Food for thought

You come home from a long day at work. It's so convenient to just give the kids a prepackaged star-shaped or stegosaurus cut-out schnitzel. Just fry and serve, ketchup on the side (it's made of tomatoes, you reason). It's so tempting to tear open a packet of dehydrated pasta, add water and dish up, or to pour soup from a bag right into a microwave bowl. You end the meal with cake bought at the grocery the week before and call it a day.

Israel's supermarkets boast a vast range of products that are convenient, and often tasty, solutions for a meal or snack. People may not realize, however, that processed foods are no substitute for fresh food. During processing, the materials tend to lose at least some of their nutrients.

"Processed foods aren't an adequate substitute," says Galit Goldzak-Kunik, a senior dietitian with Clalit Health Services in Haifa and a doctoral student at Haifa University. "I'm not saying you can't eat preprepared food once or twice a week. But if it becomes a daily habit, it's a problem. These foods don't contain all the nutritive components the body needs, and the components they do contain aren't always high quality. Consuming small amounts of processed foods probably won't do harm. But when you eat large amounts, it's another story."

Like most things in life, it's a question of moderation, or dosage if you will. It's okay to eat a piece of cake from the supermarket that contains preservatives and food coloring once in a while, or pasta from a bag rich in salt, which means, rich in the mineral sodium. But it's important to understand what you're eating.

1. Industrialized products tend to have high quantities of sodium. For instance, one serving from a 3-serving bag of Osem majadara (rice with lentils) contains 710 milligrams of sodium. One Mana Hama of Osem spaghetti has 985 milligrams of sodium.

Dorit Adler, manager of the nutrition and diet department at Hadassah University Hospital says the recommended daily intake of sodium is 2,300 mg, which means that a single meal from one of these products provides almost half the daily requirement of the mineral.

Sodium is one of the worst things about processed food. The tremendous amounts that manufacturers add to their products can lead to several medical problems, including heart trouble, hypertension and arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries).

"Sodium is considered a public enemy. It's hard not to exceed the daily recommended intake if you eat mainly processed food," says Sigal Frishman, head of the nutrition and diet division at Beilinson Hospital. Moreover, eating richly-flavored processed food over time can cause a craving for that salty taste.

Don't make the mistake of thinking you can make a pot of rich soup from one of those packets, even if its name indicates you can. The same goes for pasta sauce from powders: it won't contain the same levels of vitamin C as sauce made from actual tomatoes.

"Dehydrated vegetables add hardly anything [nutritive] to the dish, because all their vitamins and fibers are removed [during processing,]" says Sigal Frishman. If you want the most out of your vegetables, you have to eat them fresh. For instance, she points out, when you prepare tomato soup from a powder, that pretty red color probably comes from food coloring.

It can be difficult to calculate how much calories, saturated fats and sodium we're putting into our bodies when eating processed foods. It is all the more complicated when water is added.

Let's take Knorr's tomato sauce powder. The manufacturer cites on the packaging that the nutritive values it states relate to 100 grams of the sauce after cooking. Now, the bag weighs 155 grams. But how many grams of sauce does the bag produce after adding the water and cooking? It will differ with the amount of cooking time, whether the pot sits around and so on. At the end of the day, we don't know exactly what nutrients we're getting from the dish. Unilever, which makes the Knorr products, says the information on the packaging complies with Israeli standards. Those state that the nutritive values must relate to the product after preparation, Unilever says.

Then there is the conundrum of monosodium glutamate. Lots of products state on the packaging that there isn't any. But to make sure a product you want doesn't have any, or does for that matter, check the list of ingredients.

What's the problem with monosodium glutamate, anyway? "It is a substance [naturally] found in the nervous system," says Goldzak-Kunik. In fact, it's a neurotransmitter, which is a chemical that relays signals between nerve cells and other cells. "The problem is with children and babies. Some studies claim it can cause behavioral disturbances or attention disorder," Goldzak-Kunik continues. She adds though that other studies found no correlation between ingestion of the chemical and such problems.

In other words, the jury's still out. The U.S. Food and Drugs Administration ruled that monosodium glutamate is safe for consumption. But some people may feel discomfort after consuming foods that have it, including heartburn, tingling, headaches or rapid pulse.

In other words, it's a good idea to get used to fresh foods, rather than develop cravings for the essences, flavorings, preservatives and other chemicals found in processed foods.

The raison d'etre of the processed-foods industry is naturally to make money. That's how business works. They achieve this aim by using the cheapest possible components, which they then render tastier with flavorings, essences, aromatic chemicals and whatnot, plus preservatives to give the food a longer shelf life. How do you know what the long-term effect of eating unnatural things will be? points out Goldzak-Kunik.

Interestingly, we asked the three dietitians what all those letters in the list of ingredients meant, and they didn't know, at least in some of the cases.

What can be said is that an additive prefixed by the letter E means it has been approved by the European Community for use. What the additive is, though, is another story.

Broadly speaking, substances approved for use in the food industry don't, or aren't supposed to, do harm. Some can cause digestive difficulties. "Flatulence, diarrhea and stomachaches are some side effects of certain E additives," says Goldzak-Kunik.

You can check the Web sites of the FDA or the Health Ministry for more information about the E additives, which can be anything from food coloring to cellulose, essences, aromatic chemicals and so on. Taking E202 for instance, we find that it's a synthetic antifungal and antibacterial preservative. E200 is our friend sorbic acid; another preservative, E252, is potassium nitrate, also found in fertilizers. Yum yum.

Another point worthy of note when shopping for food is the order of ingredients. Manufacturers are required to list ingredients by proportion. The first ingredient is the main one. Note that in the case of frozen meat, the second ingredient on the list is usually water. Take a look at a box of cookies: Ten to one sugar will come before flour. You may well find margarine as well, which should alert you to the probable presence of trans-fats (and butter should alert you to cholesterol). In processed chicken products, the third ingredient will be bread crumbs. Adler chuckles that she once checked and found that a third of the processed-chicken product, by weight, was bread crumbs. Think of that: You're paying a lot for bread crumbs, and your child isn't getting the chicken you think he is.