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Two out of three people in America today are either overweight or obese. That means
every time you sit down in an airplane or a packed movie theater, more likely than not
you’re going to wind up as the lean center of a fat sandwich. But as you look right
and left and see nothing but heft, you can’t help but think, What happened?
How did we all get so darn fat?
Well, the simple answer is that we eat more calories. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention found that American men eat 7 percent more calories than they did in 1971;
American women eat a whopping 18 percent more—an additional 335 calories a day! But
the harder question is this: Why do we eat so many more calories? Are we suddenly more
gluttonous? Do we have some kind of collective death wish? Is the entire country hellbent
on qualifying for the next season of Biggest Loser?
No. There’s an even crazier reason: It’s the food!
We’ve added extra calories to traditional foods, often in cheap, mass-produced
vehicles like high fructose corn syrup. These new freak foods are designed not by chefs,
but by lab technicians packing every morsel with maximum calories at minimum
cost—with little or no regard to dietary impact. Indeed, Eat This, Not That! 2011
has uncovered the truth about some of your favorite fast food and grocery store items and
how they're causing you to pack on unnecessary pounds. It’s enough to kill your
appetite, which—in these cases, anyway—would be a good thing.
Bonus Tip: Don't miss our year-end walk
down The Restaurant Hall of Shame: The 20 Worst Foods of 2010!
THE FAST-FOOD HAMBURGER
The great American staple. Don’t worry, burgers really do come from cows—but
have you ever wondered how those giant chains process and distribute so much meat so
cheaply? And . . . are you sure you want to know?
The Truth: Most fast-food hamburger patties begin their voyage to your buns in
the hands of a company called Beef Products. The company specializes in taking
slaughterhouse trimmings—heads and hooves and the like—that are traditionally
used only in pet food and cooking oil, and turning them into patties. The challenge is
getting this byproduct meat clean enough for human consumption, as both E. coli and
salmonella like to concentrate themselves in the fatty deposits.
The company has developed a process for killing beef-based pathogens by forcing the ground
meat through pipes and exposing it to ammonia gas—the same chemical you might use to
clean your bathroom. Not only has the USDA approved the process, but it's also allowed
those who sell the beef to keep it hidden from their customers. At Beef Products’
behest, ammonia gas has been deemed a “processing agent” that need not be
identified on nutrition labels. Never mind that if ammonia gets on your skin, it can cause
severe burning, and if it gets in your eyes, it can blind you. Add to the gross-out factor
the fact that after moving through this lengthy industrial process, a single beef patty
can consist of cobbled-together pieces from different cows from all over the world—a
practice that only increases the odds of contamination.
Eat This Instead: Losing weight starts in your own kitchen, by using the same
ingredients real chefs have relied on since the dawn of the spatula. (Here are the 15 best dishes for quick and easy weight loss.) If
you’re set on the challenge of eating fresh, single-source hamburger, pick out a nice
hunk of sirloin from the meat case and have your butcher grind it up fresh. Hold the
ammonia.
BETTY CROCKER'S BAC-O BITS
We’ve all been there before: A big bowl of lettuce or a steamy baked potato is set
before us and the sudden desire for a bit of smoky, porky goodness pervades. We try to
resist, but we grab for the bottle anyway: Mmmmm . . . bacon.
The Truth: Not quite. If it’s Bac-Os you grab for, just know that
there’s not the slightest whiff of anything pork-like to be found in the bottle. So
what are those little chips you’ve been shaking over your salads? Well, mostly
soybeans. The bulk of each Bac-O is formed by tiny clumps of soy flour bound with
trans-fatty, partially hydrogenated soybean oil and laced with artificial coloring, salt,
and sugar. The result is a product that’s actually less healthy for your heart than
the real thing!
Eat This Instead: Hormel makes a product called Real Bacon
Bits, and as the name implies, it’s made with real bacon. And gram-for-gram, the real
bacon actually has fewer calories than Betty Crocker’s Bac-Os. If Hormel can make a
nutritionally superior product using real bacon, then why would you ever choose the
artificial one that’s loaded with partially hydrogenated soybean oil?
PREMADE GUACAMOLE
When you buy bean dip, you expect it to be made from beans. And when you buy guacamole, it
seems reasonable to expect it to be made from avocados. But is it?
The Truth: Most guacamoles with the word “dip”
attached to the label suffer from a lack of real avocado. Take Dean’s Guacamole, for
example. This guacamole dip is composed of less than 2 percent avocado; the rest of the
green goo is a cluster of fillers and chemicals, including modified food starch, soybean
oils, locust bean gum, and food coloring. Dean’s is not alone in this offense. In
fact, this avocado caper was brought to light when a California woman filed a lawsuit
against Kraft after she noticed “it just didn’t taste avocadoey.”
Eat This Instead: Avocados are loaded with fiber and heart-healthy
monounsaturated fats. Trading the good stuff in for a bunch of fillers is cheating both
your belly and your tastebuds. Either look for the real stuff (Wholly Guacamole makes a
great guac), or mash up a bowl yourself. Scoop out the flesh of two avocados, combine with
two cloves of minced garlic, a bit of minced onion, the juice of one lemon, chopped
cilantro, one medium chopped tomato, and a pinch of salt.
Bonus Tip: Unlike packaged-food
manufacturers, fast-food and sit-down restaurants don't typically rely on chemicals to
enhance flavor. Instead, they pack in sugar and sodium, calorie counts be damned. Beware
of The 10 Worst Fast Food Meals in America!
FRUIT ON THE BOTTOM YOGURT
It seems like the ideal breakfast or snack for a man or woman on the go—a perfect
combination of yogurt and antioxidant-packed fruits, pulled together in one convenient
little cup. But are these low-calorie dairy aisle staples really so good for you?
The Truth: While the yogurt itself offers stomach-soothing live cultures and a
decent serving of protein, the sugar content of these seemingly healthy products is
sky-high. The fruit itself is swimming in thick syrup—so much of it, in fact, that
high-fructose corn syrup (and other such sweeteners) often shows up on the ingredients
list well before the fruit itself. And these low-quality refined carbohydrates are the
last thing you want for breakfast—Australian researchers found that people whose
diets were high in carbohydrates had lower metabolisms than those who ate proportionally
more protein. Not to mention, spikes in your blood sugar can wreck your short-term memory,
according to a study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Not what you
need just before your urgent 9 a.m. meeting with the boss!
Eat This Instead: Plain Greek-style yogurt, mixed with real blueberries. We like
Oikos and Fage brands—they’re jacked with about 15 to 22 grams of belly-filling
protein, so they’ll help you feel satisfied for longer. And blueberries are another
great morning add—scientists in New Zealand found that when they fed blueberries to
mice, the rodents ate 9 percent less at their next meal.
Bonus Tip: Daily e-mails (or tweets) that
contain weight-loss advice remind you of your goals and help you drop pounds, according to
Canadian researchers. We're partial to our own Eat This, Not That! newsletter, and to the instant
weight-loss secrets you'll get when you follow me on Twitter (twitter.com/davezinczenko).
TURKEY BACON
Pork bacon’s got a bad rap for wreaking havoc on your cholesterol. But is turkey
bacon really any better?
The Truth: Stick with the pig. As far as calories go, the
difference between “healthy” turkey bacon and “fatty” pig is
negligible—and depending on the slice, turkey might sometimes tip the scales a touch
more. Additionally, while turkey is indeed a leaner meat, turkey bacon isn’t made
from 100 percent bird: One look at the ingredients list will show a long line of
suspicious additives and extras that can’t possibly add anything of nutritional
value. And finally, the sodium content of the turkey bacon is actually higher than what
you’ll find in the kind that oinks—so if you’re worried about your blood
pressure, opting for the original version is usually the smarter move.
Eat This Instead: Regular bacon. We like Hormel Black Label and Oscar Mayer
Center Cut bacon for some low-cal, low-additive options.
REDUCED-FAT PEANUT BUTTER
Nothing makes a PB&J feel less indulgent like a scoop of low-fat Jif. It’s low
fat, so it must be better for you . . . right?
The Truth: A tub of reduced-fat peanut butter indeed comes with
a fraction less fat than the full-fat variety—they’re not lying about that. But
what the food companies don’t tell you is that peanut oil—the fat in peanut
butter—is a heart-healthy monounsaturated fat that can actually help fight weight
gain, heart disease and diabetes! Instead, they’ve tried to cash in on the
“low-fat” craze by replacing that healthy fat with maltodextrin, a carbohydrate
used as a filler in many processed foods. This means you’re trading the healthy fat
from peanuts for empty carbs, double the sugar, and a savings of a meager 10 calories.
Eat This Instead: The real stuff: no oils, fillers, or added sugars. Just peanuts
and salt. Smucker’s Natural fits the bill, as do many other peanut butters out there.
We especially like Peanut Butter & Co. Original Smooth Operator and Original Crunch
Time. (12.21.2010, David Zinczenko)
Bonus Tip: The average American drinks 450 calories a day—a quarter of the calories you're supposed to consume during an entire day! Beware of The 20 Worst Drinks in America, 2010 Edition.
"To Achieve World
Government it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism,
their loyalty to family traditions and national identification" Brock Chisholm - Director of the World Health Organization
"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to
believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a
reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police
State Dictatorship it's going to
get." Ian Williams Goddard
The fact is that "political correctness" is all about creating uniformity. Individualism is one of the biggest obstacles in the way of the New World Order. They want a public that is predictable and conditioned to do as it's told without asking questions.
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." Thomas Jefferson