Real Food

I am currently reading Michael Pollan's latest "In Defense of Food". There are some pretty startling things in just the first chapter which deals with what the American consumer has been told is good "food". I wasn't aware of the fact that there is not one definitive study that proves that a diet high in saturated fats increases your risk of heart disease nor is there a study that proves a low fat diet is any healthier than a high fat one. Some very interesting reading.

On a slightly different note there is a new member of the blog roll La Vida Locavore by Jill Richardson. Very good food site. Today Jill points us to an article by a dietician Does Natural = Healthy. Here is one bit that caught my attention;

Examples of foods that may be genetically modified include - potatoes, soybeans, chicory, squash, sugar beets, alfalfa, corn, canola, flax, papaya, and tomatoes. About one-third of all corn crops and three-fourths of all soybean crops are genetically modified.

That's a much bigger list than I would expect. I knew about corn, soy, cotton, and canola but papaya and squash? What the article doesn't mention is that genetically modified foods aren't separated out from non-GM foods so you can't assume that 2/3 of the corn products you buy are franken food free. It's all mixed together, so any non-organic corn products you buy probably has some GM corn in them.Your only safe bet is organic which by definition cannot have GM content.

BTW, Were you aware that the government has just ruled that High Fructose Corn Syrup is a "natural" product? Neither was I. You might also note that HFCS is almost always made from GMO corn and if you haven't been paying attention then start reading labels...it's in everything.