Food, Glorious Food!

[lookin]

Does any single processed food product today not contain that ingredient? The name itself inspires nausea.

Xanthan Gum

Worth noting that Matrix's recently discarded PoP'ems contain not only Xanthan Gum, but Cellulose Gum, Guar Gum, and Carob Bean Gum as well. Why so many gums, you may ask, especially in a foodstuff not intended for blowing bubbles?

It turns out that these gums are meant to replace various fats, like butter, while retaining some semblance of what the food chemists refer to as "mouthfeel". They impart a 'slippery' quality to the food like fat does and, in excess, can give one the sensation of slurping on a slug.

"Good", you may say, "butter's fattening anyway, and I'm glad these chemists are finding ways to get rid of it." And you may have a point. If your cardiologist has told you not to have so much as a pat of butter ever again, then a cocktail of gums, artificial flavor, and artificial color may be just what the doctor ordered.

But my guess is the wholesale replacement of natural ingredients with ersatz compounds straight from the lab has little to do with better nutrition, and lots to do with the increasing industrialization of our food supply. The donuts your great grandmother lovingly served up would not fare well moving through the factories and distribution systems that deliver a box of PoP'ems to your grocery basket.

First, they'd be way too expensive. Real butter, real vanilla, and real chocolate cost real money, and the folks at Entenmann's understand that a six dollar box of donut holes is not going to be a big seller. Hardened soybean oil and artificial flavor and artificial color are lots cheaper, and look enough like the real thing that folks are willing to fork over three or four bucks at the checkout stand to give them a try. After they discover, as Matrix did, that they taste like waxy marbles, they may not buy another box, and they may even throw some away, but at least that one box got sold. And there are plenty of kids whining at Mom to buy the next one.

Another reason is the manufacturing process itself. Real butter has to be well cared for, while on its way to the factory, and while there. Rancid butter can contaminate other ingredients and, at the wrong temperature, it can slow down the machinery. Oils and gums are far more stable, and keep things flowing smoothly.

But the primary reason behind the move to fake foods, in my opinion, is the extensive distribution system they have to move through to get to us. A century ago when William Entenmann and his horse were delivering baked goods in Brooklyn, real butter was an option. His donuts were typically eaten the day they were made, or soon after. Even after he expanded throughout New England, there were rarely more than a few days between manufacture and consumption. His products just didn't have enough time to get stale or moldy.

But when Entenmann's expanded nationwide forty years ago, a couple of new problems appeared. First, the products would have to travel thousands of miles to towns where the temperature could easily top a hundred degrees. And second, they'd have to ride in trucks, sit in large grocery warehouses, and wait on supermarket shelves for weeks and maybe months before somebody picked them up and brought them home. So the food chemists dosed them with preservatives and/or replaced natural ingredients with artificial ingredients that could survive a year in the desert without any noticeable effect.

Welcome to the foods we eat today. Some years ago, I started reading ingredients labels on most everything I pick up at the supermarket. Often, especially with 'fun foods', it's enough to make me put them back on the shelf.

Although I've never seen any research to back it up, I have a theory that the industrialization of our food supply is one reason, and perhaps the primary one, that the U. S. is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. My theory is that, in an effort to get the nutrients our bodies require, we are forced to eat much more fake food than we would if we were eating real food that delivered real nutrition.

PS: Entenmann's isn't the worst offender, by far, and they still appreciate the appeal of real butter. In fact, to this day, they make an All Butter Pound Cake that appeals to the consumer who's looking for some real food. But, I've read that it's best if eaten within a week or so and, even then, look what they've had to dose it with to move it through our distribution system:

Ingredients: Sugar, Bleached Wheat Flour, Eggs, Butter, Nonfat Milk, Water, Modified Food Starch (Corn, Rice), High Fructose Corn Syrup, Leavening (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda, Monocalcium Phosphate), Salt, Sorbitan Monostearate, Artificial Flavor, Preservatives (Potassium Sorbate, Sorbic Acid, Sodium Propionate), Polysorbate 60, Xanthan Gum, Mono-And Diglycerides, Wheat Gluten, Guar Gum, Propylene Glycol Monoesters, Oat Fiber, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Caramel Color, Soy Lecithin.

Yikes!

[Lucky]

Well, here is where the multitude of pictures posted on the site have some more practical value. These are pictures of young men, young men with hot bodies. Clearly, if you accept the above, these young men did not grow up on healthy Entemann products brought by horse to the Brooklyn bakeries. No, they eat foods made today with guar gum, and xantham gum and high fructose corn syrup, tons of sugar, Propylene Glycol Monoesters, Oat Fiber, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate...AND THEY STILL LOOK GOOD!

So every time you see one of those hot young 'uns in a photo shoot, pop a pop'em or whatever they are called, and soon enough you too will look like photo material for Lurker and Zipper!