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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Beginning of End for Processed Foods? (Pedcast)


	Podcast:		Portable Practical Pediatrics
	Episode:		Beginning of End for Processed Foods? (Pedcast)
	Category:		Kids & family
	Duration:		00:00:00
	Publish Date:		2017-06-04 20:16:10
	Description:		Introduction For those of you who are new to Portable Practical Pediatrics, I am your host, Dr. Paul Smolen, a board certified pediatrician with 35 years of practice and a whole lot to say. From diapers to the diploma, if it involves kids, we discuss it here. Americans parents have always been interested in providing healthy foods for their children but in the past, that desire has led many parents in some unhealthy directions. Remember when we tried to remove fat from their diets food for fear of feeding them too much cholesterol (that didn't lower their cholesterols, did it?), or when we replaced healthy natural fats in our children's diets with processed trans fats (now considered very unhealthy), or when we enhanced the natural flavor in food with sugar and salt to make the food more appetizing (wow, was that another colossal mistake). And of course we can't forget when we replaced real food with processed, bland, pureed baby foods. All of this backfired as we now know and have made today's American children some of the poorest nourished kids on the planet. If you read my book, Can Doesn't Mean Should, you will recall the appalling fact that the most consumed foods by American children are Chicken nuggets, grain based deserts, yeast bread, soda, and pizza. So it was with great interest that I was reading my copy of the WSJ the other morning and what do I see on the front page but an article about how the American consumer is shifting their eating habits once again. Are we chasing another food fad folly or this time, are things different? Stay tuned to find out. Welcome to this trendy edition of Portable Practical Pediatrics. Music Introduction Spreadsheets tell the Story Corporate America watches us very very carefully. Their data banks are overflowing with information about our spending habits because our spending choices are their bread and butter. In fact, they know more about us than we know about ourselves since they can watch our behavior as a group... a very large group. And believe me, when our behavior changes, they notice. That fact brings me to an article in the WSJ that made that point very clearly. The article pointed out that profits, or lack thereof by the giant agro businesses, are telling these company's executives that the tastes and spending habits of Americans are changing. And frankly, I think the executives are a little scarred. Consumers are spending less on processed foods, soda, chips, and processed sugary cereals-- products that they have spent decades creating, marketing, and perfecting. The data now show that water sales are outstripping soda sales in the U.S.! Can you believe that! What is going on here? Usually, the American consumer does what the advertisers tell us to do but could there be a new sheriff in town? Maybe information is flowing so fast and freely, so unfettered and so unadulterated by the influence of advertising, that people are beginning to see more clearly, the healthy choices for their family's diet. Could the era of marketing be waning? Maybe so since consumption of processed food, sodas, and unhealthy cereal seem to be on the decline while whole foods and healthier options seem to be on the rise. Even doctors are beginning to see food as medications, writing prescriptions for fruits and vegetables instead of pills. That is truly amazing. What will the Grocery Stores of the Future Look Like? What does all this change mean for the future of food in the U.S.? Your guess is as good as mine but if the miraculous economic engine of capitalism is able to bless us with continued wealth like we saw in the 20th century, I'm betting that healthy high quality food will be making a comeback. That food is likely to be more and more international and diverse as time moves forward. I foresee a time when going to the grocery store will be much more like the experience our ancestors had when they went to the center town "market" to buy food for the day.
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