What toothpaste do you use?

[phykell]

Originally Posted by iCraig

I know what you mean, but the alternative to me is to live in a bubble then. To hide from aspartame, msg, sacharin etc etc... I think life's too short to worry about what if and maybe. Plus, in 20 years fluoride could be proven to strengthen teeth and prevent bone cancer. Tada! It's certainly possible. Hindsight still a wonderful thing in the opposite regard, and those who cut it out of their diet all their life will kick themselves.

I do see your point, of course I do, and I'm not saying it's black and white. What I'm saying is that it's probably unwise to wait for incontrovertible evidence to prove all these chemicals and additives are OK. The burden of proof should be on the suppliers of our food and until it is, it's actually very simple to avoid the majority of the potential problem foods/drinks.

[iCraig]

Originally Posted by phykell

it's actually very simple to avoid the majority of the potential problem foods/drinks.

I don't think it is. There's about 10 or 11 major "problematic" additives used in food and drink today. Can you or anybody else really be confident that it's a walk in a park to avoid them? I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think it requires research, constant checking and planning to stock your cupboards and fridge with stuff that doesn't have any of them. The list below is typical things that will contain aspartame. Not all brands will use it, but generally the items below will have it somewhere in the product line. These are the ones I've found, but there'll be more in stuff what I mentioned earlier, like Lemsip and Beechams. Stuff like that.

Mints and chewing gum
Carbonated soft drinks, especially things like Coke Zero.
Cereals
Syrups for coffee and hot drinks
A lot of ice cream and frozen dairy products in general
Gelatin (sugar free ones though)
Hard sweets like smarties and m&ms. Actually smarties might have dropped it recently, or that might have just been the colourants and flavours, not the sweetening.
Iced teas
Hot chocolate and things like horlicks and nesquik milk drinks
Certain low sugar jams
Juice Drinks
Maple Syrup
Ready meals
Chocolate mousses and low fat/sugar desserts. Usually the "Be good to yourself" ranges
A plethora of tinned foods
Nutritional Bars
Protein weight gain and protein drinks
Tomato sauces
Low fat yoghurts

The above list is aspartame *alone* by the way. Plenty more to add into your shopping blacklist, like, saccharin, msg and hvp, acesulfame K, sucralose, and the wonder drug that is caffeine. All those have tedious health links that are so far unproven.

OK, you could avoid all stuff like that, or pick the brands that don't use it. Then of course that assumes you either never eat anywhere but home, or you know the contents of friends and family's cupboards and the all the ingredients resturants will be using for your meal. All of this possible? Sure. Easy? I really doubt it, sorry.

[phykell]

Originally Posted by iCraig

I don't think it is. There's about 10 or 11 major "problematic" additives used in food and drink today. Can you or anybody else really be confident that it's a walk in a park to avoid them? I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think it requires research, constant checking and planning to stock your cupboards and fridge with stuff that doesn't have any of them. Then of course that assumes you either never eat anywhere but home, or you know the contents of friends and family's cupboards and the all the ingredients resturants will be using for your meal. Possible? Most likely. Easy? I really doubt it, sorry.

Have you considered that it's actually too easy to buy food with no knowledge of what goes into it. Merely a different perspective perhaps, but bearing in mind that we're talking about the food that we eat and that we give to our families, surely a bit more consideration is justified.

Convenience food, processed food, TV dinners, fast food, etc. are arguably tantamount to oxymorons IMO

[Haly]

Originally Posted by iCraig

Mints and chewing gum
Carbonated soft drinks, especially things like Coke Zero.
Cereals
Syrups for coffee and hot drinks
A lot of ice cream and frozen dairy products in general
Gelatin (sugar free ones though)
Hard sweets like smarties and m&ms. Actually smarties might have dropped it recently, or that might have just been the colourants and flavours, not the sweetening.
Iced teas
Hot chocolate and things like horlicks and nesquik milk drinks
Certain low sugar jams
Juice Drinks
Maple Syrup
Ready meals
Chocolate mousses and low fat/sugar desserts. Usually the "Be good to yourself" ranges
A plethora of tinned foods
Nutritional Bars
Protein weight gain and protein drinks
Tomato sauces
Low fat yoghurts

Woo I manage to miss out all but two of those things in that list (tinned food, usually veg until the veg patch in the garden's underway and cereal).
There are a couple of things like Juice drinks and ice cream that I use rarely but otherwise don't use the rest

[phykell]

Just noticed your list after I posted - the vast majority of what you've listed doesn't really count as "food" IMO but for those items that do, the fact that the manufacturer has chosen to add aspartame would flag it as poor quality AFAIC.

Incidentally, we're talking *food* here, not mints, nesquik and smarties.

So far today, I've eaten two shredded wheat with soya milk sweetened with apple juice, a load of dried fruit, an apple, a banana and a pear plus a salad sandwich with soya turkey/stuffing and cranberry sauce. I baked the bread myself and the resulting lunch was fantastic

[phykell]

Originally Posted by Haly

Woo I manage to miss out all but two of those things in that list (tinned food, usually veg until the veg patch in the garden's underway and cereal).
There are a couple of things like Juice drinks and ice cream that I use rarely but otherwise don't use the rest

That's pretty good going

[Haly]

Originally Posted by phykell

That's pretty good going

I used to eat some right crap so I'm no saint But I always keep an eye on what goes in what food and always doing home cooking now. I only really drink water (rarely some sort of fruit juice if I'm at a friends or something) so that cuts out the hot drinks and carbonated drinks.

On the subject of this debate, I can see both your view and iCraig's view so I think I'm somewhere in the middle of it. There are times where I say to hell with it and eat something very unhealthy but a lot of the time, I also keep an eye on what ingredients are being used etc. Guess I go for moderation on the whole.
I think in many ways lack of money and learning to cook has helped my diet, purely because I make more meals and don't succumb to easy ready meals etc because of the price, and tbh 99% of the time they don't taste anywhere near as nice as home made!

[iCraig]

They are food phykell whether they are your personal tastes or not, ok, minus the stuff like Lemsip which is more medicinal. You don't have it when you're thirsty, you have it when you're ill. The rest are common consumable items people buy to eat/drink, not put on their mantlepiece.

[phykell]

Originally Posted by Haly

I used to eat some right crap so I'm no saint

Me too and I drink far too much coffee!

Originally Posted by Haly

But I always keep an eye on what goes in what food and always doing home cooking now. I only really drink water (rarely some sort of fruit juice if I'm at a friends or something) so that cuts out the hot drinks and carbonated drinks.

On the subject of this debate, I can see both your view and iCraig's view so I think I'm somewhere in the middle of it. There are times where I say to hell with it and eat something very unhealthy but a lot of the time, I also keep an eye on what ingredients are being used etc. Guess I go for moderation on the whole.

I sometimes say to hell with it as well and I'm not saying that no-one should ever treat themselves. I just think it's a bad idea to knowingly adopt an attitude of being unconcerned about what's in your food when it's obvious that the quality that's available to us, is so variable and inconsistent. I also believe that advantage of eating decent food is borne out by increasing levels of diabetes and heart disease, etc. I think the correlation between our diet and the shocking rises in various health issues can no longer be denied, or, more important, ignored by the younger generation.

[phykell]

Originally Posted by iCraig

They are food phykell whether they are your personal tastes or not, ok, minus the stuff like Lemsip which is more medicinal. You don't have it when you're thirsty, you have it when you're ill. The rest are common consumable items people buy to eat/drink, not put on their mantlepiece.

Your definition of food and mine, are inconsistent at best and if that's your idea of a reasonable shopping list, you're not going to reach your 40s

As I said, there is a difference between food and just stuff our body can (hopefull) tolerate.