Search results: natural

It’s the end of the year and Reuters is making predictions about the top health stories of 2008. We must be on the same page. Most of them are issues discussed here. In order: the push for raw milk, melting fat (with injections of something supposed to get rid of body fat? I think I may have to miss that one), the farm bill, defining natural, problems with food labels, Michael Pollan (a story in himself!), the end of cheap food, and the need to fix the FDA and USDA. Sounds a lot like 2007…

According to FoodProductionDaily, my newsletter source for information about food and nutrition in Europe, the U.K. Food Standards agency is changing its red-yellow-green labeling system to distinguish added sugars from those naturally present in foods. This is a good idea and I wish the FDA would do the same thing, but one of the reasons given doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. According to this report, the Food Standards Agency agreed to do this because “sugars derived from fruit, such as fructose, are generally lower in calories, while added sugars are perceived as unhealthier.” Added sugars may be perceived as unhealthier, but sugars are sugars and they all–sucrose, fructose, glucose, maltose, lactose, and all the rest–have the same number of calories, roughly 4 per gram. I think there is a better reason: naturally occurring sugars come with everything else that’s in fruits and vegetables, and added sugars don’t.

I have long talked about trans fat as a calorie distracter. People think “trans fat-free” means “calorie-free” when it most definitely does not. Whatever replaces trans fats will have just as many calories–130 per tablespoon, meaning that each tablespoon is 5% of a day’s average calorie intake. That’s why I either laugh or cry when I see “zero grams trans fat”
on the labels of junk foods. Trans fats raise the risk of heart disease a bit more than do the saturated fats that occur naturally in foods. But trans fats are unnatural and unnecessary and it’s good to get rid of them. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal explains how food companies are struggling to find replacements that do not increase the amount of saturated fat in processed foods. This, as it turns out, is not so easy to do. I discuss all this in the fats-and-oils chapter of What to Eat, so I’m happy to see the WSJ take it on.

This must be the week for talking about raw milk. The Washington Post and the New York Times both ran stories about the push to be able to drink raw milk, legal or not. Why do people want raw milk? Some like the taste, some swear by its health benefits, some believe in a natural, raw food ideology, and some just don’t like the government telling them what not to eat. The health benefits are supposed to be that raw milk contains enzymes and good bacteria that get destroyed by pasteurization (which heats milk to a temperature that kills most bacteria, bad and good). Food safety officials, on the other hand, cringe at the idea of feeding unpasteurized dairy foods to anyone, let alone children. Cow’s milk is not sterile and there are all too many instances in which harmful bacteria in whole milk made people sick, and sometimes very sick. Drinking raw milk is risky. How risky? It’s hard to say. If you know your dairy is following rigorous food safety procedures, there’s a good chance that its products are OK. But what if you don’t? When it comes to milk, I prefer mine pasteurized. The enzymes in milk get destroyed during digestion anyway, so why take a chance? Cheeses, however, are another matter. As long as they are properly aged and salted, raw milk cheeses ought to be just fine. Even so, I’m happier about eating them when I know that their producer is following a carefully designed safety plan with monitoring and testing for harmful bacteria. If I don’t know this, I just have to trust the seller and hope for the best. Raw milk generates intense passion on both sides. But why so much? Do tell.

Today’s question (see Flaxseeds) is about Chia seeds: “I have heard and read that Chia seeds, (Salvia hispanica, a plant of the genus Salvia in the Mint family) are very high in omega-3s and very nutritious in several other ways. They were highly prized by the Aztecs and have been touted as a little-known “superfood”. Have you any knowledge about them or the accuracy of this?”
I consulted my standard sources for this sort of thing, Wikipedia (always a good place to start and then confirm independently) and the USDA’s authoritative data on food composition. As you suggest, Chia seeds have a good balance of omega-3 unsaturated fatty acids. But does this really make it a “superfood?” I think foods are foods. All natural, unprocessed foods have a mix of nutrients and the best approach is to eat a lot of different kinds of relatively unprocessed foods that together provide the nutrients and other components of food that promote health. Chia seeds, like flaxseeds or other kinds of seeds, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and grains contribute good things to the diet, but it’s the overall combination of foods you eat that counts. Enjoy Chia seeds if you like them, but are they a miracle food? I wish it were that easy.

In a full-page ad in today’s New York Times, Tyson Foods announces that all of its Tyson brand fresh chicken will be raised without antibiotics and marketed as “100% All Natural Chicken Raised Without Antibiotics–No Hormones Administered and No Artificial Ingredients.”

Tyson deserves applause for taking an important step toward greater food safety. Use of antibiotics as growth promoters increases chicken growth rates by about 10%, but non-therapeutic use of antibiotics increases antibiotic resistance in chicken bacteria. Resistant bacteria can spread to poultry workers, their families, and beyond, meaning that if the bacteria make people sick, the antibiotics will be useless as treatment. Tyson is a huge company that sells more than $26 billion worth of beef, chicken, and pork annually. If it eliminates non-therapeutic antibiotics, other companies may be encouraged to do the same.

The ad implies that only Tyson brand chicken is eliminating antibiotics and that its traditional chicken–undoubtedly the vast majority of what it produces–will continue to be treated with these drugs. If so, Tyson is positioning this particular chicken as a premium brand quite likely to be sold at a premium price. Watch for this at your grocery store.

As for No Hormones Administered: A footnote in tiny print at the bottom of the illustrated package label says “federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones in chicken.” Chickens are never treated with hormones anyway.

Finally, “100% All Natural” simply means that the chicken has no artificial ingredients and is minimally processed. It does NOT mean that the chicken is Certified Organic or that the chickens are raised under uncrowded conditions, an issue I discuss in the What to Eat chapter titled “Meat: Organic versus “Natural.”

Take a look at the ad and tell me what you think.