Warning about flavors and hidden sugar

Nutrition: expert warns of flavors and hidden sugar

11/11/2014

„Food instead of food“: This is an appeal of the well-known German author Hans-Ulrich Grimm, who deals intensively with the food industry. For a long time the journalist has warned against hidden sugar and flavors.

Optics more important than taste
For years, the German author and journalist Hans-Ulrich Grimm has been dealing with industrially manufactured food. In his opinion, optics and durability are often more important to the food industry than taste or tolerability. He speaks of the fact that the corporations one „industrial parallel world“ to create real food. As reported by the news agency APA, the expert said at a press conference in Linz, Austria, that in a finished strawberry yogurt are far fewer fruits than in a self-mixed and expected that a chicken soup from the pack „two grams of dry chicken“ contains, „that's equivalent to seven grams of wet chicken, four plates each“.

Tricks of the food industry
„You can only do that with aromas.“ This has the consequence that one adds. „Flavor consumption leads to being overweight because the body is being cheated of something it needs.“ This is similar to the sugar. So the sense of taste gives the body what it has to expect when eating, said Grimm. For human digestion indicates the information „sweet“ but rather an apple than lemonade. „It's not just about sugar, it's about getting out of sweet mode.“ The author, who has worked in a number of books on the tricks of the food industry, said that in recent decades, it has not increased the sugar content of their products, but has put artificial sweeteners on top. That's why the body demands more and more.

Sugars and sweeteners with health consequences
Even though the health consequences of high sugar intake, such as obesity, diabetes or high blood pressure, are repeatedly warned, sweeteners such as aspartame can cause similar problems to sugars, such as high triglyceride levels, which are a risk factor for Are cardiovascular diseases. Recently, an Israeli research team led by Eran Segal and Eran Elinav from the Weizmann Institute in Rechovot found in a study that sweetener promotes diabetes risk.

Author prefers to cook himself
According to Grimm, the reasons why additives are used are often far removed from flavor enhancement, but serve, for example, for durability or appearance. According to him, for example, cola contains phosphoric acid to prevent it from becoming completely black due to the sugar coating, the expert explained. On demand, he said that a traffic light label „sure good“ would be to find your way around the jungle of labels that consumers expect in the supermarket. However, he prefers to cook on his own. (Ad)