Personal experience: the terrible American products

Arriving in the US and reading what they write on the packaging of products, I was horrified. Almost every product manufacturer writes what is harmful in it. The question immediately arises: if they don’t write that there isn’t there, then, in all likelihood, are there all these nastiness in the products? Or maybe they are not bad things, but simply American horror stories? What do the Americans stuff their products with?

Chemistry in meat

Most of the inscriptions on meat: without hormones, without antibiotics, fed with natural food, without the addition of solutions and injections, organic and so on. I asked the question: Is there really so much chemistry in meat, and how is its use regulated in the USA?

It turns out that in the United States when growing any poultry and pork, the use of hormones is prohibited. But everything else - antibiotics, which then get into our blood, nutritional supplements, injections for the appearance and increase the shelf life - all this is. Organic meat is cleaner, but much more expensive.

GMO

The former director of the UN World Food Program, Kathryn Bertini, with whom I was fortunate enough to meet, told a story. Another African country was starving, and the UN collected humanitarian aid to help with the products. When the cargo was ready, the Africans asked whether the grain was American or not by chance.

“American,” Katherine answered.

— So it’s GMO?

“Apparently so,” Bertini did not hide.

“Then we won’t take him.”

- How can you not? Your people are dying of hunger.

“If your GMO grain gets into our soil, we will forever lose our grain fund,” the Africans replied.

After this story, all agricultural products in the USA seem to me GMOs, because manufacturers do not have to indicate GMOs on labels.

Food allergies

Before the USA, I have never encountered food allergies. I heard, of course, about them, but I was never asked if I had food allergies. Especially in everyday life, I did not encounter restrictions. When we arrived in the USA and our daughter went to school, we immediately read in the school’s instructions that it was forbidden to wear certain products, such as peanuts, to school.

It turned out that many Americans have food allergies. The most common ones are: for peanuts, for lactose, for gluten and for eggs. Therefore, in almost every product, the manufacturer indicates the presence or absence of these components. It comes to the absurd. We buy honey recently, but it says on it: without peanuts, without lactose, without gluten. In the sense of? And what could be with them?

Saturated and trans fats

After a Framingham study of factors that increase the risk of heart disease, Americans fear cholesterol and fat, raising it. Therefore, in each product in the "composition" is indicated not only the amount of fat, but also the amount of saturated and trans fats.

Without going into details, saturated and trans fats are those fats that you want to avoid, if your heart and blood vessels are dear to you. And here, too, comes to the point of absurdity. For example, a woman's kilo under 100 chooses chips in the supermarket without saturated and trans fats in the composition. Is it really so incomprehensible that with chips under any circumstances it is better to stop at all?

Sugar

Another scourge of Americans - diabetes. Millions of Americans suffer from this terrible disease. If the body can not regulate blood sugar - you need to limit the consumption of sugar, decide the Americans. But how to do it, if instead of water, many of them drink sweetened soda from morning to evening?

Sweeteners of various types come to the rescue, and the same 100-kilogram American from the previous paragraph takes their dietary cola to their chips without trans fat, gluten, peanut, lactose and eggs. Only if sugar is at least an understandable substance, then I don’t have any confidence in the sugar substitutes, and I don’t want to use them without a special need. Therefore, it is necessary to check the presence of sugar substitutes on the labels.

The original column is published on the portal.Yandex Zen".

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