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 by Dr. Rita Louise
The other day my family and I visited my in-laws for the weekend. We had just finished eating breakfast and I began cleaning the kitchen. On the counter by the stove, there was a splattering of grease which I embarked on wiping up. My mother-in-law told me to "hold on" as she reached under the kitchen sink and pulled out a bottle of "grease away". Within seconds of her spraying it onto the counter, the fumes reached my nose and throat and I started to cough. With eyes half open, I looked at my mother-in-law and announced, "That product is pretty darned toxic". Her response was "but it works good!"
I was taken aback at her reaction, but it made me think of the hundreds if not thousands of products for sale on any given day that are harmful to our health. What astounds me the most about this is that we happily choose to use them regardless of their potential risk. Granted, these products are designed to make our life easier, but in the end, what price are we really paying?
I remember a number of years back I was helping a friend clean his apartment prior to his moving out. I volunteered to clean the bathroom and worked diligently on the shower door. After scrubbing it for about 45 minutes and going through almost a full bottle of 409 cleaner, was I surprised when I discovered a swan etched into the glass that made up the slider door. I was also surprised the next day when I looked at my fingertips and noticed that I didn't have fingerprints anymore. I was even more surprised when I found that I could create long tears in the skin of my fingertips with just a gentle tug.
Many people don't realize that our skin is permeable and can absorb materials it comes into contact with. Don't believe me? Here's a way in which you can verify this for yourself. Place a clove of fresh peeled garlic into the toe of one of your shoes. Within 20-30 minutes, you will begin to smell the scent of garlic as it is excreted by the pores of your skin. You may even begin to notice the scent of garlic on your breath.
If our skin is permeable enough to allow the oils of a single clove of garlic to pass from our toes to the rest of our bodies, then it only makes sense that toxic products that come into contact with our skin will be absorbed as well. It's not only what comes in contact with our skin that we should be concerned with; we should also worry about the "fumes" or airborne molecules that we breath in at the same time. When we choose to use products such as 409, chlorine bleach or even spray our showers down daily with Tilex, do we worry that long term exposure to these toxic products may be harmful to our health? Probably not. More than likely, we echo the words of my mother-in-law: "but it works good!"
Household cleaning supplies aren't the only things we happily purchase and use that negatively impact our health. Ok, picture this: you walk into the supermarket. On the wall to the left is the produce section that is stocked with a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. Along the back of the store is the meat and fish section, and down the right side of the store sits the dairy cases. Filling the remainder of a typical supermarket, other than household cleaning and personal hygiene goods, are food products which, bottom line, are not good for us.
Think about it, what do you find sitting on the shelves? Hamburger Helper, Spam, macaroni and cheese, Pop-tarts, Sugar Smacks. If you read the label, these foods are primarily made out of white flour, white sugar and hydrogenated vegetable oils. They are also loaded with artificial colors, preservatives and flavors. If you look close enough, you will even find "foods" being sold that aren't made out of any real food products at all.
In our fast paced world, prepackaged, preprocessed foods are quick and easy to make. In fact, they let us cook a dinner for four in less than twenty minutes. But what are we really eating? Our body need proteins, carbohydrates and certain kinds of fats in order to survive. It also needs vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. These building blocks are found in fresh food, such as the kind you find around the perimeter of the supermarket. So while we may be "eating" enough daily, prepackaged, preprocessed, fat laden foods do not contain many, if any, of the essential building blocks we need. Instead, they are filled with items which our bodies cannot digest nor assimilate.
While giving a presentation on nutrition, I mentioned that some brands of salad dressings, especially the ranch or other creamed varieties, contain a chemical called propylene glycol. I had learned in college that polypropylene was a kind of plastic, so taking it the next step, I inferred that propylene glycol was some kind of petroleum derivative that was added to the dressing. One of the attendees spoke up and shared with the group that propylene glycol was indeed a petroleum derivative and was better know by another name: anti-freeze.
In recent years, food manufactures have jumped onto the health bandwagon developing low calorie, sugar free or fat free food alternatives. These products are advertised as being good, if not better, for you than their counterparts. The truth you will quickly discover if you read the label, is that sugar, salt or some kind of chemical replaces the natural "offending" ingredients. Decidedly, they may look and taste like the real thing. What I don't understand is why we would choose to eat it.
Let me give you an example. A couple of years ago, Frito-lay developed potato chips that were fried in Olestra. Olestra is a fat substitute. Potato chips fried in Olestra have no fat and fewer calories than their counterpart. This is primarily because they are not fried in oil. Marketed as "Wow" chips, these were the only food type products sold on the market that came complete with a warning label. The manufacturer warned of potential digestive problems that could be experienced when consuming their product as well as impairment in the absorption of specific vitamins. The question that always comes to the forefront of my mind is: are we that desperate to eat a potato chip? In turn, if we are looking to cut calories, eliminate sugar or reduce our fat intake, is it that hard for us to control ourselves that we need to endanger ourselves… for a chip?
When asked, most people will admit that Hamburger Helper, pop tarts or even 409 probably aren't good for us; but the reality is, however, that if people weren't buying these products, they would not be on the shelves. Did you realize that both Hormel and Libby jockey for shelf space at the store to sell their version of potted meat? In the big picture of things, this means somebody is buying it. And if you don't know what potted meats are, I challenge you to go to the supermarket and find out exactly what it is.
From strictly a business perspective, manufactures spend millions identifying and filling our needs. In today's high dollar advertising budgets, many times we don't even know we have a problem until we see it on TV. If we took the time to ask ourselves if these products were good for us, we probably wouldn't buy them. If we didn't buy them, manufacturers would move on and introduce something bigger, better, faster or brighter.
Personally, I find it a sad state of affairs when buying a truckload of Raman noodles costs considerably less than buying a pound of fresh fruit or even a head of lettuce. And while parents argue and protest about violence on TV, they contentedly allow advertisers to market some of what I would consider the worst foods to children, thus programming a whole new generation as to the "benefits" of these non-food items.
We are constantly looking for the proverbial magic bullet. We can continue to deny the health implications of long term exposure to toxic, unnatural products being sold on the market today, or we can choose for health: our own, our children's and that of the planet. The choice is and always has been ours to make. In the rushed and harried world we have created for ourselves, faster does seem better. But is it really?
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