I’ll admit it, I am a new fan of the Jillian Michaels podcast. Sure, I liked her before, but now there is a new level of respect for all the things that she does behind the scenes that never get aired. While listening to one of her recent blurbs, she spoke about her campaign against food companies. Out of the many companies she approached to debate sugars and salts, ONLY ONE COMPANY would let her through their doors and into the factories. That was General Mills. You may know them for their many cereals and progresso soups.
Food Conditioning
Once in the factory and in the office of executives Michaels starts her “save the world” rants about how their products are overly process, packed full of sugar, loaded with salt, and filled with artificial dyes. Within minutes she’s brought back down and talked off the cliff. General Mills executives began to tell their story about how they have already been decreasing sugar and salt for the past several years! Flabbergasted, Michaels asks why they haven’t told the public. G.M. executives go on to say that you must condition the pallet to adjust to flavor changes. In other words, you can’t just drop sugar, and salt without people noticing the huge change is tastes. SO over time, the company has slowly decreased their amounts in efforts to make America healthier.
When I heard this I was shocked (good way)! I was impressed that the food companies had made some sort of effort to make America healthier. Of course, this isn’t all the companies, but Kelloggs has also jumped on the band wagon saying that they would reduce the amount of sugar.
The firm said that by this time next year it would remove 15% of sugar in all its Coco Pops cereals, effectively reducing sugar content to one and a half teaspoons a serving and eliminating almost 750 tonnes of sugar from the nation’s diet annually. The sugar will be replaced with starch from grains and glucose syrup, and no artificial sweeteners will be used. Calories will be maintained at approximately 116 a serving (Source).
What are your thoughts on food companies secretly changing their recipes? Food conditioning may not be such a bad thing. We know that when it was used for evil (increasing salt and sugar) and had horrible affects on our youth and on us. SO changing it for the better could only help us get back to where we should be!!
Adria Ali
BS, CPT, CES, PES
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