This has gotten out of control! People have forgotten why brown food is healthier than white food. When people are shopping and they want to be healthy they will grab brown rice instead of white rice – thats fine because brown rice does have more fiber and vitamins than white rice.
The problem is that the marketing whizzes on 5th Avenue have figured this out and use it to pass off junk food as health food. Most people these days are so poorly educated on nutrition and health that they never stop to ask *why* brown is healthier than white, they just know it is, so when they go shopping they grab brown – brown crackers, brown bread, brown breakfast cereal, brown tortillas, brown cookies.
Lets take a step back and look at WHY brown food is healthier than white and WHEAT is the reason. It used to be, when you would make bread you would grind wheat, mix it with water, salt, and yeast, and make … bread. It was extremely healthy with lots of vitimans and lots of fiber. Then people discovered that if you removed that “nasty” wheat hull, you could make bread products light, fluffy … and nutrition-less. (Please read all about bread).
For a long time, people did not realize that the fluffy white loaves of bread was void of any nutritional benefit, but when they did, they ‘fixed’ the white bread by adding vitamin pills in each loaf to replace the vitamins that were removed with the hull. Since the 1960’s, “health food” has become more and more popular but snack foods have become even more popular. How make the maximum bucks? Simple, try and fool people into thinking they can have it all! Make their junk foods brown to give them the appearance of health. Sprinkle token trace amounts of “whole grains” on top so that you can include that magical phrase that mothers love to see. Add brown food coloring to make the food look healthy and unprocessed.
AAArgh! Here is where we are today. People have forgotten that the reason brown food is healthier than white food is simply the lack of processing. The less food is processed, the healthier it is. If it is available in four mouth watering flavors and comes in individual “fun size” plastic bags or plastic lunchable trays, you can be SURE that its highly processed regardless of the color and any “whole grain” or “multi-grain” BS that appears on the front of the package.
Healthy?
