What the heck have we been eating?

Its really astonishing reading the labels and marketing nowadays. All Natural, No Hormones, Real Cheese, Cage Free, and of course Organic. What the heck were we eating before? And why is it so hard to find real food?

About a year ago I learned all about high fructose corn syrup. First of all its not something found naturally but lab created. Supposedly it makes you more hungry and is one of the worst things for your body. Around the late ’80s, sweetener consumption in the US went from mainly sugar to about 50% high fructose corn syrup! Wow, I never got the memo on that!  Remember Supersize Me… it wasn’t really about the burgers and fries but about the gallons of coke we consume which has high fructose corn syrup. So the really scary part is… its in everything. When I buy whole grain bread… it has high fructose corn syrup. What! I thought I was being a discerning consumer. There are only about 4 of 30 brands of bread that don’t have it (Mortons and Organic brands).

Okay but that is really only part of the story. There is actually something called Food Science. Engineering our food to make it taste better, look better, smell better, and last longer. Huh, interesting. Even our vegetables are engineered… and as an engineer I know about optimizing tradeoffs. So we get bigger, juicier, apples. Nice. But apples today have half the nutritional value than apples 50 years ago. So the catch is Food Scientists are trading off profit maximization for nutrition.

Anyone who cooks with onions may have experienced this first hand. At Costco you can find an onion twice the size but with what turns out to be half the taste. There is something wrong if you cut an onion and you don’t cry. The little organic ones bring me to tears! Interestingly recently I thought, I will start a vegetable garden. I found seeds online called Heirloom seeds. These are supposedly the original, non-genetically engineered versions. So again, what the heck have we been eating? And worse, now vegetables are not as good for me as they used to be? I thought organic was just about pesticides but there is so much more.

Its no wonder we are obese. We need to eat twice as much to get the same nutrional value. We inject our bodies with chemicals that creates insulin resistance and supresses our natural feeling of fullness. So I’m one of those people who is annoyed by the organic hype… but buy nothing but. I look forward to the day we go back to trusting nature over engineers.