It only means that commercially produced pills that contain these substances in concentrated form may not help. Said the AP:
The idea that antioxidant vitamins might ward off heart trouble was plausible. Test tube studies indicated that antioxidants protect the heart’s arteries by blocking the damaging effects of oxygen. The approach works in animals, and studies show that healthy people who eat vitamin-rich food seem to have less heart disease.
However, experts say that perhaps antioxidants work when they are in food, but not when in pills. 37
Gulping jarfuls of orange, pink, or blue artificially concentrated vitamin tablets in an effort to offset the increasing nutritional poverty of our corporate/commercial food supply may actually end up making things worse, not better.
“Whenever the diet is inadequate, the person should first attempt to improve it so as to obtain the needed nutrients from foods,” say Whitney and Rolfes.38
Great advice, but how can we follow it if the foods available at our supermarkets have few or no nutrients? If the trend lines over the past 50 years continue to hold true, it would seem that our food supply system is heading inexorably toward a diet made up largely of “nonfoods” that contain increasingly fewer measurable nutrients, except for the relatively dangerous ones of fat, salt, and sugar.
Twenty or more years from now, if these trends aren’t halted, will the “food” offered commercially in chain stores be nothing more than an attractively colorful but inert, sweet- or salty-tasting physical solid we swallow to give ourselves the illusion of eating, while we try hopelessly to obtain our real nourishment by juggling a smorgasbord of pills? “Hey, Jack, come on over for Thanksgiving dinner, we’re having roast pill, with non-gravy!”
Whatever the future holds, for the past 50 years the nutrients have been leaching out of nearly everything we eat, leaving a vacuum that commercially produced vitamin pills can’t fill.
And, as the saying goes, “nature abhors a vacuum.”
Something else is already filling it.
MARY WASHINGTON IS A PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN, with wide, innocent-looking eyes and a quiet, disarming voice. You wouldn’t think she’d scare anybody, but judging from her story in the Westsider, a Michigan newspaper, she sure made some folks nervous.
Covering the consumer beat, she’d been assigned to investigate a new supermarket phenomenon. As she told her readers:
Going to the grocery to buy meat has probably been the same routine for years: Pick your favorite pork chops, chicken, steak, etc. and prepare it at home, as usual. But what if that routine could threaten your life?
People with high blood pressure, heart problems, or allergies had better start reading the package meat labels closely, because there’s something new in chain store food most consumers aren’t aware of.
I went to the meat section of my two local grocery stores, and did some shopping around. I found that meat, especially boneless pork chops and boneless chicken, now has the words ‘seasoned,’ or ‘preseasoned’ in almost-invisible small print on the label. This disturbed me, so I went to the store butcher at [the first store] and asked what seasoning is in this meat. 1
Adopting a deadpan tone to match her innocent demeanor, she continued:
He looked at me as if I was crazy, and asked why I was so concerned. I told him my mother has high blood pressure and if she is unaware that seasoning is in this meat, it could make her ill. Ordinary salt is actually sodium chloride—and sodium is something people with hypertension (high blood pressure) should avoid.
According to the Family Health and Medical Guide, “a reduction in sodium intake is particularly important for persons with hypertension.” Why? “Hypertension causes injury to the blood vessels, making it easier for atherosclerosis to develop. It is also the major factor in the development of stroke. In addition, hypertension makes the heart work harder, resulting in an enlarged heart, poorer function and congestive heart failure. Hypertension can result in damage to the eyes and kidneys as well.” And sodium makes hypertension worse.
Not to mention the possibility of ... whatever other unnamed “seasoning” is in this meat posing complications for persons with allergies.
I also told the man I was a reporter for the Westsider. This seemed to make him nervous. His name tag said “Ron,” but he refused to give a last name. He said he didn’t know anything about the so-called seasoned meat, because all he did was package it and set it out on the shelves.
The store manager, Melvin, also gave no last name and refused to speak on the record. 2
Mary was persistent, however, and wouldn’t give up.
I asked why a fourth of the packaged meat on the meat counter was labeled “seasoned?” He said it was because it “has flavor” in it. I asked whether sodium was the best choice for flavor, reminding him ... about people with hypertension.
Melvin said if people have special needs then they should pay more attention to the foods they eat and make better choices when choosing their groceries. He seemed anxious for me to go away.
At [her other neighborhood store], the butcher said flatly “no comment!” He was not wearing a name tag at all. The store manager said he was busy and to leave my phone number to call me later on the issue. But I told him I would wait. After an hour, he came and said he needed to make a couple of phone calls first to know the right answers to my questions. He never got back with me. I also called him and left a message, but he ignored it. 3
Since reading Mary’s story I’ve made some forays of my own, to Canadian supermarkets, and found the same sorts of labels, and the same reluctance of store employees to answer questions about them. Most often, they simply shrug and plead ignorance. In some stores most meat labels now carry seasoning “instructions,” advising shoppers to “season with pepper and or spices (No Salt).”
Why should diners suddenly need to be told—after centuries of deciding this question for themselves—how to season their meat? And why no salt?
Determined to get an answer, I followed the story up the food sales chain, from store clerk, to meat manager, to wholesale meat salesman, to a customer service agent for a meat packer in Manitoba, who at first told me “we have a lot of moisture-enhanced products going out now, because it tends to make the pork less chewy, more tender. But there is some salt in the moisture that’s going into the pork already.... It’s like a brine solution.” When I mentioned the possible effects of salt on people with hypertension,
