By Kathleen Bullard
Did you know that old shoelaces can be part of a healthy diet?
Just cut off the plastic ends of your kids’ old shoelaces, chop them up, sauté them in a little butter with onions and garlic, then add fresh parsley.Of course, the shoelaces should be made from cotton (organic, if possible). They will add tasty fiber to your diet. Really? Of course not! We didn’t have you believing this for a second, did we?.
So why do we believe the purveyors of all kinds of preservative, chemical, fat, salt, and sugar-laden foods when they make this claim? Note the wording of this common claim carefully. They are not saying their product is healthy, just that it can be part of a healthy diet, implying that you and your family are eating healthily in all other ways.
A comparison to this can be made to an old adage: “The solution to pollution is dilution.” The idea was that the environment could absorb and process a certain amount of pollution without any ill effects to the overall ecosystem. This is true to a certain extent. But given too many toxins from pollution, nature suffers, sometimes irrevocably.
The same is true for you – a little bit of something bad may not hurt, but too much can be damaging especially in the long run. Your children’s “ecosystems,” meaning their developing brains and bodies, are even more sensitive to toxins of all kinds. If you ever tried to start a plant from a seed, you know how delicate they are as opposed to an established plant.
So the big food companies try to convince us that “a little bit is ok” and won’t harm you, thus “part of a healthy diet.” Yet if your kids are consuming a soda (diet or regular) every day and a bag of Doritos, here’s what they are taking in:
Diet Coke: carbonated water, caramel color, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potassium citrate, natural flavors, citric acid, and caffeine. Regular Coke substitutes 10 teaspoons of sugar in a 12-ounce can for the aspartame.
Just to look at one ingredient in Coke: while caramel color sounds innocent, in 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that caramel coloring is possibly carcinogenic to humans.
Doritos: Whole corn, vegetable oil (corn, soybean, and/or sunflower oil), salt, cheddar cheese (milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes), maltodextrin, wheat flour, whey, monosodium glutamate, buttermilk solids, romano cheese (part skim cow’s milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes), whey protein concentrate, onion powder, partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil, corn flour, disodium phosphate, lactose, natural and artificial flavor, dextrose, tomato powder, spices, lactic acid, artificial color (including Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 40), citric acid, sugar, garlic powder, red and green bell pepper powder, sodium caseinate, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, nonfat milk solids, whey protein isolate, corn syrup solids.
Salt or sodium is actually listed in numerous places (count ’em 8!), as is the fat and sugar, besides the chemical concoction. Do you know what even half those ingredients are? And why would you ever want to put that into your child’s delicate, growing ecosystem? So don’t!!!
By the way, old shoelaces really can be a part of a healthy lifestyle. If you play, exercise, and stay active enough you’ll be wearing out those shoelaces in no time!