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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Smart Food Shopping w/ Dr. Charlotte Rouchouze (Pedcast)


	Podcast:		Portable Practical Pediatrics
	Episode:		Smart Food Shopping w/ Dr. Charlotte Rouchouze (Pedcast)
	Category:		Kids & family
	Duration:		00:00:00
	Publish Date:		2018-03-11 18:13:08
	Description:		Introduction Doc Smo: Today's pedcast features child food expert Dr. Charlotte Rouchouze. Long time listeners to Portable Practical Pediatrics will recognize that name. She has been a guest on my show many times. She is also the force behind an excellent food blog called "The Children's Table". Recently I talked to Dr. Rouchouze about a topic that many parents and myself find confusing; how to read and understand a food labels. Artificial versus natural flavorings, this preservative or that preservative, artificial colors and sweeteners are among the things readers of food labels need to begin to understand. I thought my listeners might enjoy an opportunity to improve their food IQ with an expert like Dr. Rouchouze to guide them so don't go anywhere, here comes Dr. Rouchouze. Musical Intro Why is important to learn to read food labels? Doc Smo: Why is it important for parents to know how to read and understand food labels? Let me just say I am the biggest proponent you will find of making food yourself, for a whole variety of reasons, but I am also very suspicious of terms like “unnatural” and “toxic” that are tossed around in the organic food world. Anyone who has ever tried to define “natural”, whether it be in the area of people, plants, food, chemicals, or anything else, knows that it is often a maddening endeavor. Just the other day, I was engaging in a fruitless debate with someone on a parenting blog about whether petroleum jelly was “natural” and whether that even had any relevance whatsoever. It’s unnatural! She said. Well, it’s derived from petroleum, which is natural, right? I said. (I like to stir the pot!) Does that mean it’s safe? No! Does that mean it’s bad? No! So when I read, on that same blog, an article about Target setting a goal to eliminate artificial ingredients from the children’s food at their stores, my ears perked up. When food companies use the term natural, what does it really mean? To be clear, I VERY MUCH in favor of food companies eliminating ingredients we know to be harmful, such as transfat. But this is a bit hazier. So lets take a look at some artificial food additives and see what we find. To be clear: any food additive that is present in packaged food has the FDA’s general stamp of approval called GRAS (generally recognized as safe). This is a given. At the same time, any food additive will undoubtedly also have a rabid base of detractors in self-help books and on natural lifestyle sites. Making sense of all of this is not easy. So let’s take a look. Preservatives Nitrates/Nitrites: it’s unclear whether nitrate-free has any meaning, considering the celery seed they use is also high in nitrites. “Natural” perhaps, but whether that means better is still a question. Consume cured meats, and that includes sliced turkey, with moderation since there is some evidence that nitrates can be carcinogenic. *What about sodium benzoate? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_benzoate Safe but to be avoided- GRAS Natural versus Artificial Flavor: First there’s the question of natural vs. artificial flavors. I know that the last time I browsed the baby food section of my grocery store (which was last week), almost every mainstream product on the shelf contained “flavors.” I’m always wondering why the banana puree that it is supposed to contain doesn’t provide the banana flavor, but alas, most products do contain what they call flavors. Look no further than the Gerber Graduates products on the Target website, and see that all of them include flavors. I especially like the description of the Gerber Yogurt Melts, which states on the package that it is “naturally flavored with other natural flavors.” Ha! That sounds awfully complicated for something so natural! With the term “natural” flavors, people assume it just comes naturally from the food, but natural flavors are compounds isolated by food scientists from a wide variety of sources,
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