The Goods Are Odd

Two products have recently fallen out of favor in our house due to their being less “real” that we had previously thought. By real I just mean whole and tested through long term human consumption (think centuries). There are clearly some product that don’t fit this description that I still occasionally buy or eat- like gummy bears or cliff bars. But the following two products got the boot because they marketed as whole foods and there are plenty of alternatives that are just as satisfying.

The first was a goodbye to Nancy’s whole milk yogurt. (sigh) I love Ken Kesey, I love Oregon, I love their containers. What I don’t love   is explained in the letter below that I sent through their website. I’ll let you know if I get a response.

Unless they can prove some careful way of preparing their powdered milk I will stick to Straus, which uses just whole milk and cultures.

Dear Nancy’s,

I am confused about discrepancy between the statements on your whole-milk products and your website which denounce the use of thickeners and your ingredient list which has non-fat milk powder as an additional ingredient to whole milk and cultures.

After years of eating your yogurt I have now switched to Straus Yogurt, who has nothing in their whole milk yogurt but whole milk. I eat whole-fat products because we need the fat to absorb the calcium and other nutrients and because low-fat products are processed foods which I stay away from. A main ingredient of low-fat foods I am interested in avoiding is powdered milk, used often to add body and flavor to a depleted product. Milk should not be subject to high heat as it damages the fats. As explained by Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food “powered milk contains oxidized cholesterol, which scientists believe is much worse for your arteries than ordinary cholesterol.”

So, why on earth do you add powdered milk to your whole milk products? And even more confounding, why do you say in multiple places that you only use “pure milk” or that “Because we take the extra time to fully culture our products, they are naturally thick and creamy. We never add ingredients that are meant to stabilise or thicken dairy products.” While non-fat milk powder isn’t artificial, it is still a processed food that hardly qualifies as pure. You may be following the letter of your statements but not the spirit.

I have shared the switch to Straus yogurt on my food blog, www.mindtomouth.org, and would welcome your comments if you care to explain the reason that you use non-fat milk powder and whether or not you have an explanation as why its use is consistent with your statements about not adding thickeners and only using pure milk.

Regards,

Sage

Okay, the second one is tricky, and honestly I don’t feel like I’ve gotten enough good information to make a really informed decision about the use of this product. But I feel like the lack of consistent information is what has made me decide to just avoid it.

I was attracted to agave because it is cheaper than maple syrup and, honestly, I was being well-marketed to. Lots of natural processed foods had agave on the label and that made them easier to buy (like ketchup or cookies). I was eating it on waffles and yogurt (Nancy’s whole milk at that point…).

The Weston A Price foundation recently published a piece about agave in their journal that explained agave’s high fructose levels as just as detrimental to the body as the High Fructose Corn Syrup. Both were explained as subject to industrial processing and should be avoided. You can see that report here (its a pdf).

But I don’t like to just follow WAPF blindly, and after looking into the brand I bought (Madhava) it seemed like there might be two different products, the syrup from the Blue Agave, same as tequila, and the syrup from the Salmiana agave, and two different processing methods, Blue agave using heat and possibly chemicals to extract the syrup and the Salmiana syrup is apparently processed using ” gentle enzymatic action”.

So the controversy actually gets a bit weird and comes down to two or three people with known and unknown special interests. There is not a lot of neutral information about agave and quotes from various sources (health blogs etc) about its production seem too come back to the same two sources (see articles below). The biggest problem I couldn’t solve is whether or not agave contains starch. That seems like a pretty straight forward inquiry.

Natural News published two articles that cover the question of the quality and healthfulness of the syrup (everyone agrees that it is not a traditional sweetener as the process for extraction was developed in the 90’s, and I think this is ultimately why WAPF is opposed).

One, the anti-agave side, is written by Rami Nagel and based on information largely from this guy Russ Bianchi (who has some company, adept solution inc. that has no website…). Nagel was the co-author on the WAPF article which is also dependent on a good deal of information about  agave processing from Bianchi. (It was a bit frustrating to see a lack of more rigorous fact-finding on the part of WAPF who I depend on for reliable information, just goes to show to always check out multiple sources).

The other article is a rebuttal to Nagel’s piece written by the owner of Madhava. He seems to know Bianchi personally and have some negative feelings about the problems Bianchi’s opinions about agave has caused to the industry. His information is convincing, but vague- things like “enzymatic processes” are not explained in a functional way, so it leads me to feel there is more marketing involved than education.

At this point the whole thing became too much. I tried to parse out whether or not what I had been dripping on waffles was really going to hurt me, which seemed to come down how bad high level of fructose are for you, which seemed to come down to starch. Again, this could not be verified as there was too much conflicting information. The most consistent info did seem to come down in favor of agave, particularly on the glycemic index measure (which I think is misleading because it only looks at glucose, not fructose). I decided that just on the basis of it being a new process and a weird three-guy controversy I was just going to avoid it. (Not to mention the politics involved, and use of indigenous land and labor…)

Ultimately, I decided to put my mouth in charge and when I really really tasted the agave it just seemed a bit too intense. So raw honey and maple syrup it is. There is a positive side to these good sweeteners being expensive- forced moderation. I think that the taste-test is the ultimate lesson because many foods, not just agave, are mired in controversy (traditional fats for one) and it just doesn’t seem worth precious time to get caught up in the back and forth on the ever un-verifiable internet. I know that Straus tastes better than Nancy’s and Agave tastes processed and super sweet.

I think having good information about a product provides us with a much needed limit in choice when it comes to packaged food, but just a quick glance at the back of a product is revealing- if you need to research it, it is probably best avoided.