Outside In | Eating healthy is simple: choose food over highly processed food
- While Hong Kong’s obesity problem is not as widespread as in the West, there is still reason for concern as the Western diet becomes more prevalent
- Heeding Michael Pollan’s food rules can help cut through much of the confusing language around food and improve what and how we eat
Why the suspicion? First, the full name: Toasted Coconut Almond Milk Blend. Obviously, the giveaway word was “blend”, which opens up a Pandora’s box of possibilities inside.
It reminded me of my first adventure down a US supermarket aisle, several decades ago, in search of some muesli for breakfast. I encountered almost 40 metres of vividly packaged offerings, from a wide range of granolas to hundreds of muesli-like substances, but my search for simple, unglamorous muesli was in vain.
Second was the elaborate list of things this blend did not have: 100 per cent vegan, low saturated fat, lactose-free, soy-free and carrageenan-free. The minute you see such a long list of things it is free of, you start to build a mental list of what it might not be free of.
By the way, what on earth is carrageenan? Why is it so important to eliminate something I never knew existed? Wikipedia tells me carrageenan is derived from a red seaweed. It has apparently been used for centuries as a thickener in ice cream, cottage cheese and jellies. But in the past decade some scientists have claimed it is responsible for colitis, rheumatoid arthritis and even colon cancer.