Dreadful food

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

There is one reality about food, nutrition and health that we have not really consciously considered in the scheme of things. It is the fact that in our time and age, food has become an industry, with players romping the world over.

You see, when we realize we are dealing with a “food industry”, we know that the products they are churning are those that pass through the most cost-efficient of processes, which may not really be for our health and wellness, even if they are trumpeted as such.

Have you ever considered for a moment what sort of chemicals they sprayed those apples and oranges that fill our supermarket shelves for them to look – emphasis on look – fresh? How long ago were those fruits picked, packed, and shipped to our city from the places where they were grown?

Aside from that, we are not even sure exactly what the long-term effects are of our manufactured foods. Cereals, for example, which are passed off as “healthy” for their supposed fiber content, are a controversial subject. While it may be true they are rich in fiber, what about the sodium and sugar they are loaded with in this breakfast food?

Aren’t you terrified at the end-result of consuming all those instant noodles that fill our market shelves? What kind of synthetic chemicals were added to give them taste, and what processes were their ingredients subjected to so these noodles get to your plate quick, tasty, and in consistently quality? More cause for worry: At the cheap prices they are sold, I dread to think what really makes these noodles and how consistent consumption of them will eventually affect our bodies.

I am particularly aghast at the popularity of those instant noodle soups, the ones that just need to be steeped in hot water and voila! They’re ready for eating. I can only imagine what they did to the flour, what it was mixed with, so they come to you conveniently dry and then come to life at the touch of hot water. Then, you have the flavoring, the salty dust and oil and tiny chips of pitifully dehydrated veggies that are supposedly restored to their previously glorious state when mixed with boiling water.

Some important things were lost, some other things were added to these foods before they got to our plates in convenient speed, and I’m sure we are going to pay for these in the coming days.

Ditto diet sodas; while they do not contain sugar and therefore won’t impact on your blood sugar, what other hidden dangers do they bring? To this day, debate over aspartame, the chemical in the sweetener used on diet sodas rage in the Net, and no authority seems “authorized” enough to rule on the matter.

The problem with food safety is the culprits are difficult to pin down. The question, for example, of whether diet sodas are bad or not has not been really clarified: up to how much can we consume to keep it in safe levels?

How much can be eaten of these cereals loaded with sodium and sugar without compromising our health? Will eating them for breakfast everyday for 10 years not have any impact on our bodies?

I don’t think our government regulators have any foolproof standards to ensure that food that gets to our markets are safe to consume even in the long run. And so we continue to see more and more of these manufactured foods that are trumpeted for their goodness but, in fact, hide little devils in them that will eventually gnaw at our insides.*

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