喜悦身心养成记9: 拒吃有毒酸奶

曾经以为酸奶有益于健康，原来市售的大部分酸奶也是垃圾食品。

以下英文资料来自FOODBABE.COM

The Cornucopia Institute just came out with a very revealing report (an investigation that took 2 years!) about what’s in yogurt, and how giant food corporations, led by General Mills (Yoplait), Groupe Danone (Dannon), Walmart, and PepsiCo are saturating the market with less nutritious yogurt. Conventional yogurt usually comes from milk produced by cows that are confined and unable to graze in open pasture. They’re usually fed GMO grains, not grass. As the yogurt ferments, chemical defoamers are sometimes added. Then high doses of artificial sweeteners, sugar, or high fructose corn syrup are sometimes added too. That’s not all: colors, preservatives, and gut-harmful carrageenan can be dumped in.

喜悦身心养成记9: 拒吃有毒酸奶

甚至一些有毒的配方都没有标注出来:

Surprising Things That Can Be In Yogurt:

HFCS-90 – This variation of high fructose corn syrup contains way more fructose than regular high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). When HFCS-90 is used, the ingredient label won’t indicate that high fructose corn syrup is an ingredient, rather it can be deceptively listed as simply “fructose” or “fructose syrup” without any reference to corn syrup. Regular HFCS contains up to 55% fructose, whereas HFCS-90 has 90% fructose by weight. That’s 9 times more fructose than the average fruit! An overload of fructose in the diet isn’t healthy because diets that are high in fructose are associated with obesity and cardiovascular disease. HFCS-90 is derived from corn starch, which is likely GMO. It’s totally misleading when companies say that fructose is natural and comes from fruit, when it’s a processed additive typically derived from GMO corn.

Neosugar – This is a highly processed form of sugar made by hydrolyzing liquid GMO sugar beets or sugar cane. It’s so heavily processed that your body can’t digest it and it just passes through you like a fiber. It’s also marketed as a prebiotic, but there isn’t much evidence out there that neosugar is more beneficial than real food and it appears to just be a marketing ploy. Natural prebiotics are found naturally in raw fruits and vegetables. According to Dr. Michael Blaut, “It is questionable whether a wholesome diet rich in fruit and vegetables needs to be supplemented with prebiotics for optimal health effects”. Some names used by industry for neosugar are “Nutraflora” and “Fructan”, which is how you may see it listed on the ingredient label. Beware that neosugar is allowed in organic yogurt. Thankfully, the only organic company that is currently known to use neosugar is Horizon, so it’s pretty easy to avoid.

Dimethylpolysiloxane – You’ve heard me refer to this chemical in the past as the silly putty ingredient that’s widely used as a defoamer in oil fryers at restaurants, and famously used in McDonalds french fries and soda fountains. Turns out that it can also be used during the processing of yogurt – and it’s not labeled, even if residues remain in the final product. One of the biggest issues I’ve got with dimethylpolysiloxane is that the FDA allows it to be preserved with formaldehyde, one of the most highly toxic substances on earth. As Cornucopia highlights in their report, most of the safety studies that have been done on dimethylpolysiloxane were conducted or paid for by the chemical companies, and not enough independent research has been done. Every yogurt company I called – Dannon, Chobani, Zoi, Greek Gods – emphatically denied that they use any anti-foaming chemicals, except for one. Yoplait (General Mills) told us it was proprietary information and “We’re sorry, but we don’t share processing information”.

Nanoparticles – There’s a big controversy surrounding the results of a 2012 study that found titanium dioxide in Dannon yogurt. In May, Mother Jones reported that Dannon Oikos Greek Yogurt contained the nanoparticle titanium dioxide, but have since retracted this from their article following Dannon’s claims that, “We don’t use any ingredients in Dannon plain yogurt that contain titanium dioxide. In the event we use an added color in our products we label it as an added ingredient”. I also contacted Dannon, and they confirmed this information. However, microscopic particles of titanium dioxide (nanoparticles) can be used as an artificial color to make white foods whiter and brighter. According to Friends of the Earth, there’s been “a tenfold increase in unregulated, unlabeled “nanofood” products on the American market since 2008… made by major companies including Kraft, General Mills, Hershey, Nestle, Mars, Unilever, Smucker’s and Albertsons. But due to a lack of labeling and disclosure, a far greater number of food products with undisclosed nanomaterials are likely currently on the market”. This concerns me because nanoparticles have been shown to carry risks to human health and the environment, and nanoparticles of titanium dioxide are specifically linked to gastrointestinal inflammation.

Synthetic Pesticides – Yogurts that contain fruit likely contain synthetic pesticide residues unless they are organic. Berries are the most popular fruits found in yogurts, and they’re also on the EWG’s Dirty Dozen List of the most contaminated produce. The pectin that is added to some yogurts may also contain another dose of pesticides, as it’s made from conventional fruit. The National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the President’s Cancer Panel all warn about the health dangers of consuming pesticides found on conventional produce.

喜悦身心养成记9: 拒吃有毒酸奶

但人们能在这些酸奶中吃到多少还活着的益生菌却是个问题。

Probiotics – The “Live and Active Cultures” seal on a container of yogurt does not guarantee that any probiotics are actually in the yogurt by the time you eat it – it only verifies they were there when it was manufactured. The addition of artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose may compound this problem because they’ve been shown to be antimicrobials that also have the ability to kill beneficial bacteria in the gut, which warrants more research. (sources: 1, 2). Cornucopia sent yogurt samples to the University of Nebraska Lincoln’s Food Processing Center to test for probiotic content, and what they found was astonishing. Several yogurts were found to have less than the required 100 million cultures per gram including Chobani, Walmart Great Value, Yoplait Go-Gurt, LaLa Cult, and Dannon Danimals Smoothies.

对策是拒吃有毒酸奶，只买有机食草奶牛产的牛奶制品，而且没有添加额外的水果、精制糖或人工合成糖的酸奶。

喜悦身心养成记9: 拒吃有毒酸奶

They ultimately recommend minimally processed organic brands that are either sometimes grass-fed or 100% grass-fed. These include: Traders Point Creamery, Maple Hill Creamery, Nancy’s, Organic Valley, Kalona, Wallaby Organic, and Clover Stornetta, Stonyfield, and regional brands such as Butterworks Farm, Seven Stars, Straus, Hawthorne Valley Farm, and Cedar Summit. By doing so, we support organic farmers, protect our environment, encourage humane treatment of animals, and ensure good health for ourselves and our families.