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RANT WARNING
An article in the US News and World Report today is a perfect example of the confusion surrounding nutrition that consumers must wade through every day.

It starts out promising:

Since the concept of “healthy” can be awfully fuzzy, let’s put it bluntly. “All of these are empty calories that offer you no nutrition,” says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a dietitian and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association.

But the very next sentence contradicts this strong stance:

That doesn’t mean they’re forbidden, just that they should be eaten in moderation, she says.

Okay, I understand the author didn’t want to make the reader throw down their paper in disgust, but how much non-nutrition is good? How much takes away stomach space for better foods?

The infuriating statement that got me riled up enough to post this was:

(Many people, including obesity expert Barry Popkin, say one of the easiest ways to drop weight is to simply cut out all caloric beverages.)

Let’s throw that stinky old baby out with the bathwater! No milk, regardless of how much healthy fat or important vitamins it contains? No lacto-fermented drinks? No small beer? No kvass or barley water? If it has calories, just toss it all! This is so reminiscent of the “evil calorie” days in the 1960s when we were advised to “fill up” on carrot and celery sticks and we would automatically lose weight. That worked like a charm, didn’t it?

Nutritionism rears its ugly head next, comparing fructose, glucose and sucrose and their different effects on body systems. All fascinating, if not new, information except for a couple little details. I don’t believe anyone in the article is referring to a big old spoonful of sugar, or a little cup containing isolated high fructose corn syrup. The “science” is treating these sweeteners as if they are single foods, eaten in isolation, on an empty stomach, by machines who handle the input of fuel identically. Does my body react differently to a HFCS-laden soft drink in midafternoon than to a teaspoon of honey drizzled on soaked grain porridge in the morning? You better believe it does. I feel the difference. Sweeteners aren’t a closed system, eaten on the molecular level. They are part of a food system that has infinite applications, and therefore isn’t able to be studied efficiently, leaving science out in the cold.

Don’t worry because it doesn’t matter anyway:

But those hypotheses have not been proven, emphasizes Melanson, and there’s no take-home message for people in terms of the form of sugar they eat.

Ah, so the premise of the article “Sorting Out Sweeteners” is: Relax, America. Sit back and read. We’ll sort out this mess for you. But the message is quite different: Um, never mind. We don’t know any more that we did before and can’t enlighten you.

But, just for giggles, the article take ones more shot at nutritionism:

There are tiny differences in the minerals in some sweeteners; the less processed, the more trace minerals, says Blatner. (Honey, for example, has some magnesium and calcium.) And there is some evidence that the levels of antioxidants in sweeteners can vary.

Whew! Well, at least if I’m going to eat sugar, I can have the magical “antioxidant” in it. What a relief.

Sadly, this is all the mention of processing you’ll find. No mention of the chemicals used to turn that sugar white, to keep it declumped and without flavor (other than sweet.) No mention of the myriad of enzymes in honey that are destroyed when the honey is heated. No mention of the sulfur used in molasses production. We’re just going to pretend that sugar comes off the cane in little white crystals, and that it’s a natural, unprocessed food for now, okay? Makes it easier to compare apples to apples.

Next, the article dazzles you with some scientist-ese:

Importantly, you shouldn’t let any fructose worries scare you away from fruit; while it’s true that tree fruits and berries contain a large percentage of fructose, the absolute amount is quite low, Melanson says.

What the heck (excuse me, Mom) does “absolute” even mean in this sentence? It’s absolutely there? Not there? Purple? What?? Don’t get me wrong. I am in total agreement with the intent of the statement: fruit in its whole, ripe, in-season, local form is the very best form of sugar you can consume.

In all, I’m pretty disappointed with this level of reporting. I’m disappointed that the message conveyed seems to be “Uh, they told us to tell you to eat less of it, but we know you won’t and you don’t care, and neither do we.” I’m frustrated that consumers once again are being told erroneous information, partial information and bad science. I’m thrilled I didn’t spend a buck fifty for a copy of this paper to find birdcage-liner-quality information like this in it.

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays, hosted by Food Renegade.

As a small child, I used to joke about the product that would make me my first million dollars: “Instant hydration! Just add…(wait for it) WATER!” Yuk Yuk.

That very thing seems to be happening in our grocery stores. We all know tomatoes have lycopene, which has been implicated in reduction of heart disease. We know about the beta-carotene in carrots, and feed them to our children so they’ll have strong eyesight. Leave the produce department for the aisles of bags, boxes and cans at the store and you’ll find labels on nearly every category of food touting this health benefit or that special antioxidant. “If I can get all the calcium I need from yummy orange juice,” one friend confided, “why would I ever drink plain old milk again?”

And so the bad food choices continue, masked by health claims that are dubious at best. There is no standard for these labels, no regulation, no guidelines.

The U.S. has no legal definition of a functional food — it is strictly a marketing term here. — Kristina Fiore at Med Page Today

I am not suggesting government regulation. A governmental agency is far too susceptible to corruption to be trusted. The word we need to get out is that the important part of the food isn’t the nutrients it contains, but the food itself. Food Renegade put it perfectly:

Focusing too narrowly on nutrients has obscured the true value of eating Real Food.

We need to start eating a wide variety of whole, raw (if appropriate), traditional foods for their wonderful taste and because we trust they will give us the nutrients we need because that’s what they were put here for. Micromanaging our diets by counting grams of minerals, vitamins and micronutrients is cumbersome, frustrating and takes the joy out of cooking and eating the foods given to us to enjoy.

Mankind has enjoyed health, strength and long lives for thousands of years without antioxidant-enhanced fruit juice, calcium-added antacids, and phytosterol boosted “table spread.” Why do we think we can strip foods of their natural purposes and re-engineer them to our specifics and come out with anything more than industrial waste?

Fight back this Friday by turning your back on the man-made, engineered food that promises health and long life. Boldly go to the foods that man has consumed for thousands of years that has actually delivered health and long life.

Long live butter!