When my kids were younger, the\u00a0“Seven Wonders of the World” would sometimes be discussed in school\u00a0– y’know, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Pyramid of Giza, and so on.\u00a0 Afterwards, they and their classmates would be\u00a0challenged to come up with a list of\u00a07 modern\u00a0wonders.\u00a0 Technological achievements\u00a0like computers, space travel, flight, television and splitting the atom always made these lists.\u00a0 I always found it odd\u00a0that our modern system of food processing and distribution –\u00a0a network\u00a0that’s intrinsic to our\u00a0very survival\u00a0–\u00a0never even got\u00a0an honorable mention.\u00a0 It was\u00a0taken completely for granted – and\u00a0not just by the kids, but also by their teachers. \u00a0<\/p>\n
This is pretty typical.\u00a0 It’s something most people don’t think twice about – processed food is so ubiquitous, it’s invisible.\u00a0 We’re so accustomed to the relative safety, variety, and reliability of our food supply, that it’s only news when the system breaks down.\u00a0 Even then, such events are temporary and local, so they’re soon forgotten.<\/p>\n
It’s rather different for me: rather than being blind to it, I’m hyper-aware of it.\u00a0 This is because\u00a0my degrees are in Food Science.\u00a0 That’s not<\/strong> nutrition, by the way: it’s food technology.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It’s an odd pairing: most people don’t think of technology as something related to food.\u00a0 I have an especially vivid memory of\u00a0a conversation I had\u00a0years ago with\u00a0the mechanic working on my car.\u00a0 I was in grad school at the time, and he asked me what I was studying…so I told him.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n He looked at me with this deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression on his face.\u00a0 He was obviously unclear on the concept, so I tried framing it this way:<\/p>\n Me: “Have you ever wondered how you go from an ear of corn to a box of Corn Flakes…and how you make\u00a0each box of Corn Flakes look, taste, smell and crunch exactly like every other box of Corn Flakes, year after year?”<\/p>\n Him: “No, never.”<\/p>\n He still had that\u00a0clueless look on his face, and that worried me some, as he’d just gotten through fixing my brakes!<\/p>\n But that’s the essence of it, really.\u00a0 Raw agricultural products are living (or once living) things, and everything that’s done to them: freezing, heating, fermenting, drying, grinding, extracting, extruding, etc. has an effect.\u00a0 The mass production of food products involves biochemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry, engineering, microbiology, toxicology, enzymology…and yes, even psychology.\u00a0<\/p>\n At this point, you might be asking: what does this have to do with losing weight and getting in shape?<\/p>\n In my experience, it matters A LOT.\u00a0 There’s more to food than just the number of calories, and grams of protein, fat, and carbohydrates.<\/p>\n This is a topic I’ll be\u00a0posting about a lot\u00a0in the future, to explore what’s in everyone’s favorite foods, and to dissect the often confusing subject of what constitutes a “healthy” food.\u00a0 When you understand food, it’s a lot easier to make good choices and resist the\u00a0lure of bad ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When my kids were younger, the\u00a0“Seven Wonders of the World” would sometimes be discussed in school\u00a0– y’know, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Pyramid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[698,701],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}