While my partner and I were on our way to the Phillipines for a well deserved holiday, we were in transit at Manila for a few hours. After 8 hours of pressurised air, limited water intake, a few home bought carrot sticks we were gagging for a nice meal and to stretch out our kinked necks and legs.
As anyone on a special diet would know being stuck in an airport with limited food options does not make for a pleasant stay.
After trawling through the usual options of processed food outlets and looking for non-existent salad bars we decided to pay about $30AUD to go through to an international lounge that had the promise of a freshly cooked buffet and snacks with unlimited drinks on offer. Ker-ching! Where is it, let’s go!
All the water in the world for me and all the beer in the world for my partner. Right, onto the buffet. Options were a congealed pasta dish with what I think was a tomato based sauce but could possibly have been swimming in a Thousand Island dressing, it had a pinkish tinge to it. Bread rolls and a Soup of god knows what, it was a cloudy colour with an interesting film on the top of it. NO salad, NO vegetables. Bread is off the candida menu, as is pasta and tomatoes. Yikes! As my boyfriend will vouch, this girl gets very grumpy when hungry, and is quite capable of having a complete meltdown until fed. And not just anything, it has to be something of the healthy variety.
Hmmm. Onto the snacks. Packets of nuts. Now that is something allowed on the diet!
And not just any nuts, a packet of Ding Dong Nuts!
On the front of the packet the promise of peanuts, green peas, broadbeans and corn. All allowed on the diet! Although was miffed at corn, peas and beans being classified as nuts, but allowed on the diet anyways and free from any reaction from my very unhappy tummy.
Until I read the back of the packet. I had to take a picture, because the ingredients certainly weren’t something I would want to put in my body or anyone’s body. The picture is a bit fuzzy so I will list the ingredients for you:
Peanuts, Corn, Green Peas, Broad beans, Sugar, Artificial Flavours, Palm, Corn & Coconut Oil, Enriched Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Vitamins B1, B2), Spices, Artificial Colour FD & C Yellow (E102), FD & C Yellow (E110), FD & C and FD & C Blue (E133), Monosodium Glutamate (E621), and TBHQ (antioxidant).
How can what seems to be a simple packet of nuts (and beans) become an ingredient list with letters and numbers that certainly weren’t grown from a vege garden? And what place do letters and numbers have in the body?
So I began to dissect the added unwanted ingredients in the list.
Corn Oil is a highly processed oil, high in polyunsaturates and becomes toxic when heated. Yum!
Palm Oil is destroying natural habitat for Orangutans and other species in Indonesia and Malaysia. Great. Palm Oil proliferates almost everything you buy these days. It’s a very cheap oil to produce so the oil of choice for the food processing manufacturing giants. But very un-ethical.
Coconut Oil now I know is good for you. But only if its virgin, organic and cold pressed, naturally extracted without the use of high heat (which destroys all the natural goodness giving enzymes, minerals and vitamins). No doubt the Ding Dong makers did not go down the organic path!
Enriched wheat flour is only enriched because the nutrients that were originally in the wheat get stripped out at processing time so artificial vitamins get added in, which the body does not synthesise well.
Artificial colours FD & C Yellow, FD & C, and FD & C Blue are derived from benzene and coal tar – YUM!! All know allergins and potential carcinogens as well as causing nausea, hyperactivity and creating general havoc in your body.
- …a toxic cocktail of letters and numbers not designed for human consumption
MSG (Glutamic Acid) comes in many disguises (E621, hydrolysed wheat protein, yeast extract etc etc) and food manufacturers love to use it as it makes the blandest and cheapest foods taste wonderful and the flavour is quite addictive and keeps you coming back for more. Glutamic acid is a neurotransmitter that excites our neurons (not just in our tongues). This electrical charging of neurons is what makes foods with added free glutamic acid taste so good and MSG can get into the brain, injuring and sometimes killing neurons, along with weight gain, endocrine dysfunction, headache, diarrhea, chest pain, dizziness, palpitation, weakness, nausea/vomiting, and abdominal cramps makes MSG one very scary additive!
TBHQ – now I had to do some research on this one as I had never heard of it. Turns out TBHQ is a form of Butane – a lighter fluid! Can cause Cancer, hyperactivity, restlessness, allergies and can affect estrogen levels in women.
When are food manufacturers going to take some responsibility and eliminate these unnecessary artificial flavours, colours and preservatives?!
Consumers please start voting with your wallets! Don’t buy numbers and letters products. Check the ingredients list before buying anything. I do and I am always blown away by how much of this stuff creeps into a seemingly innocent product. What is claimed on the front of the packet is definitely NOT a reflection of what is listed on the back of the packet.
So as you can imagine, I put the nuts where they belonged – in the rubbish bin!
Ding Dong indeed.
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