M. Thomas Propes

Ingredient Splitting You might know to check the ingredient list of your kid's favorite snack and that food companies keep coming up with nicer-sounding names for the harmful ingredients they want to hide in their processed foods. But do you know what ingredient splitting is? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that ingredients be listed in descending order of predominance by weight on food labels. This means the ingredient that makes up the most significant proportion by weight is listed first. Would you buy the dog / cat food that has corn as the first ingredient or the one that has chicken? Pet food companies know you’d likely prioritize meat for your carnivorous little darlings, so they started unraveling the corn into different bits and pieces. This way, the food can have 25% chicken, 15% corn meal, 15% corn flour, 15% corn syrup, 15% corn gluten meal, and 15% other random stuff. In reality, this product is 60% corn, but chicken is the first ingredient because they separated the corn into different fragments. They can do this with soy, rice, potatoes, sugar, etc. – it's not just about corn. For human food, you might recall picking up a product with 5 or 6 different sweeteners. You probably laughed and thought, why do they need sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose AND maltose?! Well, it’s for the exact same reason… if they just used sugar, they use so much that it would be the heaviest ingredient and, therefore, the first thing that you saw on the ingredient list. So, they divide the same amount of sugar over several different sweetening ingredients, cutting the weight of each item down and lowering all of the sweet items further and further on the ingredient list. If you want to eat healthy, the best thing you can do is to avoid the middle of the grocery store and shop the perimeter. That means hugging the walls of the grocery store, looking only for single-ingredient foods that you can mix together at home. Don't let the food conglomerates mix your food for you; they will use the cheapest ingredients and try to trick you at every turn. The processed foods in the middle of the store have refined sugars / artificial sweeteners, trans fats, sodium nitrates/nitrites, artificial colors, artificial flavors, preservatives, emulsifiers and thickeners, seed oils, per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS / forever chemicals), microplastics, and heavy metals. You don't need that stuff, and if you were whipping a meal together at home, you probably couldn't pronounce some of these things and wouldn't know where to look for them in your pantry or at the grocery store; that should be a clue. These nasty ingredients are not good for us. I'll permit you to go in the middle for animal fats, coconut oil, avocado oil, extra virgin olive oil (single source that isn't cut with seed oils)... or seasonings (without microplastics and heavy metals) if you must, but don't get distracted by all the shiny packaging - get in and get out quick. If you must buy something else, please check the ingredients. Keep in mind that these companies like to split the ingredients to promote more appealing foods while making the unhealthy ingredients look like a smaller ratio than they actually are.