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25 Comments

  1. Oh gosh – seen you on tv and went to your site. I love it – one day I hope to take my mom to one of your gluten free classes. But it is so nice to see an article like this one. It is hard to make others understand that YES people do this and it is sooo sad. The hardest part is when you believe this and you can not one get your kids to grasp the concept and second family members. Thanks for writing this.

  2. ” The serving sizes are usually about enough to feed a small kitten, you’ll probably eat triple.” LOL so true!

    On the bright side, products like these will keep us nutritionists in business for quite a long time. ;-) So much to educate, so little time. :-)

  3. I always get sucked in by
    “natural”. I can never read the ingredients list with my contacts on and have learned my lesson. I once brought something home from the frozen food section. When I discovered it had cottonseed oil, I returned it to the frozen food section without asking for a refund. Don’t tell anyone. No one reading this would ever buy it anyway.

  4. The “natural” in natural colouring or flavouring can actually mean anything from nature, as opposed to a man-made chemical. Truth: healthier than drinking bleach or Yellow number 5. But the source of these “natural” colours and flavors, sometimes things like beets, algae, turmeric and paprika, are also occasionally the innards of beetles and caterpillars. I the end, natural or artificial, either one is made in a lab.

    100% agree with your advice to ignore all the nutrition labels and gov’t claims and read only the ingredients.

  5. “Health Check” needs a reality check. Maybe if the Heart and Stroke foundation stopped getting funding from corporations that product the very foods that are linked to heart disease and stroke then there would be a legitimate method of determining the healthiness of food.
    Did you know some Pizza Hut food gets a health check? Puh-lease!

    I usually steer clear of food that even has a label at all ie. I eat a lot of produce.

  6. I tend to get sucked in less at the grocery store and more at home or a potluck when someone has a package of something open, especially if I eat some before finding out the ingredients.

  7. So glad to find this here. Thanks for spreading the word. If it comes in a box, wrapper or plastic clamshell, I don’t trust it. Nowadays, you have to be extra vigilant not to be fooled. Read those USDA organic labels and you discover that the label means different things depending on what color it is. Even their top-rated organic foods only have to be 95 percent organic–and that’s organic by their watered-down standards. That leaves plenty of room for GMO and other carp to slip in.

    Best practice: Buy locally grown, whole foods and prepare them yourself. As Michael Pollan says, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

  8. This is a great list- so important for people to realize. I still fall victim to packaged Organic foods, though I try to stay away.

  9. Years ago, I used to work for a chicken processing company and I remember the whole ‘health check’ thing being absolute bull. The health check chicken breasts that were being produced had to be kept under a certain level of sodium that was still ridiculously high – It’s chicken! Why are we filling it with phosphates, water, and salt? Needless to say, I no longer work there – I didn’t feel remotely comfortable standing by products like these and it really opened my eyes to the crazy ways we are being lied to by big food processors. How do people look at the chicken at places like Subway and Tim Horton’s and think “Yup, looks like real food to me!”? I don’t get it AT ALL. Moreover, How are these companies selling crap like this to the general public? Gross. And there’s my rant lol

  10. Love the comments of your readers – the problem with food, is that it is all Food Grade standards and their standards are very poor – they are not even required to list everything that is in thet can, package or bottle. The same goes for nutritional supplements – the majority of manufacturers are only under Food Grade Standards – hence – they can have arsenic in them if they wanted to – always purchase nutritional supplements that are Pharmaseutical Grade – there are only about four companies that have this rating – they HAVE to list all contents of each supplement, and are the best in the market place.

    It is a mine field out there in food land!

    Jan Petrook

  11. Health Check has to follow guidelines before approving a company’s request – they aren’t just getting money and putting their logo on a package. I agree with everything else in this article except for the Health Check bashing.

  12. Aesthetics by Rachel Has Gone [Truly] Organic! Read Why… » Aesthetics by Rachel Spa Blog says:

    […] the market that I could find.  And I can confidently, knowingly tell you that these brands do not healthwash or […]

  13. I really loved this post and the one on Arbonne. Very eye-opening and helpful to me! It can be extremely difficult to navigate the “healthy” and “safe” products bombarding us from every angle! You have great information here! :)