annual, you are researching GMOs?  Are you my long-lost twin, separated at birth?  I’ve just begun looking into the quality of our food supply as well.  It’s a long story but basically I was searching the net trying to help a friend who was told she has irritable bowel syndrome.  I thought maybe it was a specific food ingredient she was eating that was the culprit.  Anyway, you know how it is when you start researching something, you just get led from one thing to another, and in the process I learned that maltodextrin is being added to all kinds of things these days and is being touted as “natural” as it starts with a natural food: corn.  Well, the natural part ends right there.  After reading about the side-effects of this ingredient,(diarrhea, headaches) I went through my pantry and found an unbelievable amount of items containing maltodextrin.  I tossed them all: it is now in things like cottage cheese, cake mixes, jello, gravy mixes, lots of “low fat” foods (maltodextrin is a cheap, sweet filler) and even nuts.  Yep, I thought I was eating salted almonds, but nope, I was eating almonds, salt, and maltodextrin.  Funny that I was having unexplained headaches, and now that I have eliminated all maltodextrin, I’m fine!  Unfortunately, I do feel that food companies can hide the fact that they are using maltodextrin, by just listing “natural flavorings” as a disguise for maltodextrin, so you don’t really know for sure, which can be disastrous for people who have severe adverse reactions to it.  Anyway, my internet search led me to Robyn O’Brien’s research, and it is fascinating. She has some videos on the internet, and I just got one of her books, but have only skimmed it, I will get into it more after the holidays.  I was dumbfounded when I learned that other countries have stricter food laws than the U.S., and that the big companies like Kraft and Wal-mart will make food for these countries, adhering to these countries’ food laws,  while we in the U.S. get stuck with the questionable ingredients in our food, ingredients that are banned in other countries! We are guinea pigs.  While other countries get sugar in a product, we get the U.S. version that has high fructose corn syrup in it. I also read somewhere that other countries don’t have our version of Kraft macaroni and cheese.  You know how our cheese packet has that neon orange powder?  In other countries it is not neon orange!   

I’m looking forward to learning more about the quality of our food and GMOs (for instance, if the canola plant has been modified so that bugs and birds won’t come near it, why would it be good for us to eat it, if nothing else will?), and also growth hormones in meats/milk, pesticides on our produce, the rise in the number of food allergies, and so on, and so on, and any correlations of these things to the rise in obesity and cancer, but what I have discovered so far is:

You don’t want to blindly accept everything you’ve been told about the safety of our food; question all of it, just like you questioned dieting.  If you hadn’t been open-minded about the alternative to dieting, you would most likely still be dieting, and getting fatter and more unhealthy, like most everyone else is,

and,

unfortunately, to a lot of companies, profit means more than anything else.  Not your health, not your safety, but their bank accounts.

P.S.  it doesn’t stop with food; a lot of health and beauty products, I’ve come to find out, are loaded with questionable ingredients.  Lotions, sunscreens, benzoyl peroxide, hair dyes containing PPD = chemicals, chemicals, chemicals—-many of which are banned in other countries!!!  These products need to be labeled with WARNINGS, like on cigarettes, so the consumer knows what they are purchasing.  I’d like to know if I’m buying a food that’s been genetically modified or not!

Bottom line is: do your own research.

Headaches, eh?  I’ve been having those, too, and couldn’t quite nail down what was causing them.  I’ll avoid the maltodextrin stuff and see if that makes a difference.

I happened to grab Food Jail last night and randomly opened to page 216 and read this:  “She had learned one big thing in treatment - that she was emotionally screwed up.  But it was a lie.”  That lying stuff sure is pervasive!  I think there are two types of lies:  people lie to you for their own advantage (the companies that want to sell you diet treatments, for example) and people who tell you things that aren’t true because they believe they ARE true (like the therapists helping the gal on page 216).  Who can you trust anymore?

I go back and forth on the GMO thing, because I think if someone can engineer a sweet potato that can withstand drought and then lots of people in Africa don’t starve to death, that’s a good thing.  But if people are toying with my body chemistry and it’s making me fat or sick, I don’t want anything to do with it!!  I think I’ll keep moving toward more whole foods and more organic foods.  If that’s what we buy, that’s what the stores will sell.  But if we keep buying their lies, they’ll keep selling those!!!

I’ve reserved the O’Brien book at the library; I’m also reading Seeds of Deception.  It’s a bit horrifying, actually, what the big companies will do to shut people up.

Merry Christmas to all!!

I don’t eat very much packaged food and haven’t in many years, partly for the additives and partly because of the sodium. Roast your own almonds, it’s cheaper and better for you and it takes all of 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Read all labels. ALL. It takes more time at first but since we tend to buy the same things over time, you will learn quickly. And this means you won’t eat out often because restaurant food is loaded with bad stuff. We always have containers in our fridge with three different kinds of nuts, we have natural peanut butter, real (not low fat) cheese, etc. Lots of fruits and vegetables. Know which produce you should buy organic. Oatmeal is good if it’s not the processed stuff. Real food usually doesn’t need a label with 27 ingredients! If you want to get more educated, subscribe to Center For Science in the Public Interest’s publication “Nutrition Health Letter” They name brands that are and are not good, point out what things are “food porn,” and give specific information you can take to the grocery store. We’ve been interested in this topic since forever in our home. My husband makes our soups. We stopped eating very much store bread and he lost 5 pounds without doing anything different, and we were eating the healthiest whole wheat bread out there. CSPI is a nonprofit and accepts no advertising. They are a wonderful organization and almost single-handedly responsible for pressuring restaurant industry and food producers to disclose nutrition information.

This can be an evolving, life-long process. Learn as you go. We will make mistakes, just move on. Recently I had a craving for Campbell’s tomato soup made with water, not milk, which I used to love as a child. Within a few minutes of eating it I had a headache and was really sick. It had to be the soup. A cake mix would never come into our home and we would never eat jell-o, even though green jell-o is sort of the state dessert in Utah. Cottage cheese, yes, but we are careful which brands. Same with store yogurt. Crackers, only whole grain such as AkMak, Wasa, and like that. They are good!! You can develop a taste for these over time. It’s worth it, it’s no sacrifice, it’s a way of life and it will help you stay naturally thin when you eat high quality, healthy food. So what if it costs a little more? I consider it our “health insurance,” what we spend at the grocery.

Sure once in awhile I crave french fries, not very often, though. And many times it’s more of a craving “in my mind” then on my plate, and I’m satisfied with maybe 10 fries.  I will have pizza maybe once or twice a year and that’s plenty. I know that GMO’s have been in our food supply since about 1996 and it may be difficult to avoid them or even to know where they are, but if you eat more whole, clean food, you won’t have to worry. It’s good to spent the time to get this knowledge. It’s worth it to be healthy. It’s like exercise, after awhile, it’s just a habit, it’s what you do, and you miss it if you don’t do it. Maltodextrin is also in granola bars, also watch out for a fiber called inulin that is supposedly for diabetics. That the the other diabetic sweeteners can cause diarrhea. I also have a problem with calcium carbonate which is added to many cereals and even orange juice to up the calcium. Did you know that almond milk, and soy milk, the calcium comes from additive calcium carbonate? Same with those fiber cereals and with the orange juice. I never have juices in our home and our daughter-in-law never let’s our baby grandson have juices. Pure sugar. A big sugar load all at once can cause headaches and diarrhea in some people. You have to learn and know your own body.

Center for Science in the Public Interest says HFCS is no better or worse than fructose, honey, agave nectar, regular table sugar… they are all sweeteners and we get way too much of these in our diet and should cut back. This is all to go toward something good, not to “deprive” myself and have a “diet mentality” .. I eat this way because I know the results are worth it and I love the food I eat. The only time I crave and eat bad food is when I’m too hungry. My husband is also very healthy,has stayed the same weight ever since we were married, and we raised a healthy child who, at 38, looks better than his contemporaries. I’m proud of my little family. People say I look young for my age and I think I do. Thanks to Jean’s book, How to Become Naturally Thin by Eating More, I have the tools I needed to be the best I can be, for me. I’m not a size 6 anymore but I don’t need to be, I look great no matter what size my jeans are. It comes from the inside.

Merry Christmas everybody!

annual, you are right, who can you believe anymore?  It seems like the more I learn, the more I realize how hoodwinked I have been my whole life, in just about everything.  This world is so scary!  I’m trying to set my kids straight too, so they won’t be so gullible to fall for everything they hear.  I recently watched a documentary on YouTube called The Beautiful Truth.  Talks a lot about eating good healthy foods.  It is 1 and 1/2 hours long, and if I wasn’t so bewildered by the whole thing, I would have cried.

Noel, thanks for all of that valuable information!  I feel I am on the right path, not quite to the place where you are, but on my way!  My nut of choice is the cashew, but I pack almonds in my husband’s lunch for work and occasionally have a few of those as I make his lunch, so have noticed the ingredients on the package.  I will try roasting them myself to see how we like them.  About the cake mixes, I don’t routinely buy them, and only make cakes for birthdays in our house, and will usually make them from scratch.  However, nostalgia got the best of me back in August, as I noticed “Cherry Chip”  cake mixes on the shelve at my grocery store—my long lost favorite cake of my youth!  This is the cake my mother made me at ages 9, 10, 11 for my birthdays.  I had been telling my daughter about it over the years, and have not seen it in stores for years. So when we saw it on the shelf, all common sense flew out of our heads and we purchased 2 mixes!  So I made one for my birthday back in August, and as you can imagine, sweet, yet sickening, but kept eating it in hopes of recapturing a delightful moment of my past.  I’m sure cake mixes have evolved since then and probably have 75 more nasty things in them than they even had back in 1969.  So, I was stuck with the other mix and then noticed that maltodextrin was in it. Yep, read all labels!  My most recent discovery of maltodextrin has been in, get a load of this: my arm and hammer DEODORANT.  Why oh why must they put this in everything?  So it can seep into my bloodstream trans-dermally, in case I’m not taking in enough of it by mouth?  I’ve since tried concocting my own deodorant with baking soda and cornstarch, and dabbing it on with a cotton ball.  This works okay for me, but for my daughter- not so much.  She sweats more profusely than I do.  It seems to help with odor, but not so much with stopping wetness. Anyone have any suggestions for a natural deodorant + anti-antiperspirant? I have been making my own bread for about 2 months now, as my favorite store-bought bread for some reason is always out of stock when I shop.  I think this is a blessing in disguise. I don’t buy jello either, except it was on the “okay to eat” list from my doctor when I was prepping for my colonoscopy, as well as the product “Ensure Plus.”  Rather than a complete fast, I chose to eat whatever was on the list, and had some of these items leftover when I was doing my maltodextrin research.  Maltodextrin is the second ingredient listed on the Ensure Plus bottle, after water.  With products constantly having ingredients changed for their new and improved versions, Noel is right: we need to check every time we buy something.  Even our old “safe” favorites are subject to ingredient changes whenever manufacturers discover a cheaper ingredient to substitute for a costlier one.

I like how both Noel and Swan mentioned craving something nostalgic - french fries and cherry cake - and I have those too, but I find the craving isn’t satisfied the way I expect.  Probably because my tastes have changed (or the product has, as Swan pointed out with the cake mix) and so the pleasure I expect isn’t quite what I get.  Mostly I get a sense of eating chemicals!  I made a devil’s food cake from a box the other day, but put a homemade icing on it, and I really didn’t care for the cake, but I liked the icing.  Maybe because there were no chemicals in it!

I’ve said before that this NT stuff is a progressive revelation, and eating more real food and less manufactured food is just another step.  Not that I ate that much to begin with, but now I really notice a difference in the taste of manufactured food vs real food.

I watched that YouTube video…ugh.  I also watched Food, Inc. last week…double ugh.  I don’t think I’ll become vegan (or have a coffee enema!), but I can certainly keep moving toward that end of the spectrum.  I made a chicken pot pie from scratch last week - even the pie crust was scratch - and served it with some organic butternut squash I had grown in my garden.  Now THAT’S getting real!  I suppose if I had raised the chicken myself I could get more points, but one step at a time.

Thanks for batting this around with me, ladies!  It’s been very (a little too!) informative!!  (I say a little too, because once you understand the truth of something, you become aware of having to make a choice, and change is hard!)

I would have a really hard time becoming a vegan too annual, as I love meat and my body seems to want it a lot.  However, the minute I feel that there is something really wrong with it, like if or when I uncover more truth about animals/hormones/antibiotics and who knows what else, and that eating them is more detrimental to my health than not eating them, I will change my tune on a dime.  I have nothing against eating meat. It’s yummy.  But I do have something against eating it if it does more harm than good.  I’m a little afraid of what I might learn.  There’s a new farm nearby that I’m going to have to explore, it sounds good, but will have to check it out.  They say they raise only grass-fed cows.  I’m definitely willing to pay the price if need be.

Ha ha, I’m not running out to get a coffee enema anytime soon either! But, I have to say, it sounds a lot more natural to the body than chemotherapy does.  I’ve heard chemotherapy described as throwing a bomb on a large city and expecting it to kill only the bad people.  In that regard, if I had to make the choice, that coffee concoction starts sounding better all the time.

I forgot to throw this in my last post.  When I was on my witch hunt for things with maltodextrin in them in my house, this one threw me right over the edge:  I found it in my daily multi-vitamin.  Come on!!!  I wanted vitamins, not vitamins mixed with that nasty stuff!  Guess what?  I know longer take vitamins.  I’m going make it a point to get every thing I need from the high quality foods I eat.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I’ve eaten only organic foods with the least ingredients listed for over ten years. Most of my weight gain came after I began organic, non GMO, best of the best healthy foods. I’m just saying. Merry Christmas everyone.

Kelcy, thanks for saying that!  Now I can dispense with the notion that eating strictly organic is the missing ingredient in my becoming NT.  Do you notice any effects if you eat something crazy like a cake from a mix or a fast food burger?

Yes actually I do. I get stomachache, usually rather severe.

Hi ladies, I’m not vegetarian either. I tried it for about six months, maybe around the time before I found Jean, and I just could not do it, I love chicken, fish (salmon/tuna), turkey, beef only once in awhile, love bison and we can get it here in restaurants. However, I do have smaller portions of these foods now than I used to. When buying salmon fillets, I will get a 5 oz portion. If we make meat loaf, we use turkey breast or bison and I have one slice. We can also get free range eggs for $3/dozen, of course we live out in the country. I forgot to say that we always have brown rice in our fridge and other grains. Swan, you’re going to love toasted almonds without salt! I used to bake our bread but I found we were eating too much of it to the detriment of variety in our choices. Bread bread bread even healthy bread is not a good thing.

I didn’t know why maltodextrin would be in deodorant, that’s crazy. I don’t read labels on those products, except mouthwash, now I’ll probably have to look at my toothpaste. Really, I’m not going to get quite that picky. When the tomato soup gave me the headache, I was disappointed because I WAS looking for the childhood memory. Well said. Just going organic or vegetarian will not get you lean and healthy. You must have the “eat on time” and the “eat enough but not too much” mentality. Also variety. Can’t eat the same foods all the time, even healthy foods. The body craves variety. This is where I have my downfall. I like to eat the same things over and over.

I’m not saying I never eat a dessert or a piece of birthday cake or a dish of ice cream. Just that they don’t really hold the allure they once did. That is both good and bad. Good because it means I eat healthier food and bad because I’m disappointed I not longer get that great “high” from loving the particular food. My husband made me his famous chocolate layer cake from scratch and the icing from scratch and I only ate one small piece and gave the rest of the cake away. Neither one of us needs it or wants it around.

Kelcy, I sure wish we could discern why you haven’t lost the weight. It is a puzzlement, that’s for sure. Swan, I don’t take vitamins at all, except Vitamin D, ever since I read that it is not necessary and a waste of money (Center For Science in the Public Interest/Nutrition Action Health Letter).

I have salt cravings really bad if I cut down too much on that, and I get headaches and shaky from going too low on salt. I have low blood pressure, I guess my body is telling me something. My doctor has told me salting my food is not a problem for me. And since we don’t do much processed food, we’re not getting the salt additive from the manufacturer.

Change is challenging but take it one thing at a time, not all at once and it is easier. Start with the easier changes, then work up from there. Annual, thanks, this is a good topic.

You all have a Merry Christmas. We have no snow where I live for the first time since five years I’ve been here.

No snow in Utah?  That’s just wrong!

I’m so thrilled and fascinated that we’re all learning the same things, although some got to the party earlier than others.  After reading Swan’s comment about maltodextrin in vitamins I checked the acidophilus I had been taking and bingo!  There it is.  And I realized the only supplement I had actually been instructed to take was a vitamin D - same as Noel!  And I HAD noticed headaches when I took the other stuff, so out they go.  All this accumulated wisdom has been sooooooo helpful!!!

And the cake story!  I really enjoy baking, but the same thing happens to me:  I want one piece and I’m done.  Fortunately, my big strong husband can take care of the rest.

And the advice to change things a bit at a time is spot on.  You chicks are AWESOME.  Have a great weekend, everybody!

annual, how funny to be called “chicks” because I’m making a Buggy Barn quilt called “Barn Chicks.” I’d rather quilt than cook. I’d rather quilt than eat. It’s a nagging annoyance when i have to stop and go downstairs for food. I’ve been quilting every day since last Saturday when I got off babysitting duty and I’m on my third quilt top. It is so much fun. I haven’t even wrapped Christmas presents yet.

Here’s a cake story. A friend who was in a diet group with me back in the day had a birthday party and received two yummy homemade chocolate cakes. We shared one cake and the second one she took it to the park and left it on a picnic table, went back to her car and waited out of sight. Soon a homeless person came by and, looked all around, and with a big wide grin, took the cake and left with it! Imagine finding a birthday cake!!

I love quilting, too!  Unfortunately, the Need Parade doesn’t slow down much at my house, so it takes me forever to get one finished.  I hand quilt, so I can pick it up and do a few stitches anytime!

LOVE the cake story.  What a blessing that must have been!

I just made a pot roast that’s been marinating for three days (YUM) so I must go eat supper now.  Merry Christmas, friends!

I’d like to thank Jean for this Forum and to end this thread with a Swedish proverb:

Fear less, hope more;
Eat less, chew more;
Whine less, breathe more;
Talk less, say more;
Love more, and all good things will be yours.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, whatever you are celebrating! Noel!