Will what's acceptable to eat today still be acceptable to eat tomorrow?

Friday, August 6, 2004
Spectrum Maturity
Terri Andersen
Senior Moments
Will what's acceptable to eat today still be acceptable to eat tomorrow?
How is a person supposed to know what's good to eat or what's not, when someone in the food police business changes the rules from one week to the next? I remember back in the 1960s when just before Thanksgiving the consumer was told to stay away from cranberries. Most of us couldn't imagine a turkey dinner without cranberry sauce, but I didn't want to take any chances on poisoning anybody, so I was ready to make the ultimate sacrifice and forego cranberry sauce that year when the relatives were all coming to my house for dinner. My father, however, had a different idea. He figured the cranberry warning referred only to the canned variety, and he showed up on Thanksgiving Day with a bag of fresh cranberries to be cooked. Since I had always used canned cranberries, I had no idea how to cook fresh ones, so my father decided to take over. As the cranberries on the stove popped away during cooking, my kitchen walls, floor and ceiling were suddenly embellished with red dots. Did that bother my father? Not at all. So what if the kitchen didn't look spotless? He figured everyone would just be grateful to have cranberry sauce with their turkey. A few weeks later, as I was still finding a few red spots here and there, the food industry decided there was no reason to avoid cranberries after all. It seems that scenario of “good for you... bad for you... good for you” has been repeated a lot over the years. I remember my mother telling us that in her youth tomatoes were considered poisonous, then in later years the tomato was proclaimed perfectly safe and even good for you. Another food that got a bad rap recently was eggs. Stay away from them, we were told, since they're bad for your cholesterol levels. But in a fairly short time eggs were back in favor, as long as we didn't eat too many. Even the diet experts can't agree on which foods are best for us. - One says eat lots of protein and avoid carbohydrates; another says you need carbohydrates but don't eat too much protein. One says stay away from all fats; another says your body needs some fat to function properly. Who's right and who's wrong? Another problem today seems to be all the extra ingredients put into the foods we eat. They say it's to preserve the shelf life and won't do any harm, but how is the average consumer supposed to know if a particular ingredient will adversely affect him or not? Just recently, I read an article warning people about high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and as my husband and I started reading more ingredients labels, we were amazed to see how many products contain it. It's the second listed ingredient in most sodas, juices and iced tea, and it appears in cookies, pies, jellies, ketchup, soups, baked beans, and who knows what else. We even found it in one brand of ice cream, which we wouldn't have bought if we suspected HFCS would be an ingredient. According to the article I read in an AARP Bulletin and the further research we did on the Internet, high fructose corn syrup is not metabolized well by the body and can contribute to obesity and other health problems. Of course, the producers of HFCS will deny those claims, because it costs them less than sugar and has a longer shelf life, but I hope more research is done to protect the eating public before it's too late, if the harm hasn't been done already. (Incidentally, regular corn syrup doesn't seem to be causing any problems, just the high fructose type.) Which brings up another question in my mind. How come the problems are always discovered after a product is on the market instead of before? Granted, it's noble of the food industry to list all ingredients in a product, but some have so many added chemicals the average consumer gets bleary-eyed trying to read them. Besides, the print is often so small one needs a magnifying glass to see it. What happened to ordinary flour, sugar, milk and eggs as ingredients for waffles or other baked goods? Supposedly we need at least 50 other ingredients to make today's food palatable. I find that kind of scary. - Just for the fun of it (or to prove a point?) I counted 75 ingredients on a well-known brand of soup, 57 on a can of “homestyle” soup, and 19 on a small can of chicken gravy. Where do they find all these chemicals for us to ingest? Does the average consumer have any idea what sodium erythorbate, inosinate, guanylate, pyridoxine, hydrochloride, niacinamide, and all those other unpronounceable ingredients do to us or why we need them? I suppose as long as we remember the motto “everything in moderation,” we'll survive. Then again, there's always some old geezer who brags how he ate all the wrong foods, drank booze whenever he felt like, smoked cigars all his life, and manages to live to be 100.  Maybe he lived so long because he never worried about what he ate or drank. We all know worry is not good for us.
Terri Andersen is a resident of New Milford.

She finds that "new and improved" products are not necessarily better

Spectrum
Maturity
Friday, May 28, 2004
Terri Andersen  Senior Moments
She finds that ‘new and improved' products are not necessarily better
It seems every time I get used to a product and really like it, some efficiency experts in manufacturing land decide to make changes which make it worse, in my opinion, or they just discontinue the product, period. I realize the “new and improved” version is supposed to raise sales for the company, but all it does for me is raise my blood pressure. “Why couldn't they just leave well enough alone?" I mutter to myself (and anyone else who happens to be within hearing distance). If they have to make changes, why not just put out a new variety and leave the old one as is? Frozen waffles are one example of a change that didn't sit too well with my family. The waffles used to come eight to a package and were tasty and satisfying. One day somebody got the bright idea of adding a “bonus of two free waffles” to the package. Was it really a bonus for the consumer? The way I see it, what they're really giving us is just thinner, less satisfying waffles. Another example is chicken Soup. The original was simple and tasted delicious. Then someone decided to provide us with a “grownup" version, which includes tasteless pieces of chicken smothered with a bunch of lame vegetables, and it no longer even tastes like chicken soup. A lot of the new and improved cleaning products seem to fall short of satisfaction, too, and it's frustrating when a wonderful product used for years is suddenly unavailable. Then there are cosmetics. A friend of mine had a foundation makeup that was just the right color and texture for her skin, and she depended on it for years. So what did the cosmetic firm do? They discontinued that product. She had the same experience with a hair color she loved. I can relate to her experiences because that happened to me with a face cream I used. About 10 years ago I had a wonderful moisturizing cream that kept my face smooth and wrinkle-free. Someplace along the way someone decided to “improve” that cream, and it just doesn't do what it used to for me. [OK, maybe the years are at fault on that one, but I sure wish someone would come up with a “new and improved” product that really decreases wrinkles instead of just claiming to. While they're at it, something that grows thick, lustrous hair, whitens dentures and takes away tummy flab without disgusting liposuction would be nice. Are you listening, scientists out there?] It would also be nice to find a band aid that takes care of cracked finger tips. Every winter my thumbs and the thumbs of other seniors I know seem to split, no matter how much lotion is used, especially since our hands are drier with age and are in water so many times a day, preparing food and doing dishes. There must be a hundred different kinds of band aids on the market, but none that satisfactorily cover the fingertip and stay on when wet. Even the ones that claim to be waterproof and specially made for fingertips don't do the job right. I must have gone through 10 different boxes this winter, without success. And if that's not bad enough, the “new and improved” version of Band aid is so hard to remove from its wrapper, one could be covered with blood before getting it open. What happened to that little red piece of string that used to open the wrapper with one stroke? And how about today's clothing lines? Is anyone thinking about senior citizens when they stock their stores mainly with low cut, tight tops, sleeves that reach below the fingertips, and pants that defy gravity and cling (hopefully) to the lowest part of the hip? - Without realizing it, I bought a pair of pants like that not too long ago. They were the kind of material I was looking for and they were on sale, but because I was in a hurry that day I didn't bother to try them on. Needless to say (but I'm saying it anyway) I returned the pants as soon as possible. I doubt that anyone wants to see senior navels exposed. The same youth theme seems to prevail in the boots department, I was trying to find a new pair of boots for myself this winter, since my old ones were getting pretty shabby. Do you think I could find a pair that wouldn't have me falling in the snow or sliding on ice? [Don't the efficiency experts realize that most senior citizens have some degree of osteoporosis and are afraid of falling? I went to all the department stores in New Milford and a few in Danbury, with no luck. All I wanted was a pair of boots with a flat heel and a zipper to let me get my legs into them. The boots I found had either thin high heels or big chunky heels, plus they were hard to get into without a long shoehorn and thin calves. Luckily, I finally found one store that specialized in shoes, and even that shop had only one pair that fit my specifications. [They weren't even the size I was looking for, but I figured an insole or two would take care of that. That's how desperate I was.) Don't the manufacturers pay attention to today's senior citizen demographics, or do we not spend enough money for it to matter to them?
Terri Andersen is a resident of New Milford.