Fascinating reading. It never ceases to surprise me about how gullible we have become (the general population "we" - not those of us here who obviously do a lot more from-scratch cooking) as to what we eat.

My own cousin eats out every meal except breakfast and that is a high sugar, fiberless, nutritionally empty meal of boxed cereal and whole milk. Unfortunately while this article points to processed foods available in the grocery store, the same scientific approach is taken towards fast foods and even not-so-fast food restaurants. Restaurants pay a fortune to find those same bliss points and addictive reactions to their menu offerings.

I don't know what the answer is on a broad scale but those of us teaching our kids how to truely TASTE a healthy meal as well as make it themselves are giving their children the most wonderful lessons to carry them through the rest of their lives.

Now if only it were possible to find good food sources of unaltered food short of moving...

Thanks for sharing the link. I enjoyed reading all 14-pages.

After recently reading the book, "Wheat Belly" by William Davis, M.D. (videos available on YouTube), I'll also add modern-day varieties of wheat to the list of addictive foods - salt, sugar and fat - mentioned in the article. A "fearsome foursome" for the snack food industry.

-Grainlady

Very interesting article. Thanks for posting Peppi!

Very interesting topic.

I don't think the food companies will ever change, and I can't blame them for supplying what the public wants. I do blame parents and the general public for not adhering to healthy diets. The information is out there why people are fat and sick.

And I blame all the cooking shows, for their focus in how much butter, cream, cheese, sugar and salt you can put in a dish.

Thanks for sharing.

dcarch

I had read the shortened "excerpt" on another site, I was interested to read the entire thing, so thank you for that link, Peppi.

Of course, as dcarch mentioned, we all have choices. Most of those items are snack and convenience foods, used instead of cooking, although the seasoning packet in Hamburger Helper is easily reproduced at home and a cream sauce in place of the ever present canned soup is easy and quick.

IN the end, though, our health is our own choice. We can live on high fat, high sugar, high salt meals for as long as our hearts can stand it, and feed our kids frozen pizza and Coke for dinner then park them in front of the television with their video games and wonder why we're all so unhealthy.

the information is out there, if we care to educate ourselves. It's often as simple as reading the nutrition label. I remember a discussion where people were surprised that there was lard in Jiffy Mix cornbread mix. It was right on the box, but few read it. The same with the Nutella, read the label and you can figure out that it's not health food.

So, if you are addicted to junk food, it's up to each person to detox. Or not, their choice. And I think in many instances, it's going to be "not".

Annie

Annie, what is an "easy & quick" substitute for cream of mushroom soup? I admit to keeping a can on hand & find it does come in handy, thanks.

Elba, just make a cream sauce. Amanda uses a cube of cream cheese, 1/2 cup of chicken broth, about a teaspoon of butter. I'm not sure that's healthier than canned soup, LOL, but it has a lot less salt.

I use a more standard cream sauce by melting 4 tablespoons of butter in a pan, whisk in 4 tablespoons of flour, stir until smooth, whisk in 2 cups of milk and whisk while cooking for a couple of minutes until it's thickened. Add salt and pepper to taste. You can add white wine or parmesan cheese, blue cheese, herbs, sautéed mushrooms and their juices, garlic, nearly anything you like for flavor.

It takes less than 5 minutes total and has neither the salt content nor the taste of canned chemicals.

Can you tell that I just don't like canned soup?

Annie

Sorry Grainlady, but I disagree totally with the Wheat Belly hypothesis. It may not be junk food, but it is Junk Science. I'll change my mind on this one when the clinical trials have been conducted. It is just one more pseudo-scientific cure-all diet, where one single food is either demonized, or proclaimed the savior of mankind.

Interesting article. I got through about half of it earlier and will finish it.
"I don't think the food companies will ever change, and I can't blame them for supplying what the public wants."
Agreed. If I was a shareholder in a food company, I'd certainly expect they were trying to make food that people would like and would crave.
It would be nice to think that education is the answer, but that experiment is clearly failing. I wonder what percentage of CF posters are significantly overweight or have other diet related issues? (Let me be the first to raise my hand.) And we're supposedly a group who cares about food and knows better.
I know this won't be a popular suggestion, but personally I wouldn't be adverse to some sort of labeling program for prepared foods that provides clear and obvious warnings about foods that are particularly bad for you. Perhaps a red dot for sodium higher than a certain level per serving, a blue dot for excessive fat, yellow for sugars, etc. The way I see it, EVERYONE knows that tobacco is bad for you yet we have to see the warning labels on every ad and box. What pregnant woman doesn't know she shouldn't drink? Yet NYS requires a big warning sign everywhere that sells alcohol. To me these are almost silly; I'd rather see warnings for things that are less obvious to the consumer. The article mentions Yoplait and Gogurt - how many well-intentioned folks think they're buying healthy yogurt for their families?

For me, the most telling was the number of executives that have left the companies and totally changed their path. Speaks volumes.

Elba, make the cream sauce per Annie and stir in some ground dried mushrooms. Big flavor punch.

Great, thanks for the creamed soup substitutions!

I read and enjoyed the article.

Exactly the reason why the nutritional advice to "avoid all processed foods" is some of the best. It completely takes you out of the industrial food complex directive to get you to eat as much as possible and their efforts to get you addicted to their products. No one is manipulating the sugar or salt content of an egg or a walnut.

I agree it was a very interesting article. It was nothing new to me, other than that some of the execs have had the change of heart. The end of the article, where Dunn gave his sales pitch, had me wondering just what it was he was selling - it couldn't be real food, could it? When it turned out to be those "baby" carrots, I thought ah hah! It's fascinating to see the process they go through to come up with a product, even a sort of healthy one.

To me it borders on child abuse to feed junk food to children. My own son and DIL do it, and it breaks my heart. I try to convince them to do otherwise, but it's like beating my head against a brick wall. I'll keep beating it, though - maybe one day I'll break through, hopefully not too late.

Sally

I got into cooking to keep myself from getting overweight. I actually don't enjoy cooking for cooking's sake (a past discussion) but I do enjoy eating healthy, good tasting food so that is my inspiration to keep on cooking and experimenting in the kitchen.