Ritz Crackers are Not Grain: They Aren’t Even Food!

Ritz towerIn a recent news report a woman was fined $10 for not sending a grain in her child’s lunch, even though it had fresh vegetables including potatoes and carrots. The child’s lunch was supplemented with Ritz Crackers, under the pretense of providing the child with a grain.

This story appalls me on many levels.

First why was THIS child’s lunch the focus of persecution? What about the kids with fruit roll-ups, aka, sugar and food colour!?!?

What about the kids with white bread (stripped of its nutrients), slathered in margarine or mayonnaise, (hydrogenated “edible” oils, not food, but edible) and cancer-causing processed meat? That such a sandwich qualifies as food and fits nicely into the food pyramid is ghastly!

What qualifies a Ritz cracker as a grain?

Let’s examine the ingredients in a Ritz cracker.

Wheat Flour, (some labels say “enriched wheat flour”) Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (Soybean or Cottonseed), Sugar, Raising Agents (Ammonium and Sodium Bicarbonates, Disodium Diphosphate), Salt, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Soy Lecithin, Barley Malt Flour.

 

The main ingredient is wheat flour. It doesn’t say whole wheat so it means they’ve taken the whole grain, removed all

the nutritious parts and the fibre and left the starch. The law states they must replace some of the nutrients, namely niacin, iron, thiamin, riboflavin, folic acid. Sounds good until you realize that they add synthetic substances, and the body doesn’t necessarily use them in the same way as it does naturally occurring vitamins and minerals.

Grains in their whole state have fewer nutrients, pound for pound, than almost any whole food. Sure they have calories, but few of us have difficulties getting enough calories.

Our bodies need micronutrients like minerals and vitamins; we need fibre and proteins and healthy fats. Grains are not the best sources of any of these nutrients.

The next ingredient is vegetable oil (on some labels), soybean oil and cottonseed oils (on other labels). Soybean and cottonseed oils are most likely genetically modified, as 90% of North A

merican fields of these crops are GMO. GMOs have not been proven safe for human consumption and have been associated with severe environmental issues, including an increase in chemical usage, the creation of super weeds and super insects resistant to pesticides, destruction of soil ecology, and loss of biodiversity.

Ritz crackers info

In addition, the oil in a Ritz has been hydrogenated (adding hydrogen to convert liquid to solid) to give the food the right texture and mouth-feel and a significantly longer shelf life. Hydrogenation converts oil into a poison, as our bodies don’t know what to do with the resulting strange substance: trans fats.

Sugar is the next ingredient. Sugar is another poison in our food supply, contributing to over a hundred conditions and diseases. If it comes from sugar beet (as opposed to sugar cane) it is likely GMO and again, not proven safe for human consumption.

Then there’s baking powder and salt, and then more sugar, in the form of high fructose corn syrup, a sugar known to contribute to obesity and food addictions and usually GMO too. Food manufacturers often use several types of sugar so that they can list them separately and keep sugar from showing up first on all the labels. It’s a trick to keep us from realizing we are overdoing sugar.

About the only food value in a Ritz cracker is in the calories, which have been stripped of what little nutrients were in the grain and combined with unhealthy fat, sugar and salt.

What is really scary is that according to government-sponsored surveys, Ritz Crackers are the #1 perceived snack food in America.

If Ritz crackers are a staple in your diet, I suspect your body is starving. In North America we consume copious amounts of food but we are always hungry.

It’s because real food is so much more than calories or carbs, fat and protein. Real food is about the micronutrients that we can’t get from a processed food product like Ritz crackers.

After examining the evidence, what do you think?

Is a Ritz cracker a grain?

Is it even food?

Does it belong in your kid’s lunch?

My philosophy: Eat the Food, the Whole Food and Nothing but the Food.

Resources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/11/19/ritz-crackers-fine_n_4303073.html

http://www.snackworks.ca/en/products/Ritz.aspx

The Joy of Fresh Vegetables from the Garden

freshveggiesIt may seem geeky but my favourite food is fresh vegetables from the garden. People think I’m weird but there is truly nothing as surprisingly succulent as that first crunch of a baby carrot that you’ve cleaned by wiping it on your pants.

Steamed baby carrots with a whisker of melted butter epitomize simple, real, delicious food. The taste is sweet; the texture, firm, yet tender. If you’ve ever eaten a garden baby carrot you will agree that it should be illegal to refer to the others as baby carrots. How can they possibly have taste when they are nothing more than old carrots, peeled to a “baby” shape and dipped in bleach to preserve them? Yum! Bleach!

If you’ve ever sat in a pea patch on a hot August afternoon, gorging on the fruits of the vines, you know exactly how I feel about fresh vegetables. In fact, eating peas directly from the shells is a surefire way to get kids to eat their veggies. Contrast those tasty morsels with pureed baby-food peas or ordinary canned peas and it’s not hard to understand why kids often despise vegetables. If more kids were turned loose in a pea patch, I’m confident more kids would love veggies.

Admittedly some vegetables need help. I like turnips and parsnips cooked with a little brown sugar.  It’s how my mom and grandmothers served them. My kids thought they didn’t like turnips so I used to cook them with carrots and puree them with a little butter and brown sugar. They loved them!

Tell me; have you ever had asparagus just picked from the garden? The flavour is like none other, almost like eating the smell of freshly cut grass, sweet and green. Sometimes you’ll find spears as slim as licorice string with a tassel at the end. I suggest eating them raw and absorbing their fresh pea taste or very lightly steaming them.

Fresh garden vegetables contain trace minerals that are largely absent from vegetables grown in commercial operations.  Those minerals are vital building blocks for many processes performed by a healthy body and are undoubtedly the key to fresh vegetables’ explosive taste.

Ideally home-grown vegetables are not subjected to chemicals to make them grow or to kill insects and weeds; these poisonous substances may cause more damage to our health than we receive from eating vegetables.

Another advantage to eating home-grown produce is it doesn’t have to travel for hundreds or thousands of miles; instead it can be picked and eaten when ripe. The eater gets to enjoy all the benefits of the food with fewer of the costs, both monetary and environmental.

There is nothing so satisfying than to walk through the garden with a bowl in hand, planning lunch based on what is ripe and ready. A handful of fresh leaves with a home-made dressing, a few baby potatoes sautéed in butter, and a mess of beets and greens provide the basis for a meal that simply cannot be bought.

If you have a chance to grow and/or eat fresh vegetables from the garden, I urge you to do it. Your taste buds and your body’s engine will thank you.  If you have no clue how to raise your own garden, it’s not as difficult as you might think.  Here are some resources to get you started:

One Million Gardens http://www.onemilliongardens.com/

Garden Planner http://www.growveg.com/Default.aspx,

Documented Experiences of a Home Gardener: http://www.albertahomegardening.com/