Polydextrose: The Truth Behind the Smiles of Fred Flintstone and Toucan Sam

Recently on television and just roaming through the supermarket, you may have noticed sugary cereals by Post that have been boasting that they have a good source of fiber. You can just imagine how excited and grateful the thousands of mothers were across the country when they first heard the news. My child can have his or her favorite cereal and still get a good source of fiber per serving?! While your child is enjoying his or her cereal and you're smiling from ear to ear like a mirror image of Fred Flintstone and Toucan Sam on the cardboard box. Now I'm going to use the appropriate phrase here "You can't have your cake and eat it too". The reason why these cereals all of the sudden have fiber is because...well...it isn't fiber at all. The ingredient that is added is something else called polydextrose, and it supposedly acts similar to the process of fiber that the FDA call actually call this ingredient fiber, when it truly is not. This may seem confusing but I'll help to break it down.

The way that the cereal manufacturers make polydextrose is quite simple (well it should be if they are making a mass production and it's all about quantity and not quality now a days right?). Polydextrose is actually synthesized from glucose and sorbitol which is a low-calorie carbohydrate. Polydextrose is one of several new aged fiber additives (others include inulin and maltodextrin) showing up in dairy and baked-goods products that previously had little to no fiber in them at all. There are two different kinds of fiber known as functional and dietary. Functional fiber is where polydextrose, inulin and maltodextrin fit in and they all appear to act like fiber within the body and they are extracted from chicory root. Dietary fiber is basically where fiber comes from naturally, like fruits, vegetables, and grains. Since polydextrose is not an all natural source of fiber but rather a man made source, it does not show any evidence of enhancing cardiovascular health such as preventing heart attacks, high cholesterol, or lowering the risk of heart disease. Polydextrose acts like dietary fiber in one way by speeding up the body's gastrointestinal tract. The confusing part of this whole matter is the FDA is labeling the use of polydextrose, inulin, and maltodextrin as being dietary fiber. So the box of several Fiber One products, for example, will state on it's nutritional fact label that it contains up to 51% of your daily fiber intake and state that the fiber is dietary when it's actually functional. There is no evidence that consuming functional fiber provides any health benefits to our bodies like dietary fiber.

Polydextrose, inulin, and maltodextrin, and other other functional fibers are basically deceiving people into believing that the junk food that they're eating contains a "good source" of fiber (mainly dietary) and they all of the sudden think that their junk food has magically turned into health food. Well in my opinion junk food is junk food even if it claims to be health food. A word of advice to read the ingredient list on the back or side of the product. Those Post cereals I mentioned earlier still contain sugar or high fructose corn syrup along with added dyes, colors, and partially hyrdrogenated oils (trans fat in disguise) in the first few ingredients. If these ingredients are at the top of the ingredient list then that states that the product is mainly constructed of. Food manufacturers can lie all over their products, boasting that they have faulty fiber, contain 100% whole grains, and contain zero grams of trans fat (when they obviously do because they have partially hydrogenated oils), but the one thing they cannot lie about is the list of ingredients. If you look at the ingredient list first and notice if the list is short or a laundry list, if there are ingredients that you can recognize and pronounce. Food manufacturers basically want to sell a product and sell in a product in mass quantities. In order for the food industry to do this they have to do some research and discover what the most and relevant trends and concerns that people have. Fiber is the example here but more recently Vitamin D is creeping up into and onto boxes of cereal and other products because people are now worried about not getting enough Vitamin D. The trend is shifting because Scott Monette, a spokesman for Ralcorp, which owns Post cereal brands said that his company is removing polydextrose from their products and they are instead adding higher doses of Vitamin D to their products because it is "more timely and relevant ingredient". These people don't care about your health, all they care about is selling a product. Keep smiling Fred Flintstone and Toucan Sam, because I know behind that smile is corporate greed, and I'm not smiling back.

Rice Milk: The Other White Drink

Do you keep hearing and seeing those milk ads that boast about milk and how many vitamins, minerals, and protein are in it? Well that's all true but the milk company is also a multimillion dollar company that has a lot of close connections with other big profit companies. The fact is people should not be drinking milk, plain and simple. There is no reason for human beings to be drinking milk once we're adults. Think about it, other mammals drink milk when they're born to get essential nutrients to grow and develop. After they grow and develop do they keep drinking milk? Do they keep drinking milk from another completely different animal? It's strange if you think about it in that respect but the milk industry wants us to believe that we need milk to survive and live a healthy long lasting life. Well I'm here to give you some milk alternatives that give you the same or even more nutrients than regular cow's milk, that originate from all natural sources such as rice, hemp, soy, and almond. The product that I believe is the best all around is rice milk, but others swear by almond or soy but when I compared rice milk to the others I found that it had better nutrients and a healthier calorie consistency.

Before I start to talk about milk alternatives, let me educate you on why cow's milk is bad contrary to what you've been told in the past. According to the book "Skinny Bitch", milk has "been linked to a host of other problems, including acne, anemia, anxiety, arthritis, ADD, ADHD, fibromyalgia, headaches, heatburn, indigestion, irritable bowel movement, joint pain, osteoporosis, poor immune function, allergies, ear infections, colic, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, autism, Crohn's disease, breast and prostate cancers, and ovarian cancer" (Freedman, Barnouin 57-58). So plain and simple, milk spreads disease instead of warding off disease and making us healthier. In a nutshell, we shouldn't be drinking milk from a cow. Another reason to not drink cow's milk is because it contains a toxic substance called Dioxin. All of the steroids, antibiotics, pesticides, and hormones you also consume when you drink cow's milk. It's basically the same as eating the cow, you get everything that's in the cow's system. With such a high demand of milk, farmers have transformed into mass producing fat cats. They inject the cattle with so many hormones and antibiotics that the cow's udder becomes so big in order to keep up with the high demand of milk production. The udders are so sore and bruised that they in turn become infected with disease and that disease is leaking into the milk that we drink (60).

Since all of the gross and unpleasant information about cow's milk is out of the way I can tell you about some milk alternatives that have even better nutrients and better overall taste than cow's milk. My favorite alternative is Rice Milk. Now you have to be careful when buying this product and the other milk alternative products in the supermarket. A word of caution when purchasing these products is don't buy the regular, but rather the unsweetened product. Unsweetened does not mean however that the product isn't sweet and is rather bland and unsatisfying, on the contrary, the unsweetened products do not have any added sugar and they contain vanilla extract which makes the product taste more naturally sweet. Unsweetened vanilla rice milk is a good choice when choosing a milk alternative. It has only 45 calories per one cup serving, as opposed to skim milk which has between 90-100 calories per serving. Rice milk also has zero grams of saturated fat and only 2 grams of total fat. It also has several important nutrients such as 20% calcium, along with 20% Vitamin D, 15% Phosphorus, 8% Vitamin A, and 20% Vitamin B12. One of the best elements that rice milk has over regular milk is simply the fiber. In one cup of rice milk you get 6 grams of fiber which is 23% of your daily amount. Regular milk doesn't even come close to that. So with half the calories, both Vitamin D and Calcium enriched, an all natural and organic source from rice, and 23% of your daily fiber, it's no question that unsweetened rice milk is a better alternative to regular cow's milk. The price of rice milk is also cheaper than the price of cow's milk. You can purchase rice milk at any supermarket that includes an organic section or a Whole Foods Supermarket. The Whole Foods 365 rice milk product is only $1.69 per 32 fl oz. container!