FoodFacts.com is always looking for information that will enrich and enlighten the lives of all our community members. So when we saw this important information for women we knew we needed to post about it here.

A new Swedish study published just yesterday is showing that diets rich in antioxidants from fruits, vegetables and whole grains appear to reduce a woman’s risk for stroke — even if she has a prior history of heart disease. The study involved more than 31,000 women with no history of heart disease and almost 5700 women who had a history of heart disease. All the women involved were between the ages of 49 and 83 and they were followed for eleven and a half years (those with no heart-disease history) and almost 10 years (history of heart disease).

During the study period, more than 1300 of the women in the disease-free group had strokes and more than 1000 in the group with a heart-disease history also suffered them. Each woman’s dietary information was used to determine her individual “total antioxidant capacity” or TAC.

In the heart-disease free group, the women with the highest levels of diet-based antioxidants had a 17 percent lower risk of stroke than those with the lowest levels. But most impressively, it was found that the benefits of antioxidant-rich diets were extended to the group with a history of heart disease. Within this group, women with higher levels of dietary antioxidant capacity had up to a 57 percent lower risk of stroke compared to those with the lowest levels.

Researchers found that fruits and vegetables contributed about 50% of the antioxidant capacity in women with a disease-free history. Of course the study also showed that the women who had the highest levels of antioxidants in both groups were also women who adhered to healthier lifestyles extending beyond their regular diets to include regular exercise and avoidance of smoking.

Of course, we at FoodFacts.com always knew there was a good reason our mothers always told us to eat our vegetables. This new Swedish research simply confirms they were right all along.

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Foodfacts antioxidants, Uncategorized, women's health antioxidants, food facts, fruits, nutrition data, nutrition facts, vegetables

FoodFacts.com knows that many in our community have strong opinions regarding the fast food industry and how it affects our children’s health. We knew the following information would be valuable as you continue to make healthy food choices for yourselves and your families.

Beginning today, McDonald’s and other fast food chains in San Francisco will, by law, have to stop giving  toys away with their children’s meals. The city of San Francisco begins today to enforce the ordinance that prohibits including toys in any children’s meal that contains more than 600 calories, doesn’t include a fruit and vegetable or does include a sugary drink. We’re read a lot of conflicting opinions about these new requirements on fast food restaurants like McDonald’s — everything from fast food chains shouldn’t be patronized by adults, let alone children, ever … not even as a treat, to it’s the responsibility of parents and not the government to determine what their children consume and there should be no laws or requirements that restrict the habits of the public.

But, what if McDonald’s and other chains like it actually found a way to comply with the new law and basically give away the toys anyway? Are they doing something wrong? Are they being a smart business organization? Are they morally bankrupt? Or are they upholding the rights of people to decide for their children’s diet themselves, without government interference?

These are interesting questions, and we’ll all have to form opinions, because that’s exactly what the 19 McDonald’s restaurants in San Francisco have done. That’s right, they’re complying with the law, and anyone ordering a happy meal who wants a toy will now have to pay for it.

You might think that’s a deterrent to a child getting the happy meal to begin with.

Think again. The toy will only cost .10. And, in addition, that .10 will go directly to the Ronald McDonald House. Do you think that might be specifically designed to make the parents spending those ten pennies feel better about their kids eating all those greasy, fried, and sometimes strange ingredients?

But McDonald’s is not breaking the law. So now, by law, McDonald’s doesn’t need to make sure its kids’ meals contain less than 600 calories, include fruits and vegetables and don’t include any sugary drinks. That’s because, in reality, the consumer is paying for the toy … even if it costs a dime and that dime is being donated to the Ronald McDonald House charity.

So, for McDonalds anyway, all’s right with the world (or at least with San Francisco) … they comply with the law, they don’t have to change the ingredients in their children’s menu, Ronald McDonald House charities makes some money and the kids get the toys they wanted in the first place. Legislators heads may very well be spinning right now, because this is not the way things were supposed to unfold.

But, is everything alright for our children?

FoodFacts.com would like to get our community’s opinions on this very important subject. Do you think it’s o.k. for the fast food industry to market to children with toys (even if you have to pay .10 for them)? Or do you think that perhaps children’s meals don’t belong at McDonalds or Burger King or any other fast food establishment. After all, maybe if they weren’t there at all,  future generations of adults would be far better off in the long run.

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Foodfacts Uncategorized fast food, food facts, Happy meal, McDonald's, nutrition data, nutrition facts, nutritional information

A while back, FoodFacts.com ran a blog post regarding a report that Dr. Oz released regarding arsenic and its presence in apple juice in amounts that could be potentially dangerous to humans. If you remember, the FDA took to the media to fight back against Dr. Oz’s findings. They claimed that organic arsenic is naturally in our air, water, organic soil, and inorganic soil. They claim that Dr. Oz measured for the total level of arsenic, rather than inorganic vs. organic levels of arsenic. Inorganic arsenic is the type which is likely to cause harmful effects. Dr. Oz’s study did not separate out measurements of inorganic and organic arsenic. The FDA said that it was organic arsenic which that was seen in the study. According to the FDA that would make the arsenic in apple juice inconsequential and Dr. Oz’s study just as inconsequential. (As a note, there are a variety of conflicting opinions about the actual safety of organic arsenic.)

Consumer Reports, however has just released its own study showing that the apple and grape juice our kids may be drinking can, in fact have arsenic levels high enough to increase their risk of cancer and other chronic diseases. In fact, a full 10 percent of the juices tested by the magazine had arsenic levels higher than what is allowed in water by the FDA. The findings in this new report echo the study commissioned by Dr. Mehmet Oz in September of 2011. The FDA was not happy with Dr. Oz’s findings and deemed the study “extremely irresponsible”. Sorry, FDA … but it doesn’t look as though Dr. Oz was the extremely irresponsible party here, at least not at this juncture.

The Consumer Reports study tested 88 samples of 28 apple and 3 grape juices sold around the nation. Included in the test were the popular brands like Minute Maid, Welch’s and Tropicana. Five samples of apple juice and four of grape juice had total arsenic levels exceeding the 10 parts per billion (ppb) federal limit for bottled and drinking water. That brands of juice with at least one sample testing above the 10 ppb mark were Apple & Eve, Great Value, Mott’s, Walgreens and Welch’s.

The brands that scored the lowest arsenic levels were: Welch’s Pourable Concentrate 100% Apple Juice, America’s Choice Apple Juice, Tropicana 100% Apple Juice and Red Jacket Orchards 100% Apple Juice.

Most of the arsenic found in the samples was inorganic (that would be the kind of arsenic universally acknowledged as dangerous). It’s worth noting that although FDA guidelines for water are no more than 10 ppb of inorganic arsenic, the agency standard for juices is higher, at 23 ppb. The level is allowed to be higher because they have assumed that people will consume more water than juice in the course of a normal day. That’s a reasonable assumption — for adults.

Consumer Reports also tested the samples for lead. The results were similar to arsenic. Using the threshold for lead for bottled water, since there is no standard for juice, research revealed that about 25% of the samples had elevated levels of lead (more than 5 ppb).

Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports has called on the FDA to set arsenic and lead standards for apple and grape juice. It is recommending 5 ppb for lead and 3 ppb for arsenic and has cited evidence that long-term exposure to arsenic and lead can lead to serious health problems including lung, bladder and skin cancer, increased risks of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

Seems as though Dr. Oz knew what he was talking about back in September. It’s unfortunate the FDA assumed otherwise.

FoodFacts.com will stay on top of this issue and keep you posted as to whether there is any movement by the FDA to change its current standards. We hope they can acknowledge that the majority of apple juice and grape juice in our food supply is, in fact, being consumed by children. We need to understand that one of our most serious responsibilities as a civilized nation is the safety of our kids.

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Foodfacts Uncategorized apple juice, arsenic, FDA, food facts, Grape Juice, Lead, nutrition facts

FoodFacts.com understands that there are many members of our community especially concerned with avoiding GMO foods and any food products that may contain GMO ingredients. Since there are no labeling requirements for GMOs, it can become difficult to figure out what products you may want to avoid.

So we’ve done some hunting for you and we’ve come up with a list of ingredients that may, in fact, contain hidden GMOs. While we can’t tell you that every time you see one of these ingredients in a food product’s list that it is GMO, we can tell you that unless the product is certified organic or has declared that it is non-GMO that it MAY be. It’s up to each of us individually to determine what we want to avoid in terms of food consumption. So here’s the list:

Aspartame
Baking powder
Bee pollen
Caramel color
Cellulose
Citric Acid
Cobalamin
Corn Gluten
Corn Masa
Corn Oil
Corn Syrup
Cornmeal
Cornstarch
Cyclodextrin
Cystein
Dextrin
Dextrose
Diacetyl
Diglyceride
Fructose
Glucose
Glutamate
Glutamic Acid
Gluten
Glycerides
Glycerin
Glycerol
Glycerol monooleate
Glycine
Hemicellulose
High Fructose Corn Syrup
Hydrogenated starch hydrolates
Hydrolyzed vegetable protein
Inositol
Invert sugar
Inverse syrup
Isoflavones
Lactic acid
Lecithin
Lysine
Malitol
Maltodextrin
Maltose
Mannitol
Methylcellulose
Milo starch
Modified starch
Monosodium Glutamate
Oleic acid
Phenylalanine
Phytic Acid
Sorbitol
Soy flour
Soy isolates
Soy lecithin
Soy protein
Starch
Stearic acid
Tamari
Tempeh
Threonine
Tocopherols
Tofu
Trehalose
Trehalose
Triglyceride
Vegetable oil
Xanthan gum

FoodFacts.com makes every effort to provide you with information on the issues that are most important to our community. These food ingredients, which may contain GM soy, corn, cotton or canola, may be ingredients you want to keep your eye out for when shopping. If you know of any others we can add to this list, please let us know, so that we can update it and our community as we extend our knowledge.

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Foodfacts Uncategorized food facts, genetically modified organisms, GMO, nutrition data, nutrition facts, nutritional information

There’s been a lot of talk about BPA recently, and FoodFacts.com has been staying on top of the news. We know this is an important issue for our community and wanted to make sure you had the latest information.

A new study compared the urine of people who consumed canned soup to the urine of people who consumed freshly made soup for the presence of BPA. BAP (bishpenol A) has been linked to many health problems including heart disease, diabetes and obesity. It turned out that the group of people involved in the study who consumed just one serving of canned soup once per day for five days showed a 1000% increase in urinary BPA over those people who consumed freshly made soup.

According to CBSnews.com, the author of the study, Jenny Carwile, a doctoral student at Harvard School of Public health said in a written statement, “We’ve known for a while that drinking beverages that have been stored in certain hard plastics can increase the amount of BPA in your body. This study suggests that canned foods may be an even greater concern, especially given their wide use.”

The researchers noted that the high levels of BPA might be transient and called for more research – but said that the time may have come to get BPA out of cans. As study author Karin Michels, associate professor in the school’s department of epidemiology, put it in the statement, “It may be advisable for manufacturers to consider eliminating BPA from can linings.”

The study used Progresso brand soups, but researchers explained that it wasn’t about the brand, it was about the cans. A spokesman for General Mills, the company that makes Progresso soups, did not agree with the findings of the study.

“Scientific and governmental bodies worldwide have examined the science and concluded that the weight of evidence support the safety of BPA, including comprehensive risk assessments in Japan and in the European Union,” Kirstie Foster, told Bloomberg Businessweek in an email. Jeff Stier, a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, stated that the study “does nothing to substantiate claims that trace levels of BPA – even from daily canned soup consumption – have any effect on health.”

The study was published online Nov. 21 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

We knew that members of the FoodFacts.com community would want to read and share this information, even if the findings are, thus far, inconclusive. We know that an educated consumer will make the best choices for the diet and health of their families. Please let us know your opinions on this controversial topic.

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Foodfacts Uncategorized bpa, food safety, nutrition data, nutrition facts, nutritional information

FoodFacts.com understands that many in our community are actively trying to avoid consuming GMO products. While many understand what that entails, we are aware that there are some who are still unsure of what food products to stay away from in order to stay GMO-free. Here’s a brief run down of some of the food products you might want to avoid if you’d like to steer clear of GMO consumption.

1. The best way to avoid GMO products is to purchase USDA Certified Organic
Products. This federally regulated product label specifically prohibits the use of
genetically modified ingredients.

2. Soybean products made from U.S. grown soybeans are, most likely, GMO. It’s estimated that 94% of U.S. soybeans are genetically modified. There are a whole host of products that contain soy. We can start that list for you with tofu, soy sauce, soy milk, cereals, veggie burgers, veggie sausages, chips, cookies and frozen yogurt are just a few of the food product categories where soy can be found. Check the labels for soy as an ingredient.

3. Corn and products made with corn are also mostly GMO. Roughly 88% of all corn is genetically modified. And corn is an extremely popular ingredient in foods. For instance, high-fructose corn syrup is found in tens of thousands of products. Sodas, candies, ice cream, infant formulas, salad dressings, breads, cereals, and margarines are just the beginning. Avoid using corn oil, corn flour and corn starch as ingredients in your home cooking, as well.

4. Beet Sugar is a tricky food ingredient you’ll want to be careful about avoiding. It’s tricky because most products using it simply list sugar in their ingredients. Unless an ingredient list specifies “cane sugar”, the product most likely contains a combination of beet sugar and cane sugar. Its is estimated that up to 90% of sugar beets are genetically modified. So unless you read cane sugar on the ingredient list, it would be safe to assume that the product is GMO.

5. You might also want to be careful about your milk, egg, and cheese consumption as well. Although these products themselves have no GMO ingredients, the feed ingested by the cows and chickens may have been GMO. There’s currently no way of knowing. However, livestock eat a lot of corn. If you are serious about avoiding GMO products, organic would be the way to go here too.

These are just a few things that you can actively do to avoid GMO foods in your diet. FoodFacts.com wants to make sure our community remains educated and curious about the nutritional issues facing our country today. The more we know, the more we can do to keep our diets safe and healthy.

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Foodfacts Uncategorized food facts, Genetically Engineered, Genetically Modifided Organisms, GMO, nutrition facts, nutritional information

FoodFacts.com just came across this information reported by the Associated Press. Congress is pushing back against the Obama Administration’s efforts to take unhealthy foods out of schools.

As reported by Mary Clare Jalonick, the final version of a spending bill released late Monday would “dumb down” school lunch standards that were proposed earlier this year. Importantly, these standards included limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch menu, while putting new restrictions on sodium and boosting the use of whole grains. This latest legislation would block or delay all those efforts.

The bill also seeks to allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable. Currently the USDA wants to count a half-cup or more of tomato paste as a vegetable. One serving of pizza has less than that. It is a throw back to the Reagan administration’s failed attempt to classify ketch as a vegetable in schools. Today, however, it seems that frozen pizza manufacturers, the salt industry and potato growers have been lobbying congress to make the changes that will make them happy. The school meals that are subsidized by the federal government have to include a certain amount of vegetables. The fear has been that the USDA’s proposals could have pushed pizza and potatoes out of the school lunch business.

Some school districts have acknowledged that some of the USDA proposals do cost too much at a time when budgets are stretched to their limits. The school lunch proposal is based on 2009 recommendations by the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences. It is felt that these proposals would help to reduce childhood obesity and lower future health care costs. The USDA has clearly spoken out against these congressional efforts and will continue to work to make school lunches healthier, saying this was a clear case of putting political interests ahead of American children. Congress’s changes would probably result in restricting schools from serving a wider array of vegetables. Pizza and potatoes abound on school lunch menus. In making sure these things remain untouched in the proposal, congress is blocking the limiting of starchy vegetables to two servings each week. Many schools serve starchy vegetables daily.

FoodFacts.com will continue to follow this story for our community. But we’d like to send a message to Congress: two tablespoons of tomato paste is not a serving of vegetables.

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Foodfacts School lunch ban, schools, Uncategorized food facts, nutrition data, nutrition facts, nutritional information

FoodFacts.com feels strongly that part of our mission is to bring our community information on how they can add their voices to the causes that are meaningful to our health and well-being.

BPA (bisphenol-A) is a chemical used to line the cans that contain a myriad of different food products. It is linked to various cancers, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, early onset puberty and a host of other problems. And notably, many of the products whose cans contain BPA are meant for consumption by children. Spaghetti-O’s, Goldfish Pasta Soup, Spongebob Squarepants Soup are just a few of the products packaged in BPA-containing cans. We’ve covered BPA in previous blog posts.

While you can’t plug BPA or bisphenol-A into the FoodFacts.com database because it isn’t technically a food ingredient, it is leaching out into the food supply. You can check out this article at Huffington Post for more details.

But now we want to ask our community to do their part to convince a major food manufacturer that it’s time to move away from BPA.

Currently www.change.org is featuring a petition targeted to the Campbell’s Soup Company. Campbell’s produces a myriad of products created and marketed to appeal to children — in addition to a host of other canned foods. Follow this link http://www.change.org/petitions/campbells-stop-endangering-kids-health and include your voice in this important petition to send a message to the Campbell’s Soup Company to get the BPA out of their cans.

Follow the link, join the petition, and share this blog post. Let’s help this major manufacturer see the importance of this issue and how it affects children today and for generations to come.

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Foodfacts bpa, Uncategorized bpa, food safety, nutrition data, nutrition facts, nutritional information

Everyday, FoodFacts.com adds a plethora of different foods to our database. We post about various food products and ingredients on our Facebook page. We deliver information that encourages people to get to know what they’re actually eating that they can’t see. And, of course, we read labels ourselves. And it makes us wonder …

The first thing anyone looks at on food packaging is the nutrition label. We all know what they look like:

And we are all familiar with what they list out: Calories, Total Fat, Saturated Fat, Trans Fat, Cholesterol, Sodium, Total Carbohydrates, Dietary Fiber, Sugars, Protein, Vitamins and minerals. And for the most part, as a society, these are the things we worry about.

Maybe we don’t worry enough about the product’s ingredient list. Maybe we should consider that if a product’s ingredient list is so long that it takes up a good portion of the package, that it might outweigh the fact that the product is low in calories, fats and sugars and high in fiber and protein. Do we determine what’s healthy by the Nutrition Facts label or do we determine what’s healthy by the ingredient list carried on the product? And finally, how do we determine what makes more sense — eating foods with ingredient lists that we can pronounce and understand or eating foods whose calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbs and proteins fall within the prescribed requirements?

FoodFacts.com understands that the nutrition label is, of course, extremely important. But we don’t think that all consumers understand that it’s not the only important thing to consider when making a food purchase. Too many of us rely on convenience products that we believe are healthy for us, without ever considering that ingredient list. Sure, that diet frozen dinner is low in calories and fat, with an acceptable amount of sodium and it’s only going to take 10 minutes to heat up in the microwave. But, go ahead and try to decipher what some of the ingredients are that are listed on the box. And that bowl of microwave popcorn that took just minutes to prepare without any oil or having to wash out any pans involved in preparing it? There’s a good possibility you can’t pronounce more than a few of the ingredients on the package it came from.

While we’re all rightfully concerned about the nutrition labels, we need to commit ourselves to being equally concerned about ingredient lists. We need to be alert to ingredients in food like BHT, BHA, MSG, Polysorbate 80, Sodium Bisulfite, Ethoxyquin, Benzoyl Peroxide, Potassium Bromate and hundreds of others that are not only potentially harmful in our food supply, but have actually been banned for use in other countries.

FoodFacts.com wants everyone in our community to be the most informed food consumers possible. And we want you to make the choices that are right for you and your family. So we’d like to make sure that the next time you’re in a grocery store with a product in your hand looking for the nutrition label that you pay close attention to the ingredient list and appreciate the information it’s giving you. You might be surprised as to how quickly you put the box down and go find the real, natural ingredients out of which you can create a comparable dish that contains products you can understand, pronounce and have no chance of being banned anywhere.

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Foodfacts controversial, controversial food additives, controversial ingredients, nutrition facts label, nutrition labeling, Uncategorized controversial ingredients, Foodfacts, nutrition labels

FoodFacts.com is constantly fascinated by the changing lenses through which particular foods are viewed. Do you remember back in the 90’s when the “no-fat” craze had us turning to completely fat-free products, thinking they were good for us. Did anyone, during that time, stop to think what was replacing the fats in fat-free cheeses or fat-free mayonnaise? Caffeine was frowned upon. And chocolate was really just candy.

It’s amazing what a difference a decade can make! Let’s take a look at a few foods whose bad reputations have turned around.

Eggs
Just a few decades ago, eating whole eggs was considered one of the unhealthiest things you could do. Products like Egg Beaters, and other egg substitutes came to the rescue for egg lovers everywhere. You could order egg white omelets at the diner; you would mix up a turkey meatloaf with egg whites and discard the yolks and angel food cake had a resurgence of popularity because whole eggs were just bad for you. The confusion over eggs stems from their cholesterol content. One large egg contains 213 mg of cholesterol, accounting for two-thirds of the recommended daily limit. When scientists learned that high blood cholesterol was associated with heart disease, foods high in cholesterol logically became suspect. But after 25 years of study, it has become evident that cholesterol in food is not the culprit — saturated fat has a much bigger effect on blood cholesterol. And one egg contains about 1.6 grams of saturated fat. In 2000, the American Heart Association (AHA) revised its dietary guidelines and gave healthy adults the green light to enjoy eggs once again. The AHA’s guidelines now allow an egg a day for healthy adults while still advising a total daily cholesterol limit of 300 mg.

Coffee
Twenty years ago, caffeine was questionable. Is it good for you? Is it bad for you? Coffee houses were becoming increasingly popular and offering up brews of varying caffeination all over. The trend was to try to avoid it. But not so much today. Recently a new study found that coffee may be linked to the prevention of basal cell carcinoma. And it was linked to the caffeine directly, as those drinking decaf coffee did not experience the same decrease in risk as those drinking caffeinated coffee.

Chocolate
While it will never be true that chocolate can be included in any of the major food groups, it’s becoming widely recognized as having important health effects for those who consume it. A few months ago, research out of Great Britain reviewed seven different studies done on the health benefits of chocolate. For heart health, the studies revealed significant benefits for chocolate. It possesses antioxidant, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory, anti-atherogenic and anti-thrombotic effects. It’s certainly not advisable to overdo, but a little chocolate is actually good for you.

Things are always changing. We’re always learning more. And sciences are always advancing. The foods we eat can’t be left out of those statements. So FoodFacts.com will always try to bring out the latest information as things continue to change.

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Foodfacts cholesterol, Uncategorized caffeine, chocolate, cholesterol, coffee, eggs, nutrition, saturated fat