The Best Fitness and Weight Loss Blog
 
Picture
I absolutely love to learn new things.  I subscribe to a newsletter that gives me awesome info everyday that I am absolutely addicted to.  Today's newsletter contained some info about food that I already knew, but hadn't considered writing about before.  If is about the marketing and propaganda that our food producers use to blind us to the facts about our food. 

First I want to point out that any marketing campaign is always going to show you only its best side, so I don't blame food companies for avoiding full disclosure all of the time.  It is always up to us as consumers to some extent to do our homework.  And now in the age of computers we can find pretty much any information that we want with a few clicks of the keyboard.  Heck, when I market my personal training and weight loss program I don't talk about how freak'n hard it is to lose weight, I talk about how awesome the results are.  That is marketing 101.

So what are these big lies that we need to clarify today.
  1. Industrial food is cheap/inexpensive.
  2. Industrial food is efficient.
  3. Industrial food is healthy.
To clarify why these are not necessarily true lets go through them one at a time.

1. Industrial food is cheap.  Let me use a, example of how things are not always as cheap as they appear.  Let's pretend that you go on craigslist and find 10 cars that appear to be the same, and one of them is a lot cheaper than the others, so you go buy it.  Come to find out this car still has a lien on it from a previous owner that you have to pay off before you own it! Crap.  Then you find out that this car won't pass emissions and you need to rebuild the whole exhaust system.  And finally you discover that the air bags does not work!  Now that car was the most expensive of the lot.

That is what happens A LOT with big food companies.  You may buy something off of the shelf at a discounted rate, but guess what, we pay billions upon billions of dollars to these companies in subsidies already.  That means that you, with your taxes, have already paid some for that same food.  The same is true for lots of industries, Big oil being the most prominent. 

Then on we pay again!  Lots of these companies (not all of them) do not do as good of job protecting the environment as they could and should.  They produce millions of tons of waste that is toxic for our environment.  Once again your tax dollars support trying to hold them accountable.

Finally, you must know that often your foods are filled with hormones, antibiotics and preservatives that are catastrophic for your health.  Once again you will pay for this through your persistent medical bills.

2. Industrial food is efficient.  It is true that large corporate feed lots and factories produce HUGE numbers of food animals, and I think that this is beyond dispute.  And it is certainly arguable that without this sort of efficient food production it would be more difficult to survive as a country of over 300,000,000 million people.  But what is the cost of this lifestyle?

The cost is your health.  For any animal to survive in these sorts of conditions we must essentially keep them medicated at all times to keep disease from running rampant.  In addition, the quality of the product is greatly diminished because inactivity in animals causes muscular degeneration.  So how do we get these animals to grow lots of muscles without doing anything?  Easy, we pump them full of hormones!  Some of those hormones stay in the muscle and then you eat it!

3. Industrial food is healthy.  I am a HUGE advocate of healthy eating and getting a well balance diet, which would generally include all of these food sources.  Balance eating is part of a healthy lifestyle.  But let me once again use my car analogy to clarify.

What if now, after your nightmare purchase of that car is over.  Now it is time for general maintenance like an oil change.  We all know that changing the oil is essential to keep your car in good health.  You go out and spend your hard earned money on what you heard was really good oil.  But after a while you discover that the oil that you were buying had sand in it and was destroying your engine.  Not enough sand to bring your car to a stop today, but over time.  Would you keep buying that oil?

Food is the exact same thing.  We try to eat pretty healthy most of the time, limiting the foods that we know are bad for us like deep fried fast foods.  But wouldn't you know it, lots of the foods that we thought were healthy are doing damage too!

CRAP! - So where does this leave us?  I am not a 'chicken little', I am a realist.  You could go crazy trying to discover what is in everything that you eat.  Don't.  Here is the easiest way to approach food.
  • Avoid as many preservatives as possible.  Preservatives are bad for you, so buy foods with a short expiration date!
  • Avoid foods with any sort of hydrogenated oils.  These are in tons of food but are so bad for you that states are starting to make them illegal!
  • Buy organic.  Slightly more expensive off of the shelf but you will know that chemicals were used to the minimum in the food production.
  • Make meals.  Prepackaged meals are convenient but can really be bad for you.  Plan ahead just enough so that you can know what is in your food.  Take care of yourself and your family.
I know that this stuff can be overwhelming, but don't fret.  Just a little education can make a big difference when it comes to food.

If you like this sort of information make sure that you DIGG or STUMBLE this article, and follow the blog through a RSS Feed.

8/28/2012 06:54:43 pm

Your post is really good providing good information.. I liked it and enjoyed reading ....nice lie about food u discuss

Reply
8/31/2023 02:45:03 am

Thanks for aa great read

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    0diggsdigg
    Picture

    WEIGHT LOSS BLOG

    Boise Weight Loss Tips

      What do you want to learn about?

    View my profile on LinkedIn
    Health blogs
    Listed on: link directory
    Weight Loss Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory

    BLOG for Personal Training, Group Training or Boot Camp in Boise

    Learn how to lose weight here.

    Diet Center Directory