Last
weekend I traveled up-state to Hudson, New York to spend the weekend
volunteering at a Plant-Strong immersion get-away with the stars of Forks
Over Knives. The speaker list
consisted of an all-star cast, including author of the Engine 2
Diet, Rip Esselstyn, author
of the ground-breaking study How to
Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease,
Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, The China
Study author,
Dr. Colin Campbell, Jeff Novick who is one of the most impressive Dietary
Nutritionists I’ve ever met and finally one of the most inspiring plant-based
athletes and my friend, Rich Roll
among others.
The
weekend proved to be a great inspiration. I sat in on lectures about how to
reverse heart disease, how oil and other fats harm and damage our endophilia
cells, two different cooking classes and much more. Ann Esselstyn even personally
taught me the best and most efficient way to strip kale from it’s stem. However,
the most important lesson I was able to take away from the weekend was when
Jeff Novick, MS, RD, LD, LN taught the group how to read a nutrition label.
There
is an old joke about how vegan means expert ingredient reader. And they are. Long
term vegans are excellent at spotting the smallest trace amounts of any animal
products listed in the ingredients. As I’ve argued in the past, all animal
products should be completely removed from the diet. This includes meats,
dairy, eggs, and fish. These are devoid of micro nutrients but more importantly
have been demonstrated in study after study to be harmful in overall long term health
as well as greatly increasing the risk of contracting most of America’s most
deadly diseases including heart disease, cancer (just about every form), and diabetes.
Since I am a vegan, I always assumed I knew what to look for when evaluating a
product, however, I never realized how little I knew about these very tricky black
and white charts.
At
one time or another we’ve all looked at the package and attempted to decipher
these. But three little tricks Jeff Novick taught me makes distinguishing
between healthy and fraudulent a breeze.
We
will analyze those tricky charts in part II. First we need to understand how to
read the ingredient list. Never, excuse me, NEVER trust anything found
on the front of the package. It is amazing what companies can get away with
through their advertising on the front of their packaging. Things like “Fat
Free,” “Multi-Grain,” and “All Natural” are all common catch words found on the
front of packaged foods to make the consumer think they are getting something
they are not.
Any
time a product lists any type of oil it is an instant clue the product contains
fat. Be especially weary of the word hydrogenated oil and partially
hydrogenated oil as this is a sign that the product contains saturated fat and
sometimes even trans fat (this is particularly the case in “High Heat” cooking oils).
Even more outrageous, due to a loophole in labeling laws, companies are legally
allowed to hide harmful fats in their products and still list it as having 0
grams of fat on the nutrition label. This is because any time a product has
less than .5 g they can legally round that number down to zero. Pam is an
excellent example of this. Despite
the fact that the product is 100% fat (much
of it saturated fat), the company is legally able to claim their product is “fat
free” simply by making the serving size so incredibly small (.266 g or 1/3 of a
second of spray) that the product serving size will contain less than .5 g of
fats. Hence they round that number down to zero and bippity boppity boo you get
“Fat Free Cooking!” (check out
this article
for news about a recent law suit over this practice)
Unfortunately,
we can’t even trust words like “All Natural,” “Multi-Grain,” “Made with Wheat”
or even “Made with Whole Wheat.” The phrase “All Natural” simply means the
product started with a natural source. After processing there may not be a
single trace of that natural source left, but hey, it’s all natural! The same
thing goes for “Multi-grain” and “Whole wheat” labels found on the front of the
packaging. Instead, search for the words “Whole,” “Rolled,” “Stone Ground,” or
“Cracked” in the ingredient list. One of these words should be directly
followed by the word “wheat.” Be sure to avoid products that just list “wheat,”
“white,” “Durum,” “Semolina,” “Bleached,” “Unbleached,” or “Enriched” as these
are all code words for white flour, which has been so heavily processed nearly
all of it’s nutrients have been stripped away, leaving empty calories and
damaging oxidants (think the opposite of antioxidants).
Back
to Nature Organic Stoneground Wheat Crackers were the example Jeff used because
the front of their package looks incredibly healthy. But a closer look at the
ingredient list shows their claims on the front to be only partly true.
If you enlarge the picture, company appears to have listed the ingredients right on the front of the package, accordingly, these crackers are made from “Organic Stone Ground Wheat, Organic Safflower Oil,
Organic Whole Wheat Flakes, Organic Whole Brown Flax Seed and Sea Salt.”
However, when you compare what the front of the box claims to be made from with the actual ingredients….
“Ingredients: ORGANIC UNBLEACHED ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT
FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE {VITAMIN B1}, RIBOFLAVIN
{VITAMIN B2}, FOLIC ACID), ORGANIC SAFFLOWER OIL, ORGANIC GROUND WHEAT FLOUR,
ORGANIC WHEAT FLAKES, ORGANIC WHOLE BROWN FLAX SEED, ORGANIC EVAPORATED CANE
JUICE, ORGANIC BROWN RICE SYRUP, SEA SALT, LEAVENING (BAKING SODA, MONOCALCIUM
PHOSPHATE), ORGANIC BARLEY MALT EXTRACT, SOY LECITHIN. CONTAINS: WHEAT, SOY.” (the companies
page can be found here).
Hopefully you notice two
things. First, several ingredients were not included on
the front of the box, including the very first ingredient, which is organic and
unbleached enriched flour. In other words, this product is mostly white flour! The second ingredient is oil or 100% fat and then followed by more white flour, then white flour flakes and then finally we get "whole brown flax seed." Just
based off this knowledge, we now know to put these crackers back on the shelf and
continue shopping.
To reemphasize the first
part of our lesson, ignore the front and read the ingredients. Your body will
thank you! Go and try this in your pantry or any grocery store. You will be amazed at what you
find. Next week I will post more about how to read the Nutrition Facts Label so be
sure to check back.
Cheers,
For
more information check out Jeff Novick’s DVD lecture “Should I Eat That” or
Rip Esselstyn’s book The Engine 2 Diet.
