If I could shout a clarion call to all parents in the civilized world, it would be this (if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you could probably say it with me): “READ FOOD PACKAGING LABELS!”
When shopping, it’s easy to take the smooth road and toss things in our carts without even glancing at the label, especially if we’re tired, money’s tight, or if our kids are with us. I know how that is – that used to be me. But when we take the time to learn about what major food manufacturers are putting in the foods we buy and the effects those ingredients have on our health (immediate and future), we suddenly begin to see that reading labels is no longer a chore…it’s our right and our responsibility. We must understand and own the fact that good health is our right and no one’s responsibility but our own.
What really makes my blood boil is when unhealthy packaged foods are marketed to our children with flashy packaging, cartoon-type drawings, and promises of treats. This kind of unscrupulous, unethical marketing has been going on for decades, but I’m hoping the day will come – and soon – when the majority of parents become wise to it.
My husband and I were grocery shopping the other day, and while he was looking for the ingredients he needed to make chili, a huge sign advertising a product called LunchMakers by Armour caught my eye. LunchMakers are a Lunchables-type product, and were being sold for just 88 cents each. (Interestingly, I couldn’t find a link on the Armour site to view the nutritional information for LunchMakers. File that under “things that make you go hmm.”)
Wow. What a great deal, huh? Sure, if someone wants to fill their child full of “food grade” garbage, including a cancer-causing chemical that’s been banned in Europe (see below).
Here, in all it’s non-glory, is the too-long ingredients list from the back of the package (so long that it had to be printed in a very tiny font just to make it all fit on the label). I’ve said before…I’ll say it again: If the ingredients list on a package contains more than just a handful of items, put the item back on the shelf and walk away. You may see some things on the list that you recognize (flour, milk, etc.), but the rest is little more than preservatives, fillers, flavor enhancers, non-nutritive sweeteners, artificial sweeteners, and the like. Yuck.
So, here we go. The ingredients every parent should definitely be concerned about are in bold font. Maybe I should have hired a speed reader to read this in a video for you (it would have at least made it entertaining):
LunchMakers by Armour “Pepperoni Flavored Sausage Pizza Kit” Ingredients
Pizza Crust: Enriched bleached wheat flour (flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, corn oil, yeast, sugar, salt, calcium proprionate, guar gum, xantham gum, food starch, monoglycerides.
Pizza Sauce: Water, tomato paste, high fructose corn syrup, salt, spices, soybean oil, modified food starch, citric acid, sodium benzoate (preservative), garlic powder, xantham gum, onion powder.
Low-moisture, Part-skim Mozzerella Cheese: Pasteurized part-skim milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes, anti-caking agent (cellulose), natamycin (preservative).
Pepperoni Flavored Sausage: Pork, mechanically separated turkey, corn syrup, pepperoni [pork, beef, salt, contains 2% or less of beef, dextrose, flavorings, lactic acid starter culture, oleoresin of paprika, sodium nitrite, BHA, BHT, citric acid], salt, water, contains 2% or less of beef, dextrose, oleoresin of paprika, flavorings, modified food starch, potassium lactate, smoke flavoring, sodium diacetate, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite, BHA, BHT, citric acid.
Then it lists the ingredients of the included Nestle’ Crunch Bar, which I’m not going to copy here since it’s not the issue (though it could be, as it does contain sugar…but letting kids eat candy during the school day is another topic for another time). Following are the highlighted questionable ingredients — and why you should question them:
Sugar. Ahh, sugar. It’s in almost everything we purchase. It’s really not in that high of a dose in this package (9 grams total, and that includes the mini candy bar), but because we should limit the amounts of sugar our kids eat, especially during the school day when even a slight blood sugar crash could affect learning, I’m mentioning it here.
Calcium propionate. Calcium propionate (I’ll call it CP) is a preservative that’s included in breads for its mold-inhibiting activities. It’s not added for the calcium – calcium can be included in other ways. Many children, often with undiagnosed food allergies, have negative behavioral reactions to calcium propionate. If your child often seems “off the wall” after eating foods containing CP, look for preservative-free breads (and, because whey powder usually contains CP, make sure your bread is also whey and whey powder-free).
Food starch, modified food starch, flavorings, cheese cultures, and enzymes. According to the site Truth in Labeling, these ingredients “sometimes or always contain or create monosodium glutamate.” (Click here for a very informative list of hidden sources of MSG that you can print out and take to the grocery store next time you go.)
High fructose corn syrup. A cheap sweetener, usually only included because it’s so inexpensive, that is being increasingly implicated in a growing (no pun intended) epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes. Why is it used in so many of our food products? As mentioned in the article referenced in this paragraph, HFCS is about six times sweeter than sugar and costs about half as much.
Mechanically separated turkey. I’m including this in the list just because it’s gross. Mechanically separated meat isn’t cut up by sharp machines on a conveyor belt, it’s meat that is separated from the bones by being pressed – mechanically – through a sieve under high pressure. Imagine the meat your child is going to consume being pressed through tiny holes like paste. That’s disturbing and creates a disgusting mental picture. You may also remember the Mad Cow scare from several years ago. The UK banned mechanically-separated beef from being sold to consumers because the meat often contained portions of the cow’s spinal cord, which is where the Mad Cow virus was typically found. I don’t know – I’ll leave this one up to you, but I’m staying away from mechanically-separated meat of any kind. (What happened to the days when Grandma used to boil the bones to remove the extra meat in order to make soup? These big companies can’t do that?)
Sodium nitrite. Sodium nitrite is a dangerous chemical once in danger of being banned – decades ago – by the USDA. The meat industry, of course, convinced them otherwise (another example of how money talks). Sodium nitrite is used to stabilize the color in processed meats, like hotdogs. When eaten, it turns to nitrosamines, highly carcinogenic (cancer-causing) chemicals that have been implicated in cancers such as pancreatic cancer, colon cancer, and leukemia. Cancer rates in the U.S. skyrocketed after the addition of sodium nitrite to our food supply.
BHA and BHT. According to About.com, “Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and the related compound butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) are phenolic compounds that are often added to foods to preserve fats.”
BHA has been found to be positively carcinogenic, and BHT possibly carcinogenic. BHA, identified as a known carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, has been banned in Europe but not here in the US. I find the fact that it has not been banned here, quite honestly and simply, pathetic.
Smoke flavoring may also have a toxic effect on the body.
The amounts of dangerous additives in this package are small enough to not really cause any noticeable harm if eaten just once (unless your child is severely allergic to one or more of the chemicals/additives present). What is alarming to me is the seriously high number of unhealthy and/or dangerous substances crammed into this one package. And if a child is fed this garbage on a regular basis, these chemicals and additives WILL build up in his body and – very likely – cause serious health problems later. (Some sooner than later.)
It’s like playing Russian Roulette with our children’s health.
Besides all of these unnecessary additives, you’ll notice the amount of sodium in this one small package is very high at 550 milligrams. According to the Mayo Clinic, that’s one-half to one-third of the recommended daily limit of sodium intake for children, depending on the child’s age and size. A steady diet of high sodium foods like this could put any child on the path to developing hypertension (high blood pressure).
Obviously, we can’t avoid every dangerous additive in our food supply. But with diligence and knowledge we can significantly decrease our families’ exposure to it. Study up and spend some time on Google learning about the additives mentioned above.
After all, knowledge is power. The more we know, the less of these “foods” we’ll buy, and perhaps then these big manufacturers will begin to change the way their products are made. Like I said…money talks.
By the way, a friend of mine had a great suggestion if your child likes this type of lunch: “Small cookie cutters do a great job of mimicking the meat in the package. And you can get fun designs in the cutter that Lunchables and the like will NEVER have.” (Thanks to Eric Ehrman for that idea.) It’s also a fun way to get your kids involved with making their own lunches.
Comments welcome!
©2010 Sally Dinius
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Sally Dinius is writer-in-chief here at CrazyBusyMama.com, a blog created to inspire and motivate busy mamas everywhere to feel healthy, fit, and in control of their lives. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sdinius, and come join the CrazyBusy Mama Facebook page by clicking here.
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