The Nutritional Institute

Last night I expanded on chapter 7 (Soil to Plate) from our book Wholesome Nutrition. I delved into what real food actually is. Myself and the audience were horrified by how we have been manipulated with trickery by both the food manufacturers and the marketers of ‘food’ products.

I thought if we began with a definition of food, we could keep going back to this definition every time a product was investigated. This proved to be very helpful once all the tricks of food manufacture were exposed. The keywords that described food (through my Mac book dictionary) were: ‘nutritious, maintain life and growth.’

The potato chips
The first product I inspected was a bag of smoked beef potato crisps. Looking at the label, it contained 17 different ingredients, the first ingredient being potatoes. We asked a number of questions about these potatoes, wondering if they had been picked before peak ripeness, had they been coated with a preserving wax, had they been transported a long way, were they stored for a while before being used… These kinds of answers are not available on such packaging, which should leave us wondering which journey this particular pack of potatoes took.

The next ingredient, the second largest, was refined vegetable oil. This is a thoroughly man-made oil, with many of its molecules turned into trans fats, which studies have linked to numerous diseases.

For the third ingredient, we were potentially conned by the words ‘antioxidant TBHQ’, thinking it’s a good thing, when in fact it’s a chemical preservative which is a form of butane (highly flammable, easily liquefiable, colourless gas). It is used to delay the onset of rancidity and to greatly extend the shelf life.

For the fourth and fifth ingredients, we needed to question if the corn flour was genetically modified or not, and whether the salt used was the cheapest table salt with zero health benefits and which may lead to increased blood pressure?

The sixth ingredient was sugar: the cocaine of the food world. They need this ingredient to possibly give the crisps palatability, knowing full well that it’s a highly addictive ingredient.

The seventh ingredient was flavour enhancer E621, which is MSG. This chemical is found in 80 per cent of all modern day foods: it is an excitotoxin. Scientist know this information, but they are not saying anything because they are not prepared to take on the food giants. Would they win? I doubt it. It would be like an ant competing against the incredible hulk… And how easily do ants get squashed? MSG has been tested on mice and it has made them fat - just one small side effect of this horrible chemical.

Hydrolysed vegetable protein soya was the eighth ingredient. The hydrolisation process produces harmful compounds like MSG: a double whammy of MSG!

The ninth ingredient was ‘spices’ - we’re not told which spices they have selected, nor do we know their journey. Were they sprayed before harvest? The ‘flavouring’, what was ingredient ten, we can assume is not natural because it would have said so on the label - they would use the words ‘natural flavouring’ to try and boost this product, making it appear slightly healthier in any way they knew possible.

The eleventh ingredient was E551. This is used as an anti-caking agent and is actually a derivative of sand - is that food?

Then we were adorned with colourants. Ingredient No. 12 was E110, which is a synthetic food dye derived from petroleum. It’s an orangy-yellow colour and the food scientists call it sunset yellow. The thirteenth ingredient E122 is a red synthetic coal tar dye, thought to worsen asthma. The fourteenth ingredient E124 is also a red dye and has been banned in the US and Norway. In 2001, Toxicological Sciences found a connection between this colouring and tumours in animals. E133, ingredient No 15, is a brilliant blue. In the UK food guide, it states: ‘not recommended for consumption by children.’ There is no warning of this on the packaging. This food dye has been banned in numerous countries, including: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and so forth. Why are we still using this dye?

The last two ingredients were flavour enhancers, that are completely tasteless. Apparently these chemicals enhance all the other flavours. These are E631 and E627.

We have to wonder how denatured this particular potato chip is for them to have to use two red dyes, one blue and a orangy-yellow to get a similar colour to the initial potato…

We concluded that this product is not made to nourish. It’s dead and full of unrecognisable ingredients that our bodies have no clue how to digest or assimilate. It was not made with health in mind; it was constructed and manipulated with various chemicals that will make us buy it again. We are not eating food anymore, we are eating food-like products. These chemicals are engineered to trick us on a cellular level.

The ‘healthy’ breakfast cereal
We then took a look at a box of cereal and discussed how this particular breakfast cereal uses an Olympic athlete to endorse their product. So we are given a subliminal message that if we or our kids eat his cereal, we too may become an Olympian. The message for the person consuming the product is so different from the marketers. It’s all based on what we hope might will happen if we eat it! It had a label on the front saying that there is no need to add sugar, but they have already added one and a half teaspoons per 50g serving. What if we only wanted half a teaspoon? This cereal is also marketed as being intelligent nutrition, but we have to ask the very important question - intelligent according to whom? There is nothing intelligent about a combination of refined maize and soya. The third ingredient had to be sugar, or else this cereal would not be palatable! Maybe intelligent of the food manufactures to use an addictive ingredient, but it has nothing to do with the intelligence of the consumer….

What has happened to our food?

The ice cream without cream
Why can’t we get our hands on the real stuff? My final product was a tub of vanilla ice cream. I chose vanilla because it would have the fewest ingredients. Now we know in the English language that ice cream means cream that has been iced. Out of the 15 ingredients that were listed, not one was cream! So we’re not even eating ‘iced cream’! We’re eating some laboratory concoction that has been so manipulated that they have conned us into thinking we’re consuming ice cream. Again, sugar was the third biggest ingredient. The chemical preservative TBHQ was fifth on the list and the colours used to create an off-white were orangy-yellow, a greenish yellow and dark brown to black colour… All to create an off-white looking ice cream???

Real ice cream has four ingredients irrespective of its flavour. For example, vanilla ice cream would be: cream, egg yolks, raw honey and vanilla seeds. If you want chocolate, you leave out the vanilla and add raw cacao powder. If you want strawberry or granadilla, you add those as your final ingredient. If you want to make this a really nourishing product, you make sure that the cream is from pasture reared cows, the eggs are from pasture reared chickens, and the honey is raw and unprocessed. You could potentially eat a decent amount of this because it only has nourishing ingredients in it. Every ingredient is pronounceable and recognisable to your body. Why are we not eating real ice cream? Could it be too expensive? Perhaps that may be a good thing, then we wouldn’t eat too much of it. We would eat it in moderation like we’re supposed to.

I concluded my talk by encouraging everyone to shop smartly. Read labels if you have to buy something that is packaged. Start spending a bit more time in the kitchen and cook from scratch - you will know everything that went into that meal. You can power meals up by cooking with grass fed stocks and by including fermented products like sauerkraut. Start taking a lot more care with what you put into your body. We already live in such a polluted environment, so if we can pollute our bodies less by avoiding all the toxins in foods, we’re taking a very decisive step away from disease!