Wednesday, January 8, 2014

This is Your Brain on Food

This is not a review of any of the recently published literature regarding the effects of processed food on your brain.


I have food on my mind again, is all.


Since I quit eating dairy products a few years ago, I keep a container of unsweetened soymilk in the house. You know, for those special occasions. Lightening coffee, making omelets, mixing smoothies. Why unsweetened? I never used sweetened cow milk for any of those purposes, so why add sugar now?


Anyway, the local supermarket was out of my usual brand this Sunday. Let's refer to it as Brand A. So I grabbed Brand B of organic unsweetened soymilk. Then I read the label.


"But wait," you're saying. "It's soymilk so it's supposed to be good for you so why read the label?" I don't trust food producers anymore, although I can't point to a single event or trauma to cause my skepticism. My trust eroded over time.


Back to Brand B. The ingredients are: Organic soymilk (filtered water, whole organic soybeans), carrageenan, sea salt, natural flavor.


Brand B is using salt, some kind of flavoring agent, and a thickener derived from edible seaweed to make soymilk more... I don't know what. More of what soymilk should be? I'm looking for organic unsweetened, so OF COURSE I MIND if you salt, thicken, and flavor-enhance it... for crying out loud.


Next day, I stop in to Brighter Day natural food store to see if they have Brand A on the shelf. They do. The ingredients: Filtered water, whole organic soybeans. Three cheers for Brand A!


There is a food industry, and a flavoring industry, wrecking our (even our organic unsweetened) food.  Read the labels. Insist on accurate labeling. And choose the simple stuff.


Be Well!

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