WWGD—What Would Granny Do?
One of the best bits of how-to-eat-healthy advice I have seen in the past several years was in Michael Pollan’s book, “In Defense of Food.” He says to look at the ingredient label and if it contains a bunch of ingredients your grandmother would not recognize, then you probably should not eat it. Here is why I think that is sound advice—first of all, it is always a good idea to read food labels. Half of the food misinformation I have been complaining about the past few weeks could be helped if people would read labels. Second, if we practiced Pollan’s advice, it would steer us toward more natural, actual food and away from manufactured food-like substances that cost way more and are usually not very nutritious.
One problem is that the additive names on food labels can be misleading. Some ingredients sound like something out of a chemistry lab when they are actually things that are good for us. One example is the commonly used preservative, ascorbic acid, which actually the chemical name for vitamin C. Another is acetic acid, which is just highly concentrated vinegar. The bigger problem, in my opinion, is when ingredients are given different, creative names in order to make them sound healthy and organic. The one I see most often is “evaporated cane juice,” which is really sugar. One of the sneakier ones can be called “yeast extract,” “soy extract,” or even just “plant protein,” when it is really monosodium glutamate, commonly known as MSG. Truthfully, there is no real evidence that MSG causes health problems, but it is a sneaky source of sodium and, as a former migraine sufferer, I can tell you that it triggered migraines for me.
Lately there has been a graphic going around on social media that says something like “Chef Boy-R-D Ravioli is fine, I’ve been eating that since I was a kid,” then shows a comparison the 1970s label versus the current label. In each case the earlier label showed very simple ingredients while the current label shows a ton of things your grandmother would not recognize. I have not checked the veracity of these graphics, so I do not know if they are truthful, but what I do know is that more and more of us are eating highly processed foods and/ or prepared foods (restaurants and takeout) almost exclusively. When I was a kid back in the 60s and 70s, my mother cooked from scratch nearly everything we ate. We went to a restaurant maybe a couple of times a month. There were exceptions to this, like my friend whose mother did not cook, so everything was frozen or canned or otherwise mostly pre-made. She was also one of the only overweight kids I knew back then. There were not as many restaurants back then and grocery stores were not as big, because they sold mostly ingredients and not endless variations on pre-made foods. And we were all much healthier back then.