Nutrition has been kind of a hobby of mine for a decade or more. It started after reading the book "Ripped" by Clarence Bass.
I am always amazed when I talk to someone about eating or nutrition how many people have no clue how to read a food label.
Take peanut butter. Ideally, you want to eat natural peanut butter. The ingredients should list peanuts, and peanuts only. Now pick up a jar of skippy. Most likely you'll see peanuts, but then you'll also see some type of partially hydrogenated oil. Hydrogenated oils are NOT natural and are believed to be a main contributor to heart disease. Hydrogenated oils are solid at room temperature, where peanut oil is not. Hydrogenated oil is considered by some to be a poison! It's in peanut butters, twinkies, margarine, fried foods, cookies, breads, you name it. Americans eat it by the pound, it tastes good and it's cheap!
People get really confused with sugars. Yougurt is a good example. Most everyone knows that milk contains sugars. These are in the form of lactose and galactose. People will often look at the sugar content on a container of yogurt and see 24 grams per serving and say "well that's just the milk". In fact its not just milk, 90% of yogurt has sugar added to it! Even Greek yogurts!
High fructose corn syrup is a man made product. It's used in situations where you need to pack So much sugar into something that granulated sugar just won't work. Also it's super ****ing cheap and it tastes great! So manufacturers put it in everything! Soda, cakes, peanut butters, ketchup, spaghetti and bbq sauce, anything marketed to kids.
Food is purely about marketing. Manufacturers want to make the cheapest food possible and then they want you to consume more than you need.
Lately I've really began focusing on eating as much raw food as possible. Think about this. Food in its natural state contains the enzymes and microbes necessary to digest that food. Cut an apple in half and set it on the kitchen counter. How long till its mushy? Now look at a jar of applesauce. That applesauce has been pastureized. Cooked essentially. Chances are it has an expiration date a year from now! How is that? The enzymes in that food that will help us digest that food, have been killed off. This food is ****.
Now open your fridge and look a expiration dates chances are your milk is due to expire within a week from now. Unless you bought "ultra-pasteurized" milk. It's the latest and greatest! Now, milk stays fresh in the fridge for a month or more! technology is awesome!
And we wonder why we are sold pro biotics and such for digestive health and why we have to take medicines for indigestion.
Sorry this is kind of a rant, I get angry about ****ty food...r