The Cost of Food. . . . Part 2

Well if you haven’t read the blog post before this one you might want to. But if you don’t have time I’m sure you can catch right up. 😉 

So in my last article I did a deep dive on why some foods at the grocery store seem cheap and why some seem expensive. I say “seem” because it is a bit of smoke and mirrors or cat and mouse or chicken and egg. You may pay less on the outset of buying “cheap” food, but in the end you will pay more for your health than the pennies you saved for said food. 

In the last blog post I introduced the idea and terms of “ultra-processed ingredients” and “ultra-processed foods”. I explained  and hopefully made clear why foods with ultra-processed ingredients are cheap for the consumer to purchase and profitable for the company to make - these are foods that are cheap to make, use the unusable leftovers from other products and can sit on a shelf for literal years without deteriorating. Versus real food - food that looks, smells, tastes and digests like real food. Food that has use by dates. Food that you actually recognize with ingredients you can pronounce. Food that your body can use for your health, nutrition and energy.

In our world today we eat our foods and consume our calories from four (4) major groups as defined by food scientists: 

1. Unprocessed foods - these are naturally-occurring foods that we eat (or should eat). The foods that are unprocessed. The foods that we see in nature. You know, blueberries, tomatoes, carrots, spinach, steak and so on. 
2. Processed Culinary Foods and Ingredients - these are things like oils, vinegars, butter, sugar, salt, starches. They are not necessarily nutrient-dense like the first group but can be mixed with foods from the first group to make delicious combinations (think salad dressings and marinades). When you make a meal using the first two groups you can have delicious and varied options for every meal.
3. Processed Foods - these are ready-made mixes of groups one and two, but more than a salad dressing (from group 2) on a salad (from group one). Think about bread and cheese. You can take unrefined flour and water from group one and mix with yeast, sugar and salt from group two to get carbohydrate heaven! Or yogurt - taking milk and berries from group one and adding enzymes and sugar from group two to make what we’re all used to (well, if you make your own yogurt and don’t buy it in the store. This is not a hard process and if you’ve never done it I encourage you to look into it. You can make it a lot healthier at home with little effort.)
4. Ultra-Processed Foods - these are the ones to avoid.If you don’t think they should be avoided, let me share the definition of the term here. ”Industrially manufactured food products made up of several ingredients (formulations) including sugar, oils, fats and salt (generally in combination and in higher amounts than in processed foods) and food substances of no or rare culinary use (such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, modified starches and protein isolates). Group 1 foods are absent or represent a small proportion of the ingredients in the formulation. Processes enabling the manufacture of ultra-processed foods include industrial techniques such as extrusion, moulding and pre-frying; application of additives including those whose function is to make the final product palatable or hyperpalatable such as flavours, colourants, non-sugar sweeteners and emulsifiers; and sophisticated packaging, usually with synthetic materials. Processes and ingredients here are designed to create highly profitable (low-cost ingredients, long shelf-life, emphatic branding), convenient (ready-to-(h)eat or to drink), tasteful alternatives to all other Nova food groups and to freshly prepared dishes and meals. Ultra-processed foods are operationally distinguishable from processed foods by the presence of food substances of no culinary use (varieties of sugars such as fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, 'fruit juice concentrates', invert sugar, maltodextrin, dextrose and lactose; modified starches; modified oils such as hydrogenated or interesterified oils; and protein sources such as hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, gluten, casein, whey protein and 'mechanically separated meat') or of additives with cosmetic functions (flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, sweeteners, thickeners and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazingagents) in their list of ingredients.^[10]” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...)

      So that is a long definition and as you can see it differs pretty greatly from other categories in a lot of ways. You can’t make these ultra-processed foods at home, you just don’t have the machinery to do that. They are foods that sit on shelves for years. They may taste great at first and your kids may eat four bowls of Captain Crunch cereal but is that actually good for them??

       Here’s another definition from www.regulatory.mxns.com -  ”Ultra-processed foods. They are the ones that use many ingredients including food additives that improve palatability, processed raw materials (hydrogenated fats, modified starches, etc.) and ingredients that are rarely used in home cooking such as soy protein or mechanically separated meat. These foods are mainly of industrial origin and are characterized by a good pleasantness and the fact that they can be stored for a long time.”  Another source adds “to create highly profitable products” (Ultra Processed People, page 34). 

As you can see from the four groups, we have gone from what we’ve always eaten to this. And this fourth group - the newest group - came about in 2009 after multiple international scientists and nutritional experts saw major changes in how the food we eat interacts with our bodies (thanks Snackwells). And why are we now wondering how we can create “highly profitable products”? Why not just the food we’ve always eaten?

In America at least 60% of our daily calories come from this fourth food group. And our kids are eating more than that! 70-80% of the caloric intake of our children in America come from the ultra-processed food group. No wonder our kids are overweight yet undernourished, overfed, unable to concentrate and unable to sleep. I just read that 77% of Americans 18-24 years of age cannot meet the physical requirements to join the military - that’s weight and/or physical fitness. It’s so bad the military is lowering standards to join. LOWERING STANDARDS FOR THE MILITARY!!!!!!

People we need to get a handle on this situation. We need to fix this. And the good news is you CAN! You CAN fix this! You can fix this three times every single day! 

I’m not asking you to go on a carrot juice detox for 40 days. I’m not asking you to give up red wine at night. I’m not asking you to give up champagne (if you ever hear me say to give up champagne please understand I have been abducted and I AM NOT OKAY and need to be rescued immediately). I’m simply recommending we look at what we’ve got in our kitchens and what we’re ordering at restaurants and scale back a bit. I’m recommending we do eat more from groups one and two (and combine them for group 3). Make your bread. Make your pasta. Eat the steak. Bake the potato. And yeah, maybe juice the carrots. (Side note - Barry and I have celery and apple juices in the mornings are we’re both still alive - they haven’t killed us yet. They’re even GOOD.)

And maybe stop looking at only the cost of the item in the grocery store to see if it’s truly cheap or not. The UPC code and retail sticker aren’t the only ways to monitor worth and/or value. (Think about that Ralph Lauren swimsuit that you have and wear after 20 years and it still holds up versus the one you bought in Target last year and had to throw away at the end of the season because it was in tatters. Value versus worth.)

You WILL pay for your food either at the beginning of the process or at the end of the process. You’ll either eat and be healthy or eat and be healthy through pharmaceutical and medical intervention. Period. Your choice.

You vote. Three times a day you vote with your wallet and your mind. Choose well my friends.

Aliceson