rock bottom prices. Low prices sound good for people without much money, but nutritionally there's a catch. Low prices encourage everyone to buy more food in bigger packages. If you buy more you are likely to eat more. For example: a 2 liter container and the special for members 6 pack of 24 oz bottles were less than half the cost of the equivalent volume in 8 oz cans. Grocery store managers say this kind of pricing is not the store's problem. If you want smaller sizes you should be willing to pay more for them. But if you care about how much you get for a price you are likely to pick the larger sizes. And if you buy the larger sizes you are more likely to drink more of it. The choice is yours but anyone would have a hard time choosing a more expensive version of a product when a cheaper one is right there. You have to be strong and courageous to hold out for healthier choices in the grocery store system as it currently exists. Research says about 70% of shoppers bring lists into grocery stores but only 20% adhere to them. The additions are in store decisions or impulse buys. Grocery stores hope you will: listen to the background music–the slower the beat the longer you mosey, search for the “loss leaders” (items you always need but at a discount)--the longer you search the more products you see, go to the bakery, prepared foods, and deli sections–the sights and good smells will keep you lingering and encouraging sales, and taste samples because if you like what you taste you are likely to buy it.

Part 6: Food Fraud

Part 6: Food Fraud: Based on the book “Metabolical”

There are six examples of food fraud that reached your restaurant’s or grocery store’s shelves without your knowledge: Dilution/adulteration. Something is added to the food to disguise or extend it. Milk is a common vehicle. In 2019 in India, milk was determined to have lower fat levels than advertised because the cows are inadequately fed. Another dilution is olive oil; it’s estimated that up to 80 percent of Italian virgin olive oil is neither Italian nor virgin. Substitution. It’s common for restaurants or food stands to substitute something of lesser value in an attempt to reap a higher profit. Vendors in New York City got caught selling beef gyros or goat gyros advertised as lamb; this occurs more frequently when the meat is shredded and mixed together. Another common substitution occurs in fish sales, where one study demonstrated that 21 percent of the fish underwent substitution, and that one out of every three establishments visited sold substituted seafood. Fish substitution is more likely to occur in restaurants (26 percent) than at grocery stores (12 percent). A common substitution occurs when tilapia (containing red dye), which costs $3.51 per pound, is swapped out for snapper, which costs about $15 per pound. Of the species tested, sea bass and snapper had the highest rates of mislabeling (55 percent and 42 percent, respectively). Much of the substituted seafood is labeled as a local favorite, while the truth is it may have been flown from halfway around the world. Intentional contamination/concealment. A famous international case occurred in 2008, where melamine was found in infant formula and other dairy products. In China, the milk was being diluted by dairy producers so more of it could be sold. The dilution decreased the amount of protein in milk, so the dairy producer replaced the natural milk protein with melamine, a nitrogen-rich compound used to make kitchen countertops. When ingested, melamine causes kidney stones and kidney failure. The melamine in milk killed six infants and sickened over 300,000 people in China, but dairy products laced with melamine were exported around the world and made it to our shores. Luckily no one in the US died. Another example is Parmesan cheese. In 2012, cellulose, a by-product of wood digestion, was added to several brands; in fact, one brand didn’t even have any cheese in the product at all. Country of origin. Many food items are prized because they come from unique places. But what if that place isn’t so unique? For instance, beer-battered pollock might come fresh from the waters of Alaska, or it might come frozen from a basin in China. More likely, the reason for this kind of fraud is to avoid paying duty on imported goods, such as alcohol. Organic. You might think that buying organic would save you from fraud. You would be wrong. The markup on organic is enormous, anywhere from 25 percent for avocados to 65 percent for milk. Furthermore, there’s a clear economic impetus to mark individual items as organic, as the only way to be caught is through laboratory analysis. One fraudster netted $142 million for faking organic on the label, and then spent his ill-gotten gains on Las Vegas casinos and sexual escapades. He eventually committed suicide rather than go to jail. Counterfeiting. Perhaps the most brazen of all food fraud occurs in the luxury space. Finding out that some high rollers were duped by the counterfeiting of rare wines and scotches may give you a moment of schadenfreude satisfaction, but this is a very alarming issue. If they can do that with something under that much scrutiny, imagine what they can do to you. In the meantime, what can you, the consumer, do to protect your health and your wallet from food fraud? It’s tough to say. But there are three precepts to remember: The more ingredients, the more risk (e.g., salted peanuts have three ingredients, Oreos have eleven ingredients). Avoid highly processed food. Buying organic may decrease your risk for cancer, but it increases the risk of fraud because fraudsters focus on organic due to the higher profit margin. Buy from the supplier directly (e.g., the farmer or the farmer’s market). Fewer middlemen mean fewer entities jacking up the price and people to hide behind, as well as more direct and face-to-face responsibility to the consumer. Distracting away from the real problem. We have the data to demonstrate that processed food is a primary causative factor for diabetes, fatty liver disease, heart disease, and tooth decay; correlative for cancer, dementia, hypertension, addiction to other substances, and depression; as well as plausible for autoimmune disease and anxiety. But when the food industry addresses these issues in public, they only refer to the “obesity epidemic.” Until about 2010, they ignored the problem entirely, deflecting the issue back to the consumer and using the tobacco industry meme of “personal responsibility.” When they couldn’t deny culpability any longer, they chose to divert the public health conversation specifically toward obesity, for two reasons: because for them and the dietitians, it’s still all about calories, and the public still believes it. Knowledge. Can you trust the food industry to tell you when something is healthy or not? People have no idea what they’re eating. The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 gave us our current food label, which was supposed to provide information to the consumer of what’s in the food, but of course says nothing about what’s been done to render it poisonous. The food label is currently unintelligible in part because the industry skirts the rules. What the public needs to know (protect the liver, feed the gut) is what’s been done to the food—but that’s exactly the information that’s withheld. Access. With 74 percent of foods in the supermarket containing added sugar, it has become almost unavoidable that you will, knowingly or unknowingly, consume contaminated food in your daily life. Processed foods are quick, easy, and have permeated workplaces, gyms, schools, and your refrigerator. People in poor neighborhoods live in “food deserts,” without access to Real Food because grocery stores are hard to come by. But the problem of food deserts becomes magnified when those same areas are rife with fast food outlets and convenience stores that provide only processed items (because of shelf life and depreciation). Sometimes these are called “food swamps,” the density of which predicts obesity and chronic disease in poor populations even better than food deserts. And why not? You can drown in a swamp faster than you can starve in a desert. Affordability. Assuming one wants to buy healthy food and has access to it, they have to be able to afford it. Analysis of the cost of food demonstrated that Real Food (fresh produce, eggs, and meat) was twice as expensive as processed food (Cheetos and Pop-Tarts) in 2002, and increased by 17 cents per pound of food per year over the next decade, as compared with processed food, which only increased 7 cents per pound per year. However, the cost of obesity to the individual ends up much higher. The amount of money that they pay directly for healthcare is double that of a person of normal weight. Furthermore, if you’re working three jobs and have kids, then you need something quick and easy. Affordability is coming from a place of privilege not just in cost of food, but in time for menu planning, etc. It’s one of many social justice issues—if you don’t have the time or the money to procure and prepare Real Food, what options do you have? And the processed food industry has positioned itself to perfectly fill the gap. Cheap food seems like a no-brainer—but not really. Externalities. The belief that your actions can’t harm anyone else needs reconsideration. For example, if you smoke, you not only hurt yourself, you hurt your employer, as the cost to that employer is $5,816 per year just to carry you. The cost to employers as a result of the obesity epidemic adds an extra $2,751 per employee. There are double the workers who are obese (45 percent) as there are smokers (23 percent)—never mind the costs of the diseases of metabolic syndrome. The medical costs of chronic metabolic disease due to processed food consumption will cause a doubling of social network costs in the next decade. In the US, Medicare will be bankrupt by 2029 and Social Security will be bankrupt by 2034, bankrupting healthcare systems around the world. There’s the additional burden of diet-related harm experienced by children who are especially vulnerable to poor diet at critical developmental stages. No label, packaging, or jingle can make an ultra-processed food healthy. Furthermore, you can’t make processed food healthy by adding supplements. Conversely, Real Food, which is universally healthy, doesn’t even have a label on which to make a structure-function or health claim. Most important  it’s not what’s in the food that matters; it’s what’s been done to the food that counts. None of that is on the Nutrition Facts label. Processed food kills people (eventually). Processed food kills pocketbooks (eventually). Processed food kills budgets (eventually). Processed food kills the planet (eventually). It’s a slow process, even glacial, but we know it’s happening—or at least some of us do. Others of us keep doing it anyway because it’s mindless, seemingly cheap, convenient, tasty, and most of all, addictive. It turns out, most people think that deciding what to make for dinner and then buying the ingredients is an enormous hassle. They want what is good for their household, but trying to pick out food based on health and ingredients is impossible, and the inadequacy of our current food label becomes overwhelming. They don’t know how to read packaging (wonder why—because there’s nothing on the label that’s worth reading?), and they certainly don’t know how to make food choices based on it. When they enter the supermarket, it’s like walking into the opium den with a cacophony of voices on the endcaps of the aisles, shrieking “buy me.” They fall prey to the siren songs of the tortilla chips, soft drinks, and cookies. Here are the seven shopping rules to abide by, even before you walk into the store (or order online), that will keep you from stepping on any of the landmines the store has placed in your way. Don’t go shopping hungry. Shop the edges of the supermarket. If you’ve gone into the aisles, you’ve gone off the rails. If a product is on the endcap of the aisle, the company paid to have it placed there. Don’t be a stooge. Any food that has a logo you’ve heard of or any food with a Nutrition Facts label has been processed. If a product lists a structure-function claim on the package, don’t buy it. Example: any food that says low-fat or no trans-fats is poison, because something else is in there instead. If it doesn’t say whole grain, it isn’t. And even if it does say whole grain, it probably isn’t. If the carbohydrate to fiber ratio is greater than 10 to 1, don’t buy it. If any form of sugar is one of the first three ingredients, it’s a dessert. Change your grocery buying habits. If you have a local butcher or produce store, shop there—your choices are limited to the healthy stuff. Unfortunately, so many convenience stores around the country don’t sell fresh produce, so go to the proprietor and tell them what you want. You’ll also have to change your mindset about food and money. One way or another, you’re going to pay. You can either pay the farmer or the doctor—which would you prefer? Make a conscious choice.