click for fullsize image at visualeconomics.com

You’ve got to check this out. The numbers will frighten you. On average, over the course of a year, each of us  consumes:

53 gallons of soda (per person, factoring in babies  and health freaks who read fooducate)

141 lbs of sugar and other sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup, PLUS 24 lbs of artificial sweeteners

23 lbs of pizza and 24 lbs of ice cream

29 lbs of french fries (now it seems a bit low compared to the pizza and ice cream)

Think about this when you do your grocery shopping this weekend…

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Last week, ConAgra, a huge food conglomerate, recalled 800,000 units of Marie Callender’s Cheesy Chicken and Rice Frozen Entrées. The fear – a salmonella infection that has spread to 14 states. Recalls happen every once in a while, and we’ve written about them in the past.

In today’s post we won’t talk food safety, but rather take this recall as an opportunity to look at what’s inside each box of convenience food, from a nutritional perspective.

What you need to know:

Each package is a single serving weighing in at 13 oz. That’s a nice portion! It’s 460 calories, with 9 grams of saturated fat (46% of the daily max).The 33 grams of protein are very filling (a half day’s worth).

But we are very concerned with sodium. At 1330mg, we’re talking more than 57% of the daily maximum of 2300mg. If you need to be on a low sodium diet of 1500mg a day, you’ll spend almost all your allowance on this single dish.

The ingredient list mention salt 4 times:

Cooked White and Wild Rice, Broccoli, Cooked Chicken (White Meat Chicken, Water, Modified Rice Starch, Isolated Soy Protein, Salt, Sodium Phosphate), Water, Pasteurized Processed Cheese Spread (American Cheese [Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes], Water, Whey, Sodium Phosphate, Whey Protein Concentrate, Skim Milk, Milkfat, Salt, Artificial Color), Cheddar Cheese (Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes, Annatto), Mushrooms, Onion, Contains 2% of Less of: Nonfat Dry Milk, Butter, Modified Corn Starch, Soybean Oil, Salt, Citric Acid, Annatto Extract, Spice, Beta Carotene (Corn Oil, Beta Carotene).

You can see that the salt is used in a variety of tasks: to keep the cooked chicken moist, as part of the cheeslike spread, and added for flavor to the overall dish.

The nice orange-yellow color of the cheese comes from Annatto, so why add more artificial color (underlined).

The front of package (see picture) boasts a USDA Food Pyramid accompanied with some encouraging numbers: 25% of daily grains. 30% of daily vegetables. 30% of daily milk. 35% of daily meat.

Too bad there’s no extra mention of the excess salt- “57% of daily sodium”.

What to do at the supermarket:

Best to prepare your own dinner dishes. If you must buy prepared foods, look for sodium values lower than 600mg per serving.

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Probably the biggest news in the diet drink arena this past year has been the introduction of soft drinks sweetened with stevia. The FDA anointed stevia  GRAS status (Generally Regarded as Safe), which means it can be used in food products without requiring approvals for each specific product.

Although some consumers groups objected,  citing insufficient research into long term effects of its use, the general public and manufacturers seemed pleased with the addition of a natural low calorie sweetener. Stevia sweeteners such as Reb-A are 300 times sweeter than table sugar. They are derived from a South American plant and come virtually calorie free.

And so, drinks from Odwalla, Tropicana, and others have been formulated using Reb-A, and marketed with much hype and hoo-ha.

Unfortunately for stevia manufacturers, who for years battled to gain FDA approval, there may be a new obstacle to stevia’s massive adoption – its price tag. A recent report by business research organization KnowGenix has  pointed out that the cost of stevia extracts compared to artificial sweetners is substantially higher, and therefore it may not prove economically viable for many drinks.

Seems a bit odd to us, what with the zillions of dollars that drink manufacturers are making by selling us water, colors, and sugar (or substitutes) in pretty bottles. But then recall the massive switch from sugar to high fructose corn syrup in the 1980’s because each bottle was a few pennies cheaper to manufacture.

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This was the week of stevia, a new zero calorie sweetener, that got FDA approval as a safe food additive, and will shortly find its way into soft drinks and other products scattered about our supermarket aisles. If you are confused about all the different sweetening options out there, you are not alone. Once upon a time, it was either honey or cane sugar. But then came the industrial revolution…

(Grab a cup of coffee, take a deep breath, this is a long post) Read more…