Death is "Free" as Low-Fat/Cal Dressing

I took Subway sandwiches to feed the medical students in my Food Pharmacology class yesterday.  Because no sandwich place on the planet gives you enough vegetables to slow down the bread digestion rate enough to optimize health, I asked them for several trays of vegetables so the students could max out on their own.  In the condiments bag was salad dressing in case anyone wanted to avoid the carbs altogether.  Little does the consumer (even if you are a medical student, and even if you are teaching them a nutrition class) realize, but the "Free" dressing, meaning fat-free, is loaded with the worst of all sugars.  Here are the ingredients: water, vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, more corn syrup, salt, and less then 2% of other things.  Instead of healthy fats from vegetable oils that improve metabolism and immune function, reduce cancer risk, the list of benefits goes on and on, this dressing is all marketing hype that taps into the publics perception of fat as bad, replacing it instead with sugar that forces our liver to turn against our own body, producing triglyceride and ultimately cholesterol as fast as when you drink alcohol.  The research is so clear on this, that I have to ask myself if the people who are in charge of the companies making these products have anyone on staff or consult with anyone who understands human physiology as it relates to nutrition before they start selling us things to put into our bodies.  If they do not, then they are incompetent, and if they do, their consultants are incompetent.  That leaves the consumer needing to get a PhD in human physiology to figure it out on their own, and until then consume things that only appear healthy on the surface.  Unbelievable.  To me, this is profoundly sad: we need to HELP each other, not hurt each other (through ignorance or otherwise).  Yes I have anger over what is happening to the public without their even realizing it as they make valiant efforts to be healthy, but even more than anger I have sadness and would like to reach out to the companies (like Kraft and their suppliers like Subway) with information so they can better help us help ourselves.  For example, lets put flax oil with extra virgin olive oil in these products and REALLY get something done in our bodies.  Yes the products will have a shorter shelp life, but our bodies will have a longer life!  I would rather trade longevity of food products in for longevity of me.  And in particular, I would like to avoid compounds (fructose) that instead of killing me directly makes my own body (in this case the liver) turn against itself and kill me from the inside out.  Our effort to turn healthy salads and other foods into desserts so we are willing to eat them, while cutting out critically healthy ingredients we incorrectly perceive to be unhealthy, has the opposite effect of making them "free".  They come at the ultimate cost: our lives.

Comments

[Navneet Vats]

I think the need of the hour is include phytonutrients in the diet because our body is more suited to digest green foods. They are antioxidant rich and fight of free radicals that are responsible for diseases like Cancer, etc. Fortifying cereals with vitamins and minerals, alone will alone not serve the purpose but including organic natural produce, because of its twin functions- body detoxification and nutrition, will help the cause. Aloe Vera gel is fine example of such nutrition

[adam]

Apparently Americans eat three times more cereal than other nations. Processed like the rice puffs, corn flake type of stuff.
You really are better off eating the box. To get a kernel of corn to turn into a corn flake takes a vast amount of heat and pressure, and in the process takes any semblance of goodness out of it.
The reason these companies fortify their cereals with added vitamins etc., is that if they didn't, the said cereals couldn't be classified as food. They have no nutritional value at all, except what is sprayed on them.

[Aarthi]

I so agree with your post.
I feel in the States so called capitalist company everything usually revolves around money. If a company can make money by selling a "key" word(replace with antioxidant,low fat, probiotic) they will do it.
It is indeed sad and why are american's so gullible?