What in the world are we eating?

It's an obvious statement to say that in general, Americans have a diet consisting mostly of highly processed foods. We hear all the time about things that are bad for us: high fructose corn syrup, genetically modified or engineered ingredients, trans fats, preservatives, pesticides. We hear about so many things causing cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, etc.

We hear all this, but we're still eating tons of processed foods without much thought behind it. Some people may truly not care what they put in their bodies, while others pay a great deal of attention to it and only eat "real" food.

A majority will fall in the middle somewhere: caring about their health, but at the same time probably fooled by the food industry, causing them to make poor food choices.

Advertising and food labels can be terribly misleading, even downright lying. Most of the options laid out in front of us in the supermarkets are "foods" boxed up with a list of 25 ingredients, leading people to believe that eating this way is our only option. We also have a false sense of security believing that the FDA is looking out for our health (I don't believe they are) and that if it passes the test and is on the shelf, then it can't possibly harm us.

I think that the general public is vastly uninformed about what they are eating. I have only begun in the past few years to pay very close attention to what I eat, and I'm upset that it took me this long to care.

The message has seemed to get out that we need to always check the ingredient list before buying something. The problem is, even when you glance over the list, you're probably only going to know what a handful of the ingredients actually are. So you recognize a few things, ignore the unpronounceables and put it in your cart anyway.

Not many of us take the time to learn what these ingredients are: what they are made from, how they are made, and what health affects they can have.

What I'm going to do (maybe weekly?) is take a common ingredient that I - and probably most people - don't know a thing about and elaborate on it. I want to learn right along with you. And even if you don't remember all the details of what I write, maybe the next time you see it listed, you'll know that it's generally a bad thing and needs to be avoided.

First up will be Partially Hydrogenated Oils...

*note: the ultimate goal should be to stop buying processed foods altogether. But I realize cutting them out 100% is a hard thing to do. I haven't even gotten there yet, so let's at least be educated on what's out there.