Stealth Foods

[Guest guest]

http://www.doctoryourself.com/stealthfoods.html

 

STEALTH FOODS

 

Stealth Foods

 

 

A " Stealth Food " is even worse than it looks. A

" Stealth Food " might even claim to be good for you. A

" Stealth Food " is a chemical wolf in cheap clothing.

Your supermarket shelves are full of Stealth Foods.

Want to add to the list? Email your favorites to me

at drsaul

 

PAST WINNERS OF THE DOCTOR YOURSELF STEALTH FOOD™

AWARD for SNEAKY JUNK FOOD:

 

RICH CHOCOLATE OVALTINE

You’d expect Food, Drug and Cosmetic Blue #1 to be an

ingredient in marshmallows, right? Yeah, it’s there

to keep those sugar-laden pencil erasers from looking

yellow after a while on the shelf. And you do know

that there is Red # 40 in " Kraft Barbecue Sauce, "

don’t you? That way, they can use fewer tomatoes and

the stuff still looks good. And " Quaker’s Life " cereal

contains artificial Yellow color. Do we dare ask what

real Quakers would think of putting yellow paint in

little Mikey’s breakfast bowl?

 

But the Doctor Yourself Tarnished Silver Award for

this month’s STEALTH FOOD goes to OVALTINE! Yes,

" Ovaltine, " the health food of my youth, can no longer

be trusted: " Rich Chocolate Ovaltine " in fact contains

not one but all THREE chemical colors: Yellow #6, Red

#40, and Blue #1!

 

When I called them up (you can too: 1-800-442-0099) to

say that it is just a tad inappropriate for a product

with a long reputation for quality to have THREE

artificial colors on it, they couldn’t have cared

less. “Rich Chocolate Ovaltine,” made by Himmel

Nutrition, Inc., Lake Worth, FL 33461, is a good food

turned bad by a company that does not seem to care

very much about what your child puts in her stomach.

The only part of " Rich Chocolate Ovaltine " that is

“rich” is the profit that Himmel Nutrition is making

at the expense of consumers that don’t read the fine

print on the label. Give ‘em a call and tell them you

will not buy it until they drop the food paint.

 

HOT DOGS

Children who eat hot dogs once a week double their

risk of a brain tumor. Youngsters eating other cured

meats, such as ham, sausage and bacon, had an 80

percent higher risk of brain cancer. This study was

done at the University of North Carolina at Chapel

Hill. Kids eating more than twelve hot dogs a month

(that's barely three hot dogs a week) have nearly ten

times the risk of leukemia as children who ate none.

This research was done at the University of Southern

California School of Medicine in Los Angeles. But

here is the very important good news: Children who ate

hot dogs and other cured meats, but who also took

supplemental vitamins, had reduced cancer risk. (Jean

Carper’s syndicated column in Lancaster, PA

Intelligencer-Journal, Weds., June 22, 1994.)

 

Do you recall ever hearing anything in the media about

this?

 

YOUR KIDS' TOOTHPASTE

AMERICAN SACCHARIN SCIENCE IS THE BEST MONEY CAN BUY,

and it has been bought off, all right. A substance

that can cause cancer has no business being allowed,

ever, in the food supply. The Delaney Amendment of

the 1950's argued (based on the work of Harvey W.

Wiley, M.D., the first head of the FDA) that there is

no such thing as a truly safe dose of a harmful

substance. If you question this, ask yourself: How

many drops of rat urine would you accept in your next

glass of lemonade? Twelve? Five? Two? Even half a

drop of rat urine? Yet no case whatsoever can be made

that rat urine causes cancer. Sanitation an issue,

you say? OK, we'll boil the rat urine first. Now how

many drops would you accept in your next glass of

lemonade?

 

Where am I going with this? We accept a dose, albeit a

small one, of a known carcinogen (saccharine) while we

would not accept a small dose of sterilized rat urine.

Maybe you are thinking, ”But I don’t even use

saccharin.” But maybe you do: read the ingredients

list on your toothpaste: saccharine is almost always

in there. “But I do not eat toothpaste!” you might

say. Maybe you don’t… but your kids do. CHILRDEN

UNDER SIX INVOLUNTARILY SWALLOW AS MUCH AS A THIRD OF

THEIR TOOTHPASTE. If they brush every day, that’s 365

small doses of a carcinogen a year. Any dentist will

tell you that saccharin chemically does nothing to

prevent tooth decay. So it should be taken out.

 

Wish to be heard? Call the toothpaste manufacturers

and tell them to take saccharin out of their products,

or you will not buy them.

 

Start with the two biggest sellers: Colgate:

1-800-468-6502 and Crest: 1-800-492-7378 Additional

phone numbers for other brands are welcomed.

 

 

DY SALUTE TO VALENTINES’ DAY

Those little candy hearts with “I LUV U” and “BE MINE”

on them have a special, super secret: they make great

children’s paints! I like to try this with kids: Have

them collect their candy hearts, especially the purple

ones. Grind them up, combine equal parts water and

powdered candy, and stir. Get out a model-sized

paintbrush and white paper and have the children write

their names in food paint. It works all too well.

Then ask the kids what it does to their stomachs.

Listen carefully to their answers and insights.

 

But there’s more! When I taught junior high, I

wondered where the girls’ rather weird colored hairdos

came from. The girls 'fessed up: they dyed their hair

with Kool Aid.

 

Not a new idea, it turns out. In “The Wizard of Oz

movie,” the animals used as the “Horse of a different

color” were colored, from fetlock to mane, with a

mixture of Jell-O powder.

 

In summation, I concede that artificial colors are

great for dying horses’ hair and painting pictures.

But I am not convinced that we should voluntarily EAT

paint. So read every label and vote with your

dollars. Then send the only message that carries any

weight in the food industry: DO NOT PURCHASE ANY FOOD

THAT CONTAINS AN ARTIFICIAL FOOD COLOR.

 

 

“CELESTE” PIZZA FOR ONE

Okay, nobody is likely to consider a frozen pepperoni

pizza to be a health food, but even junk food eaters

deserve simple honesty in packaging, just as cigarette

smokers deserve an ingredients list on a pack of

smokes. That would make a pretty big pack, as there

are hundreds of chemical goodies in processed tobacco,

but back to microwave pizza: Good ol’ Madison Avenue

portrays a nice, smiling gray-haired “Mama Celeste” on

the front of the box. I rather doubt if that’s the

CEO of the company. Maybe she is a model, but it is

just a corporate image and truth is not important.

But this is: Also “modeling” on the pizza box’s back

cover is a beautiful full-color shot of “Mama”

Celeste’s “quality” ingredients, “bursting with

flavor” and “authentic Italian taste and quality,”

including “delicious cheese.” Only problem is, the

fine print on the side of the box very quietly tells

us that the number two ingredient in the pizza’s

topping is “cheese substitute.” You have to read very

carefully to find this statement, and even then, many

folks do not realize that ingredients are listed by

weight, largest to smallest. So the second ingredient

is a huge one. Far, far down the ingredients list,

there is an entry for mozzarella cheese, which is a

minor ingredient only. And in the photograph? Not a

single shot of the chemical formula for cheese

substitute… but a nice glossy color picture of a nice

big wedge of real cheese, tucked amongst peppers,

mushrooms, onions and tomatoes.

 

Mama won’t come to a toll-free phone, evidently, but

you can write “her” at Mama Celeste Consumer Affairs,

1000 St. Louis Union Station, St. Louis, MO 63103.

 

And while you are at it, you might want to read up on

each of the no fewer than SEVEN artificial

preservatives in this “Pizza for One .”

 

Pizza for One? How about “Chemistry 101”?

 

CHICKEN SHADES

Hens by the thousands raised in such claustrophobic,

crowded cages that the birds will literally peck each

other to death. To reduce prison-yard aggression in

chickens, red tinted contact lenses are now marketed

for poultry workers to slip into the birdy’s eyes. It

takes a trained operator just a few seconds per bird,

the manufacturer claims. I do believe I have my

nomination for the World’s Worst Job.

 

CHICKEN KEESTERS

There is so much colon bacterial contamination in

chicken meat that there is now a product to close off

the bowels of dead chickens. It is called “Rec-Tite,”

and it is essentially super glue for chicken anuses.

And I am NOT making this up.

 

Bon appetite!

 

FROOPS POPS

You expect candy to be full of junk, and colored candy

especially so. And you are right. But I do believe we

have the all-time winner in FROOPS POPS for the “food”

with the most artificial colors ever: NINE. They are:

Red 3, Red 40, Red 40 Lake, Blue 1, Blue 1 Lake, Blue

2, Yellow 5, Yellow 5 Lake, and Yellow 6. What’s

really neat is that the candy so colored only has one

actual color to look at: red. For it is a peppermint

lollypop!

 

Let’s all write to the American Candy Company (makers

of FROOPS POPS) and tell them how much we admire their

work.

 

American Candy Company, Selma, Alabama 36701

 

 

The Doctor Yourself Award for STEALTH FOOD

Manufacturer of the Decade goes to

GENERAL MILLS, INC.

 

Good ol’ CHEERIOS. I ate them when I was a kid, and

you did too, I’ll bet. Today, regular Cheerios are

even better, as they are lower in sugar than in the

old days. Of course they contain a lot more salt, but

pobody’s nerfect. And the other flavors of " Cheerios "

(so-called “Honey” Nut, and “Apple” Cinnamon) have

lots of sugar. And precious little honey or apple.

But FLEA POWDER CHEERIOS are the flavor you probably

have not heard about… even though you may have already

tasted them back in 1994.

 

Yes, FLEA POWDER. The chemical chloro-pyrifos-ethyl

(which also kills ticks and termites) was sprayed on

oats used to make no less than 16 different General

Mills, Inc. cereals. Not 16 boxes, but 16 varieties,

amounting to 160 MILLION BOXES, including TRIX,

BOOBERRY and LUCKY CHARMS (“Ooh, now look at what they

‘ave in wit’ me Lucky Charms: pink dead fleas, yellow

dead ticks, and blue dead termites!”)

 

Of course there are precious few insects in General

Mills’ cereals, because they check for them. But in

1994 General Mills (with annual sales of about 9

BILLION dollars) did NOT check for pesticide residues.

L. Robert Lake, director of policy and planning in the

Food Safety division of the FDA) said, “One of the

things bothering us about the General Mills incident

is it went on for an extended period of time, and they

didn’t know. It means they didn’t have a good system

for checking oats.” (The Washington Post, August 21,

1994)

 

The Post continues, “By the time the company found out

about the illegal spraying, 110 million boxes were on

the shelves in grocery stores and consumers’ homes.”

“People had already fed it to their children,” said

FDA’s Mr. Lake.

 

So what happened next? A massive product recall? A

series of Saturday morning cartoon-time TV

announcements to not buy, and not eat " Cheerios " that

you already bought? No such luck. “We didn’t want to

raise an alarm for no good reason and scare people,

but we didn’t want to fail to warn them either.” said

Dr. Lynn Goodman, assistant administrator for

pesticides and toxic substances at the Environmental

Protection Agency. Well, certainly no one was alarmed,

for there was no recall at all. The Post continues,

”The two government agencies decided not to press the

company to recall the cereal. ‘We were concerned that

a recall would have been very disturbing to parents…

We did not want to cause a public panic.’ ”

 

Well, THAT certainly makes me feel better!

 

General Mills now checks for pesticides. Good. But

who checks General Mills? If a company can sell 110

million boxes of contaminated cereal, and nothing at

all happens, what does this say about our government’s

real interest in food safety?

 

(The full text Washington Post article, expertly

written by Sharon Walsh, appeared August 21, 1994.

Your public librarian can get you a photocopy through

interlibrary loan.)

 

 

Reprinted from the book FIRE YOUR DOCTOR, copyright

2001 and prior years by Andrew Saul, Number 8 Van

Buren Street, Holley, New York 14470 USA Telephone

(716) 638-5357

[Guest guest]

I looked in the archives online @ the washington post on Aug 21 1994 for

the article and did not find it. I did find the story about the illegal

pesticed in cherrios. but no other article written by Sharon Walsh.