It’s no secret there’s a political side to this whole Real Food movement. We’ve read about quite a few people dismissing it out-of-hand as a sort of agrarian fantasy of the far-left, what organic food was before it became much bigger business.
And hey, sometimes those criticisms have their place. Any time people stand up and say the way an entire continent (and increasingly, world) produces and consumes its food is fundamentally broken, you’re going to have some people defending the status quo. It’s normal, and even if we don’t agree with the criticisms, there’s nothing wrong with a little debate!
A Question: Is the ‘real food’ movement left, or right, or neither?
Where real food shines is that it’s actually, at heart, quite a conservative movement (in certain ways). Its main proponents tend to be to the left in their political orientation, but anyone who’s seen the documentary Food, Inc. or read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma will know that one of the film’s/book’s stars, Joel Salatin, is definitely not left-wing in many beliefs.
This is what makes this movement great — its intentions are beyond politics, and move towards spending time, effort, and consciousness on what you put on your plate and into your stomach every day.
But given all that, there’s one other criticism that seems to come up quite regularly, and one that we’ve found ourselves having occasionally too. And it’s this — why, exactly, are additives, supplements, and processed substances apparently so bad for us?
I mean, they do test these things, right?
Yes — no food additive, in general, goes into a product until it undergoes extensive testing. No matter how insane-sounding the substance, if it’s fundamentally bad for you (i.e., poisonous), there isn’t really much of a chance you’ll find it in your breakfast cereal.
Take high-fructose corn syrup, for example. Fundamentally, it contains the same properties as sugar, and functions exactly like it. When it was discovered, it became a fantastic way for companies like Coca-Cola to instantly save millions, as subsidized corn (at least in the USA) could produce a substance equal to sugar, for far less money.
And it’s true — even real food guru Michael Pollan admits it — there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with high fructose corn syrup as a substance, on its own. Like sugar, it’s used to sweeten things.
Same goes for many other substances — MSG, guar gum, and all the other things you’ll find in a typical processed product. What’s wrong with them, exactly? Why do we have to stick to ‘whole’ and ‘natural’ foods? They’re full of chemical compounds, too, and farmers have been ‘modifying’ seeds and trees for hundreds of years — why is this any different, or more dangerous?
Is there one simple explanation for this?
It’s an interesting question. If you’ve embarked on a mission to start eating ‘real food’, you’ll probably get that question quite a bit. Is there a way to explain it easily? Especially if you’re talking to a scientist, or a chemist, or someone like that, you might be pressed to explain — what, exactly, is the problem with a product containing 15 ingredients? It’s edible, no? Nothing in it will kill us or destroy our internal organs? Why this endless focus on real food?
With that in mind, we researched and thought about the two answers we think are the most convincing and useful.
First — no one has ever eaten these things before, let alone in such an insane combination.
This one is a traditional argument, but it works — while our prior generations, our ancestors, have been eating certain foods for many, many generations, and reaping their effects on the human body, this notion of eating heavily refined, processed foods full of synthetic additives is actually a very recent one.
When a huge percentage of all our foods no longer contain what they originally contained, but instead are made out of elements of other foods (mainly corn and soy), broken down, super-heated, and then re-combined in a laboratory somewhere, it not only becomes near-impossible to keep track of what we’re putting into our bodies, but there is no body of scientific or even practical knowledge that suggests this is a sustainable, healthy, or useful diet. It won’t kill us, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the best way to get the nutrients we need, either.
Why do we have to eat so much corn?
A huge percentage of the average McDonalds meal, for example, will contain corn. But it’ll contain corn in so many different varieties — in the corn syrup used to sweeten the coke and the bun, in the corn feed used to feed the cow who eventually makes up the big mac, or in about 45% of the chicken McNugget, which, after getting through the processing to help the food last longer, is made from chicken fed entirely on corn.
So what? Well, it means that if you’re eating a diet heavy in processed foods, you are eating refined corn a huge amount of the time. No one society has really done that before. Plenty of people have survived on actual corn, but that’s not what we’re eating here. This is corn, broken down and reassembled in thousands of ways, for the sake of economics. This kind of diet, mixed with an overall decrease in physical activity, seems to be a disaster for obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rates.
Second — they cause the body to do strange, unpredictable things.
When we eat a piece of actual corn, there is a pretty solid amount of research that shows (to an extent) what it does to the body. Same with most other ‘real’ foods. Certain vitamins go to receptors in our cells, antioxidants start to take effect, and the actual container of ‘real food’ has a ton of benefits. A carrot is a delivery system for beta-carotine and a lot of other things. Sure, we can take a pill to get some of the same substances, but it’s hard to prove they have the same effect, and somewhat unnecessary.
Take another example — orange juice. A lot of the vitamins have to be re-added to orange juice, because they’re lost in the juicing process — you’ll only get them if you eat an actual orange itself. Same goes for other products — when you buy some kind of green tea infused with omega 3, you’re not getting that ‘omega 3′ in anywhere near its original context. Sure, you’re still getting it, but not in its naturally occuring container.
So what?
Well — this has strange effects on the body. When fat is kept in a product, for example (say, a potato chip that’s higher in calories than a ‘low-fat’ one full of additives), it can often help the various vitamins and other products to be properly absorbed (maybe a potato chip isn’t the best example here…) When you start chemically removing these things from their original context, you then have to add new things in order to get your food-like-substance to function as it once did.
And really — why bother? Real foods are all around us, cost less (environmentally, at least, but that’s another article) to manufacture, and have kept humans healthy for hundreds of years. But that’s the final point of this whole Real Food movement — there’s another, simpler way, and it’s one that our grandparents used, and one that many people around the world still subscribe to, and it’s one that can let us escape from the knowledge overload, the endless supplmenets, additives, boosters, and all that marketing that’s supposed to make us healthier. Why do we need to know that a sugary breakfast cereal might possibly be good for our hearts, in excruciating, complicated detail? We don’t. It’s just another way to confuse us into buying something that isn’t real food.
There’s still lots more to say!
One thing about Real Food, as you might have noticed, is that there’s a lot to talk about, a lot to think about, and several different angles to consider. Every time Zuzana or I sit down to talk and write about it, we keep coming up with more and more to say, more questions, more inquiries, more avenues of discussion. This article started about one small subject (are additives really that bad?), but ended up touching on several!
So now we want to push it over to you — what are some of your questions when it comes to ‘real’ food? We’ve seen a few of them asked here and there in the comments, but now we want you to get specific.
Are you curious about organic food? About why corn-fed beef isn’t as good as grass-fed? What are we supposed to do if we live in cold countries, when it comes to fruits and vegetables, during the winter?
We won’t have the answers right away (again, we’re not experts — we’re still learning), but we’ll take 3 of the best questions and turn them into future articles — we’ll head off, do the research, and then introduce the subjects to you as we learn about them, too. So ask away!
Photo credit: Suat Eman
This is the reason why so many people are sick, have thyroid and other health issues and are over weight. These chemicals ruin are bodies hormonal and endocrine systems.
Enjoyed this article. I think it’s so much simpler to follow a real food diet. If it’s real food, then people have been eating it for years and years. It serves that purpose. Like you said, a lot of what we are eating today is not even real food anymore, it is a heap of crap that we like to call food because it’s either convenient, the package says it is, or we don’t question it if it’s in the grocery store.
Well… I am vegetarian so I don’t have to worry about beef and chicken and all other carnivorous products. As you guys know there are plenty of other sources of protein and vitamin B-12. (thanks for introducing salba to me! i love it!) The only thing i have to worry is about the fruit and veggies.
Even if the product says its organic how do you know it really is organic?
And what exactly is organic???
My chem teacher says organic food is has more carbon atoms. Its a long confusing, complicated process that he explained but just caused more questions than answers.
To SG,
Organic usually consists of products free of chemicals, either in the food itself or the way the food was grown. There’s no pesticides in the soil, no chemicals used to give food a longer shelf life. No genetically modified seeds. It’s about as close to your Grandma’s garden as you can possibly get. Here in the US, the USDA checks facilities to make sure the food that is being grown there qualifies as organic.
when your chem teacher tallks about organic i think he is thinking that carbon determines if somethin (anything) is organic. like carbon based life forms are organic because of the carbon. hence such studies like organic chemistry which is all about carbon chains and how the interact with other molecules. It sounds like to me he didnt understand that you were talking about organic foods instead of just organic things in general. hope this helps clear it up a little
zuzanna,
Have you ever looked into the dangers of microwaving food? It is very controversial. I use to eat microwave food all the time. I started cleansing my body of toxins, and now i am no longer able to eat anything out of a microwave oven. I get very sick everytime i do and suffer bloating, and vomiting. From what i have learned from my research is that microwaving food alters the molecular stucture of the food and makes it toxic to the body. I didnt get sick before because the body builds up a tolerance to toxins,much like smoking. but like smoking it is still doing harm to you even if you have no immediate negative effects. Just thought i would share that with you and maybe you can do some research of your own. You will find a debate over this , but speaking from experience ,all i can say is that i refuse to eat anything from a microwave.
What have you been using to cleanse your body of toxins, because i want to do the same thing but i don’t know what product to use.
It’s been a while since I read the Omnivore’s Dillemma..
But from what I remember about it, it said that “organic” crops
aren’t necessarily “cleaner” than commonly grown crops.
I mean.. if you’ve got workers hand-picking your lettuce,
then there’s a huge source of filth. people getting cut, band-aids
falling onto the soil, and not to mention e-Coli.
Isn’t healthier just to buy regular supermarket vegetables?
You can wash off the filth, you can’t wash off the chemicals used to prolong shelf life for fruits or veggies.
Great article. I see the affects of processed food all around me. I live on an Aisian island, the foods for centuries have been very natural, it’s tropical here so tons of sea food, fruits and veggies. People live long healthy lives. BUT recently, (last 20 years) European type bakeries have become a big deal, as well as ice cream and soda. I never see an over weight elderly person here, but the children and teens are getting thicker, some obese, and terrible acne. Acne that will scar, and I don’t see these scars on the older people. Talking with neighbors has confirmed that these are new developments. I have always tried to eat with health in mind, but as kids get older and we get busier, I have taken shortcuts…I appreciate these articles, they have reminded me of what I really wanted to teach my children about foods. Thanks!
The real food movement is fantastic. If it becomes main stream, it will be one of the greatest health advances of the 21st century. The reason is not only is the food that it advocates healthier but that it pushes people to be aware of the foods that they eat. Vegetarians have better health than non vegetarians. Not because a vegetarian diet is better but because vegetarians pay attention to their food. The same can be said of people who strive to eat real food.
Vitamin deficiency was endemic in the early 20th century and before. It was only with the discovery of vitamins that this started to be reversed. One of the results of this was the artificial adding of vitamins to foods. This with refrigeration was one of the reasons that the life expectancy advanced from the 40s to the 60s in the early 20th century. It was combination of better nutrition, water treatment and sanitation, more than medicine that led this advance.
One of the sad facts is that today it is the poor who pay for the negative change in the food industry. It used to be that you could tell a poor person because they would be thin. Today poor people lead the obesity epidemic in the developed world and it is the rich who are thinner. It is American Samoa, which is not known for its multimillionaires, in the pacific that is the fattest nation in the world. Fast food has all the proper vitamins but is calorically dense. The bad side of processed food is that it makes people fat. Where once food that was sweet or fattening was a rare treat, it is now the cheapest food available. Malnutrition is no longer the leading cause of the poor’s bad health. It is now obesity.
The one down side of the real food movement is the cost or the perceived cost of real food. The politics and economics of food is a major cause of this cost. There is not a developed country in the world which doesn’t subsidize its farmers. This is one of the reasons that real food is expensive. The removal of trade barriers to food and the ending of farm subsidization would make real food much more economical for the poor. Until the costs are addressed, Real food will remain a way for the well to do to stay thin and feel superior.
Maybe there are other ways for real food to become more main stream. But until something is done real food will more like designer clothes or cars, more of a snob effect than a health effect for society.
I would like to know your point of view whether you think vegetarianism/veganism is bad or not?
Hi Katie,
I don’t think that either is bad or good, it’s just a matter of personal choice. You can definitely survive on both, the question is if you really enjoy eating this way. I believe that food is here really not only as a fuel but also for our pleasure. Everyone has different believes about food. I found a video on youtube where a trainer tells people that food shouldn’t taste good and if it does, then it’s probably not healthy for them. I don’t agree with this approach, but who am I to criticize others, right? That said, if you prefer being vegetarian for whatever reason and you enjoy it, then be it.
I am a big supporter and follower of the ‘real food’ movement but I still have many questions. 1. Do frozen veggies and fruits still deliver enough nutrients?
2. If something is labeled ‘organic’ does that mean it won’t have any preservatives and additives? As a general rule I accept anything labeled to be organic as better for my body…is this the same for you two? I still read my labels but I’m just curious if this is the case across all organically labeled products.
3. How much of the nutrients are lost when you boil, steam, and bake veggies?
These are just a few questions I’ve pondered in my journey…
This is an amazing article!
I learned so much just now.
I recently have begun buying organic milk, butter, creamer, eggs, and anything else USDA approved that I can find. I don’t have a lot of money at all but I figured if I stopped driving so much and rode my bike more and stopped buying silly little treats at the checkout, I will not only be saving more money to spend on the expensive organic (and humane – Go Horizon!) foods but I will also be doing so much better things for my body and the world.
This article was so informative that I cannot think of a single question to ask you even after an hour of thinking about it :(
However, I do have a recipe for you two.
It is ridiculously easy so it’s something that y’all could make if you’re not in the mood for cooking an elaborate meal and just want something quick and simple.
Here goes:
Lemon Chicken:
Squeeze a lemon into a ziplock baggy with chicken breasts in it.
Add salt to taste.
Let it soak.
Then cook the chicken in the oven.
All of these directions depend on how you think you would like things done so I didn’t put anything in exact terms. It doesn’t take much to fill me up so I used a piece of chicken breast that was about 3 inches long, 2 inches wide and 1 inch thick. I squeezed half a lemon on it and let it soak for about 15 minutes. Then I put it on a cookie sheet with a cookie rack on it (to let the stuff drain) and put it in the oven. I first cooked it at 400 Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes and then ended up changing the temp to 425 Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes I think. I’ve never cooked chicken before in my life so this probably sounds silly to y’all but I pretty proud of myself lol. I just started cooking about 3 days ago and so far I feel great!
I hope you try this and like it.
p.s. Zuzana, may I post one of your pictures on my Facebook account? I have an album titled “Likes” and I’d like to put something from this site to show people but I didn’t want to do it without your permission.
HI Nicole D Lopez,
thank you for sharing the recipe with us and feel free to use any of my pictures on your Facebook. Just make sure to pick a nice one :)