30
Oct 09

H1N1 Trick or Treat

scaryThis afternoon I listened to a radio host interview a doctor about … what else … H1N1.

The slant to his interview was “Are children at risk of contracting H1N1 when they go trick or treating?”

The host asked the doctor questions like: “Can H1N1 be transmitted through candy.” “Are children at risk by touching a door knob that a bunch of other kids have touched?”

And my personal favourite question: “Could a ‘bad guy’ use Halloween candy to deliberately spread H1N1?”

I think the doctor was as frustrated as I was with the way the interview was going and he gave a calm and courteous, but firm “No” answer to all these questions.

I wish the media would stop.

If the media really wanted to do service to the public they would talk about how eating a whole bunch of sugar laced with food colouring, preservatives, and artificial stuff wreaks havoc on a child’s immune system.

And not only does all that crap food almost instantly deflate immune function, but researchers now say that repeated high spikes in blood sugar greatly contributes to one’s risk for developing Type 2 Diabetes.

Oh ya … don’t forget the damage that sugar can do to your child’s beautiful second set of newly forming teeth!

If you really want to protect your children this Halloween, limit the amount of candy they eat to one treat per day for a just a day or two, then quietly throw the rest in the garbage.

Want to know more? See “What’s so bad about junk food.”


08
Sep 09

Product contains ‘real’ food

I get a kick out of advertisements that claim their product contains ‘real’ food …

When a processed, packaged product boasts that one of its ingredients is ‘real’, you have to wonder what else the product contains.

I decided to investigate a breakfast cereal that brags about containing ‘real’ strawberries, and sure enough the product contains freeze dried strawberries … ingredient number 23 of a whopping 38 ingredients.

Other interesting things about this ingredient list is that the word ‘sugar’ shows up 4 times, and on closer examination I discovered that there are an additional 4 types of sugars (honey, molasses, corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup) listed AND a chemical sugar (sucralose).

That’s 9 forms of sugar to go with those freeze-dried real strawberries!

Tomorrow morning I’m going to slice some really-real juicy ripe fresh strawberries onto my really-real bowl of brown rice and top it off with really-real almond milk.

Here is the complete ingredient list of the breakfast cereal I investigated. The numbers, indentations and colours are my additions.

1. Whole Grain Wheat
2. Wheat Bran
3. Sugar
     Berry Flavored Oat Cluster
          Toasted Oats
               4. Rolled Oats
               5. Sugar
               6. Soybean Oil
               7. Honey
               8. Molasses
          9. Sugar
          10. Rolled Oats
          Strawberry Flavored Apples
               11. Dried Apples
               12. Artificial Flavor
               13. Citric Acid
               14. Red #40
               15. Sodium Sulfite
          16. Corn Syrup
          17. Brown Sugar
          18. Natural
          19. And Artificial Flavor
          20. BHT [For Freshness]
21. Wheat Flour
22. High Fructose Corn Syrup
23. Freeze Dried Strawberries
24. Salt
25. Malt Flavoring
26. Natural And Artificial Flavors
27. Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C)
28. Sucralose
29. Niacinamide
30. Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6)
31. Reduced Iron
32. Folic Acid
33. Riboflavin (Vitamin B2)
34. Vitamin A Palmitate
35. BHT (Preservative)
36. Thiamin Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1)
37. Vitamin D
38. Vitamin B12