How healthy is our food, the stuff we buy in the grocery stores?
A- Well, if you make a comparison between our food in the USA and
the food in other areas, we probably have the safest and the most
nutritional and the best food supply in the entire world.

You know the standards for food inspections and food quality that
goes into the manufacture and safety and the formulation of foods
it is really pretty extraordinary. Is it perfect? No, you can find
problems if you look.

What is processing and does it really takes the nutrients out the
food when they are processed?
A- It can if manufacturers let it, but it is a marketing power struggle.
It behooves any food manufacturer to preserve the nutrients in the
food as best they can.

That was going to be my next question. Does food lose its nutritive
value over time?
A- They can and can’t. You know if the label makes a claim on food
value, let’s say they manufacture some nutritious drink product
and on that drink is some nutritional claim then let’s say it has a
shelf value of two years then at the end of the shelf life that
product still needs to contain 100% of the vitamin C level.
It doesn’t mean that when the product was manufactured it
contained 100% of vitamin C and at the end of the shelf life it
can contain half that level of vitamin C. What that means is that
the manufacturer has to put an overage of that vitamin in the
product because some of the vitamins will deteriorate over a
period of time. Depending on the temperature of the storage of
the product, usually the higher the temperature and the longer
the storage time affects the rate of deterioration.

Vitamin C happens to be one of the most sensitive. The
government does inspections on these products. They will
randomly and routinely visit the food manufacturing companies.
They will take samples and often times it is a surprise. What the
food companies will do and the food scientist would do it when
the product is formulated they will add an overage of vitamins
and minerals but usually it’s the vitamins. It protects the product
during the shelf life.

What I am saying is that if they want the product to contain
100% of vitamin C at the end of the shelf life, then they may
have to put in 200% to begin with because they know that 2
years later it will have lost half of its value.

Then what the food companies will do is have documentation on
other food products that they have manufactured so they can
protect the rate of loss. They can predict the rate of loss on
similar products so that when a nutritional beverage is
formulated they can base the level of any particular nutrient
against historical values for similar foods.

Then that is the starting point and what they will do is enter the
food into something called accelerated storage. That is a higher
level of temperature so they can monitor the level of loss. They
call that storage study. Most food companies will do that on their
own accord but they do that in case there is ever a government
inspection because they want to make sure they are meeting
their label claim.

Companies that manufacture vitamins and minerals do the same
thing. If it is a dry food like a vitamin tablet the rate of
deterioration is usually much slower because it is a dry
environment.

In a dry environment you don’t get hydrolysis, which is the
break down of a dry product compared to a liquid. The nutrients
break down much faster in a liquid.

There is a whole host of different studies. When a product is
placed in a storage study like that, not only do they access the
nutritional properties of the food but also they have to know if
the food is stable in other ways.

Like fats can oxidize. If you have ever had a bag of cake flour on
your shelf in your kitchen and two or three years later it is full of
weevils and you smell it and it has an awful smell, it is usually
because the fat that is present in the flour has oxidized. The fat
will break down into pre-fatty acids, which is not necessarily very
good for you.

Where do the weevils come from?
A- The weevils have been there from day one, the larvae. Any cake
flour or anything made from wheat, you use flour to make a dough
and when you develop the dough it’s because it has gluten and the
gluten contains a fat or lipid.

When flour is aged or begins to smell bad it’s because the fat that is
in the gluten is starting to oxidize and break down into fatty acids.
The point of all that I just said is that the food companies not only
look at the nutritional value of the product in the accelerated
storage tests they will also look at perimeters like chemical tests on
the food, if the food contains fats is the fat breaking down into prefatty
acids. They will periodically sample the food and submit it to a
taste panel; you know a panel of taste experts. They will taste the
food and compare it back to a control sample to see whether or not
that sample ages and the flavor and texture remain. There is a lot
involved in it.

Well I think we are almost to the end of our time but I did want to
ask you one last thing. Do you have any advice that you want to offer
to our readers regarding their personal nutrition?
A- it would be something that we have touched upon four or five
times and that would be to use a balanced approach in how you eat
and the things you enjoy doing.

Don’t do anything to great excess and keep an open mind when you
hear information about things that seem to be important to your diet
and health. Read many sources before you make a final judgment.
So I would say keeping an open mind and introducing as much variety
as you can in your diet and get some exercise. Throw some exercise in
there because the value and the benefits are great.

__________________
Christopher Berry
Diabetic Discussion