W h a t ... did I just eat?!

All Natural, 100% natural, and so on.

The less processed the food, the more it retains its nutritional value. Everyone seems to agree on this. Why would manufacturers tout their wares with slogans like "all natural" on foods that bear little resemblance with the way nature offered it? We’ll go into this a little deeper on this page. 

FAT FREE, LOWFAT, NON-FAT

...  the stores in the USA are full of products with such labels. And many of the customers in these stores look ...  Hmm, no discrimination, but it does not match.  Per 1996 statistics, 75% of the U.S. population are overweight, some 25% seriously so. I don’t think the fat in the food or the trend to remove it influences obesity to a large degree. I do agree that too much fat is not healthy, but how much is too much? Think about it. What chemical tricks must be used to remove all fat from a natural food? 
If FAT FREE were a workable solution, how come so many Americans are overweight? With all these fad-foods being consumed daily, it is evident that fat-free is not it.

Healthy Corn Flakes, Crispies, Pops, etc.

A contradiction in terms. Just read the labels. Here, a major brand. It says: serving size 40g ... sugars 34g. Whoa! That is a whopping 85% refined sugar. Breakfast would be cheaper and almost as “healthy” if we emptied the sugar pot into the cereal bowl. The fractions of milligrams "vitamins added" are a shame against the vitamins in a slice of whole grain bread or other wholesome food. We pay a high price indeed for getting the nutrition processed out of our morning cereals. 

Oven Fresh Bakery: It looks and smells so great - but wait?

How do they manage to bake all day in front of the customers? How do they keep that delicious pastry dough for a day or more?
A German pharmacist told me about her friend, the baker, who runs a local shop the old-fashioned way: Get up at 3 a.m., mix ingredients, roll the dough out and have the first batch of steaming fresh bread and rolls ready at five. Hmm - delicious for the early customers and for door-to-door delivery. 
The pharmacist had asked him: Why does this Bäckermeister (master baker) not open a little store in the city? He says, in order to run such a store, you need to make a dough that can be pre-kneaded and stays in shape at least from delivery early in the morning until the last batch is baked and sold in the evening. To make the dough do that trick, the factories put in preservatives, a yeast conditioner, stiffener, taste enhancers, coloring agents and other exotic chemicals identified only by numbers for the initiated.
That was a clear message to me. I stay away from the fad-food bakeries. 

Have dough
Will bake.
Dough in a can 
is just a fake.

Taste enhancer: where's the beef? 

Food prepared competently from clean ingredients and proper recipes is naturally tasty and nutritious. The use of taste enhancer is evidence the cooks skimp on the raw material or they hide faulty technique. If the food by itself does not suit your taste - well, don't eat it. Your sense of taste and smell is a protection against ingesting substances not compatible with your system. If it is palatable only with taste enhancer, caution! You may experience side effects because the taste enhancer works by flooding the brain with an unnaturally high dosage of an isolated amino acid (mono sodium glutamate, MSG). The long-term effects of accumulation in the brain are not well researched. MSG must be declared on food labels, but why on Earth do food companies try to hide it by using a multitude of names for the same taste enhancer? Is it because 30% of the population experience allergic reactions? Could it be the companies fear they would lose sales with an honest declaration contains MSG? Yuck!

The open cup: Artificial Sweetener versus Sugar  0 - 0

A fair match. Both substances are refined chemicals devoid of nutritional value. Sugar delivers a few empty calories that pull calcium and B-vitamins out of somewhere in the body to turn the sugar into usable energy. Sweetener provides not even that, only a similar taste and side effects, some severe.
Decide for yourself. If your drink or food is palatable only with sweetener, there is likely something wrong with it. Or your body may be addicted. Caution! You may experience long-term side effects from sweeteners. Aspartame (brand names NutraSweet, PalSweet) works by flooding the brain with an unnaturally high dosage of an amino acid (aspartic acid) and with residues of methanol. Inviting brain damage with zero calories.

In 1996, I wrote here:
Check back in a month or so, there is more to come. Future topics:
 | Nutrition Facts
 | Daily Values (RDA)
 | How to compare prices on vitamins and minerals.

I never posted an update, abundant information is available on the web and you can verify a lot by cross-checking with your local library. If you are already on the way to rebuilding your health, you may find you can also trust your intuition.