How do you know you are eating healthy food?
Offline I've been wondering the last few days just how exactly your average consumer, shopping at the supermarket, is able to verify that the nutrition label on that bottle of multivitamins is telling the truth.
I was motivated to post this topic after seeing the first few minutes of "here be dragons", the critical thinking skills video, which labels certain foods and nutrition sources today as our modern "dragons" (i.e., widely believed to be true but false anyway).
So here is the question for this thread:
How would the average consumer go about verifying that the nutrition label on, say, a bottle of mutlivitamins, is really telling the truth?
If that label says that each tablet gives you 100% of the daily requirements for, say, vitamin b-12, how the hell do you know that this is truthful?
Should we hire the local chemistry professor from the college to perform random tests on our food to verify it's nutritional content or lack thereof?
And does "Approved by the FDA" constitute any reason to trust the product to be as healthy as it's label states it is?
My own experiments only give me general truths. I feel like crap and I gain weight after eating a full meal from McDonald's, but I feel just fine and gain no weight (fatty tissue) after eating a full vegetarian meal without sugar or fat.
And if this discussion starts a rabbit trail on the related subject of genetically modified food, and whether this cheaper way to manufacture food will hurt it's eaters in the long run, that's good too.
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Healthy eating?
The short answer is: "you don't".
What it comes down to is: how much do you trust the FDA to enforce labeling laws? There are a ton of rules about how things need to be labeled, and how little of something can appear in a product without having to appear on the ingredient list.
IIRC, it goes like this: ingredient lists must show the ingredients in order (by mass) in the product. The nutritional labels must contain mass listings for several things (carbs, protein, fat, sodium and maybe cholesterol), even if the content is zero (look at a bottle of water). In order for something to not appear on an ingredient list, it must make up less than either half or 1/10 of one percent of the total mass of the product (I don't remember the exact cutoff).
There are exceptions to this, both for ingredient and nutritional lists. For an example, check a bottle of beer.
Some things can be ascertained at home, but not too readily. Someone could get a basic estimate of the calorie content in food by burning it and heating a litre of water, but it would be very approximate.
As to your specific question about vitamins, that's a good question. I suppose with some careful tinkering you could approximate the amount of iron with a scale and a magnet. As to the amount of riboflavin, etc., I have no idea.
Same as above: only if you trust the FDA and the manufacturer to be diligent and honest.
This (well, the weight gain, anyway) has almost everything to do with the amount of salt in McDonald's food. Your body will hold on to a lot more water after eating McD's than vegetables in order to rebalance your body's salinity (until it gets excreted), which will make you "gain weight". After I eat pizza from my favourite place, my weight goes up at least a couple pounds for 24-36 hours because I get thirsty and drink a bunch of water.
For an experiment, add a gram of table salt (~1/4 tsp) into your next veggie meal and see what happens. A McD's burger and fries will have at least that much in it. A gram of salt will require you to drink (rough ballpark) about 100 mL (scant half cup) of water to stay in balance. So, for every gram of salt you ingest, your body needs about a half pound of water to stay in balance.
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I know when I'm eating healthy, it's simple....when you're done eating if you don't notice a grease pool where your food was you're doing pretty good!
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ConsumerLab supposedly tests the veracity of supplement label claims and there are probably more companies like them. I guess however that they too might just be another in the chain of deception since they are for-profit. However, it may be better than nothing. I'm a supplement-nut but I only take things that have significant research behind them. The issue of quality control is very important once you have selected a supplement. I suggest finding out what brands seem to be trustworthy in these independent reports and try to get all your supplements from that brand.
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I don't think the average consumer can ever "know" that they're eating healthy food. The best you can do is make your best educated guess. The simplest way to do it, of course, is to buy locally grown food from reputable farmers who are known by the community. That's what I do.
To hell with that. How do you know that "100% of the daily requirements" is actually 100% of the daily requirements? After all, it's our government telling us what we need. How many times in the past has that worked out?
It's actually not that hard to find people to test stuff for you if you really want, especially if you live near a university. I've had a bunch of things tested before. Curiously, most of the time, they contain pretty much what they say they contain. With vitamins, though, it's not that simple. Simply containing a vitamin doesn't mean that it's contained in a way that will be efficiently absorbed by the body.
So, once again, it's really hard to know.
As far as labels like "organic" it's a scam. But, the FDA does require that you not lie about ingredients or percentages of vitamins. In other words, there IS a standard, and the FDA does require that your labels are accurate with regard to that standard. So yeah. With the basics, the FDA is trustworthy.
Duh.
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The irony here is that the google ads thing puts ones for bullshit supplements at the top of the page.
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Dunno how for food, educated guess is the best choice here. But as for trusting the standards, consider the existence and legality of aspartam. Who wants to be a demented, senile wreck and die on a brain cancer, aspartam is a comfortable way to do that. And look, it's in everything where is not sugar. Often together with acesfultam (whatever it is, doesn't sound much better) and phosphoric acid. (which makes Coca Cola be the best toilet cleaner ever)
Aspartame on wikipedia:
Under strongly acidic or alkaline conditions, aspartame may generate methanol by hydrolysis.
Well, like chlorine acid in stomach??? So, aspartame is basically a packed methanol. Good news, I won't have to drink home brew to get blind.
Upon ingestion, aspartame breaks down into several residual chemicals, including aspartic acid, phenylalanine, methanol, and further breakdown products including formaldehyde,
Formaldehyde? At least my corpse will last longer after my death. Whatever can FDA do for us.
All storages are probably full of aspartame, so there can't be allowed any harmless additives like Stevia. It's obviously better to slowly kill people thinking that they drink or chew healthy, "sugar-free" stuff.
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Right.... healthy... yup >.>
considering my diet is composed of ingesting large quanities of petrolium by-products and hormone/steriod imbued "meat"? perfectly... healthy ^_^
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Health freaks generally lead unfufilled lives. Too obsessed with trying to live longer by scowering for low fat yogurt they forget to enjoy themselves. Noone uses salad for comfort food or eats a carrot after sex, lets eat all the shit we want and die of liver failure at the Oktoberfest, its what life's all about.
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