Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [69]
In other processed fat surprises. Ironically, some of the processed foods we purchase in an attempt to avoid fat or cholesterol have more fat than the product we are trying to avoid. Nondairy coffee whitener, for example, has three times the fat of natural half-and-half.16
Prepared foods such as TV dinners and fast foods also contribute to the fat surge in the American diet. In a Big Mac or Kentucky Fried Chicken or a TV dinner, Americans are getting about half their calories from fat.17 At home we could eat a meal with just as much fat, but once we pass under the Golden Arches we have no choice.
The vegetable oils most commonly used in processed foods—coconut and palm kernel oils—contain largely saturated fats, the type medical authorities warn us against. Virtually all of the fat in powdered coffee whitener is saturated fat.18 So is the fat used in processed foods such as “breakfast bars” and some imitation ice creams. Thus, even though we might never use coconut or palm oil in our own kitchens, if we eat a processed diet we get plenty of these saturated vegetable fats. They now account for 16 percent of total vegetable oil consumption.
Dangerous Change No. 3: Too Much Sugar
Since the turn of the century Americans have doubled their daily sugar dose; just since 1960 it’s gone up 25 percent. One-third of a pound of sugar is now consumed each day for every man, woman, and child in America.19
THE RISKS
The problem with sugar is both what it does to us and what it displaces. The link between sugar and tooth decay is well established. In virtually all societies studied, the incidence of tooth decay rises as people eat more sugar. Half of all Americans have no teeth at all by the time they reach the age of fifty-five.
Sugar also fills us up with calories while giving us no nutrients or fiber. Filled on sugar calories, we inevitably eat less of other nutrient-rich foods such as breads and cereals, fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, sugar makes us need the nutrients in these foods even more. Sugar increases the body’s need for thiamin and perhaps the trace mineral chromium as well, according to Dr. Jean Mayer.20
WHERE IS THE SUGAR IN OUR DIET?
As with fat, Americans are not buying more sugar and confections directly. In fact, Americans are eating significantly less candy today than they did in the early 1940s. Candy has its ups and downs, but per capita intake has been falling steadily since 1970.21 The household use of sugar has dropped to half of what it was in the early 1900s.22
We are eating more sugar because it is being added for us by the food-processing corporations and we are eating more of their processed foods.
Since the early 1900s the per capita consumption of sugar in processed fruits and vegetables has tripled. So much sugar is added to processed fruits and vegetables that Americans eat almost as much sugar in these foods as they do in cake and candy. Since the early 1900s, the per capita use of sugar in beverages, mainly soft drinks, has increased almost sevenfold.23 By 1976 the equivalent of 382 twelve-ounce cans of soft drinks—each with six to nine teaspoons of sugar—was consumed for every person in the country—up about two and one-half times just since 1960.24 (The next time you reach for a Coke, remember that you’re about to drink the sugar equivalent of a piece of chocolate cake, including the icing.) Fully one-quarter of our intake of cane and beet sugar now comes from soft drinks.25 Among processed foods, cereals and baked goods give us the most sugar; the country’s second most popular breakfast cereal, Sugar Frosted Flakes, is half sugar.26
Dangerous Change No. 4: Too Much Salt
Americans now eat 6 to 18 grams of salt (sodium chloride) a day—10 to 30 times the average human requirement, and as much as three times the