Orange Juice

Now let's turn to the orange juice in this supposedly healthy breakfast. It is quite shocking what turns up in a literature search on orange juice processing.

A quote from Processed and Prepared Foods states that "a new orange juice processing plant is completely automated and can process up to 1,800 tons of oranges per day to produce frozen concentrate, single strength juice, oil extracted from the peel, and cattle feed."

In the processing, the whole orange is put into the machine. Enzymes are added to get as much oil as possible out of the skin. Oranges are a very heavily sprayed crop. These sprays are cholinesterase inhibitors, which are real neurotoxins. When they put the oranges in the vats and squeeze them, all those pesticides go into the juice.

What about the orange peel used for cattle feed? The dried left-over citrus peel is processed into cakes which are still loaded with cholinesterase inhibitors and organophosphates. Mark Purdey in England has shown these neurotoxins are correlated with "Mad Cow Disease" (Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis or BSE). The use of organophosphates either as a spray on the cows or in their feed is one of the causes of the degeneration of the brain and nervous system in the cow and if these components are doing this to the nervous system of the cow, there's a possibility they are doing this to you also. In fact, a study carried out in Hawaii found that consumption of fruit and fruit juices was the number one dietary factor for the development of Alzheimer's disease. The researchers speculated that the real culprit was the pesticides used in fruit—and concentrated in the juices due to modern processing techniques.

The FDA has decreed that we can no longer buy raw juice, because it might be a source of pathogens. But it might surprise you to know that they have found fungus that is resistant to pressure and heat in the processed juices. One study found that 17% of Nigerian packages of orange juice and 20% of mango and tomato juices contained heat resistant fungi. They also found E. coli in the orange juice that was pressure resistant and had survived pasteurization. So there is plenty of danger from contamination from pasteurized juices.

In one study, heat-treated and acid-hydrolyzed orange juice was tested for mutagenic activity. The authors hypothesized that the heating process produces intermediate products, which under test conditions, give rise to mutagenicity, and cytotoxicity. In other words you have got cancer-causing compounds in your orange juice. In another study, gel filtration and high performance liquid chromatography were used to obtain mutagenic fractions from heated orange juice.

Another study shows just how toxic and damaging these juices are to teeth. They found that rats had more tooth decay from these commercial juices than they did from soda pop, which is loaded with sugar.

One more thing about processed orange juice. Have you ever wondered why processed orange juice stays cloudy, why the solids do not settle? This is because soy protein combined with soluble pectin is added, and this keeps the juice permanently cloudy. It might be interesting to know, for those of you who are allergic to soy.
Artificial Flavors vs. Nutritious Homemade Broths and Sauces Based on Natural Nourishing Broths

In the past, all traditional cultures made use of bones to make broth. They recognized the fact that broth was very nutritious. Science tells us that bone broths supply minerals and other nutrients, including gelatin, which aids digestion, in addition to imparting wonderful flavors to our food.

Before the advent of processed food, we made bone broth—beef broth, chicken broth and fish broth—and we used these broths to make delicious soups, sauces and gravies. When we made sauce or gravy at home, we used the good drippings from the meat, added some flour, and then added homemade broth.

Processed soup bases and sauces contain artificial meat-like flavors because it is too expensive for the industry to make real broth. Instead, they take short cuts, which means that consumers are shortchanged. When the homemade stocks were pushed out by the cheap substitutes, an important source of minerals disappeared from the American diet. The thickening effects of gelatin could be mimicked with emulsifiers, but of course, the health benefits were lost. And gelatin is a very healthy thing to have in your diet. It helps you digest your food properly and has been shown to be useful in many digestive disorders. According to a South American proverb, "Good broth resurrects the dead."
Artificial Flavorings, Hydrolyzed Protein, and MSG

Research on gelatin and natural broths came to an end in the 1950s when food companies discovered how to induce Maillard reactions and produce meat-like flavors in the laboratory. In a General Foods Company report issued in 1947, chemists predicted that almost all natural flavors would soon be chemically synthesized. Following the Second World War food companies discovered monosodium glutamate (MSG), a food ingredient the Japanese had invented in 1908 to enhance food flavors, including meat-like flavors. Humans actually have receptors on the tongue for glutamate—it is the protein in food that the human body recognizes as meat. Unfortunately, the free glutamic acid in MSG has a very different effect in the body than the natural glutamic acid in food, one that is harmful, especially to the nervous system. Any protein can be hydrolyzed to produce a base containing MSG, but the usual source is soy. When the industry learned how to make the flavor of meat in the laboratory using inexpensive proteins from grains and legumes, the door was opened to a flood of new products including bullion cubes, dehydrated soup mixes, sauce mixes, TV dinners, and condiments with a meat-flavored base.

The fast food industry could not exist without MSG and other artificial meat flavors to make secret sauces and spice mixes that beguile the consumer into eating bland and tasteless food. The sauces in processed foods are basically MSG, water, thickeners and emulsifiers and some caramel coloring. Your tongue is tricked into thinking that it is getting something nutritious when it is getting nothing at all except some very toxic substances. Even the dressings, the Worcestershire sauce, rice mixes, dehydrated soups, all of these and anything that has a meat-like taste has MSG in it. Almost all canned soups and stews contain MSG, and the "hydrolyzed protein" bases often contain MSG in very large amounts

So-called "homemade soup" in most restaurants is usually made by adding water to a powdered soup-base or soup cubes and then adding chopped vegetables, etc. Even things like lobster bisque and sauces in the seafood restaurants are full of these artificial flavors. It's all profit based. The industry even finds it too costly to just use a little onion and garlic for flavoring, so they are using the artificial flavors instead.

Most of the vegetarian foods are loaded with these flavorings. The list of ingredients in vegetarian hamburgers, hot dogs, bacon, baloney, etc. may include hydrolyzed protein and other "natural" flavorings. Soy foods contain large amounts of MSG as it is formed during processing. MSG is also formed during the spray drying of milk, so it is in reduced-fat milk because spray dried milk is added to these products.
MSG Labelling

As I point out in my various workshops, the three most toxic additives in our food supply are MSG, hydrolyzed protein, and aspartame, and the first two are in all of these secret sauces with "natural flavors." Anything that you buy that says "spices" or "natural flavors" contains MSG! The industry avoids putting MSG on the label by putting MSG in spice mixes, and if the mix is less than 50% MSG, manufacturers don't have to put it on the label. You may have noticed that that phrase "No MSG" has actually disappeared. That's because MSG is in all the spice mixes. Even Bragg's "Liquid Aminos" had to take "No MSG" off their label.
Health Problems with MSG

The industry has known about the health problems caused by MSG for a long time. In 1957 scientists found that mice became blind and obese when MSG was administered by feeding tube. In 1969, MSG-induced lesions were found in the hypothalamus region of the brain. Subsequent studies all pointed in the same direction. MSG is a neurotoxic substance that causes a wide range of reactions, from temporary headaches to permanent brain damage. We have a huge increase in Alzheimer's, brain cancer, seizures, multiple sclerosis, and diseases of the nervous system, and one of the chief reasons is these flavorings in our food. MSG is also associated with violent behavior.

Most surprisingly, MSG causes obesity! In laboratory experiments on obese rats, scientists induce obesity by feeding the animals MSG!

Ninety-five percent of processed foods contain MSG, and as you may know, in the late 1950s it was added to baby food. After some congressional hearings on this subject, the industry told us they had taken it out of the baby food, but they didn't really remove it. They just called it by another name--hydrolyzed protein. I recommend that everyone read the book Excitotoxins, by Dr. Russell Blaylock. He describes how the nerve cells either disintegrate or shrivel up in the presence of free glutamic acid, that is, MSG, if it gets past the blood-brain barrier. The glutamates in MSG are absorbed directly from the mouth to the brain. Some investigators believe that the great increase in violence in this country is due, not to sugar, but to the huge increase in the use of MSG in the food which began in the late 1950's, and particularly because it was put in baby food in very large amounts.
A Quintessential Imitation Food

To give an example of how the food industry thinks, consider this description of artificial bacon, taken from a food processing magazine: "Here is an engineered meat product which looks, cooks, and tastes like bacon, but is formed and laminated by a co-extrusion process. It is made from a mixture of pork, beef, sugar, salt, MSG, and smoked flavor and has a number of advantages. It shrinks very little in cooking; holds its shape and color well; contains twice the protein and half the fat of bacon; costs less than bacon and the processed product does not delaminate." Isn't that nice to know? Of course, now they have figured out how to do this without any meat at all by using soy. The real question is, not whether this fake product will delaminate, but whether in fact it will support life.
Fats and Oils

The last fifty years have seen a huge increase in the consumption of processed vegetable oils, and a concurrent decline in the consumption of animal fats. These oils look clean and bright on the grocers shelves, but a description of vegetable oil processing reveals the true nature of these products.

Oil processing begins with the extraction of crude vegetable oils from the seeds, a process that requires high temperatures and pressures, and often involves a hexane solvent. By the way, these oils start out loaded with pesticides. The steps involved in processing include caustic refining, bleaching, deodorizing, filtering, and removing saturates to make the oils more liquid. Most of these steps involve heat and produce toxic breakdown products known as free radicals. Free radicals cause cancer. When we cook with these oils, more free radicals are formed. These vegetable oils which look clean and have no smell are actually completely denatured and carcinogenic.
Margarine