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Do you remember when you were little? You know, when you used to live five miles west of nowhere? sticks as we used to call it and your parents were going to town? That was the most exciting time. Okay, maybe you don't remember that because maybe you didn't live as far out as I did. But it was a thrill to get in the car with my parents and go for a ride to run errands because I knew I just knew that when we were headed home, I get to stop at that little tiny store at the top of the hill that had the box with the little man and blue on it. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about Cracker Jacks, the cracker jacks, man. Well, why did I like Cracker Jacks so much? Was it the caramel sugar and the popcorn? It was bad. Was it the peanuts? Yeah, that was probably my favorite part food wise. But no, it wasn't about the food in the box. The people who made Cracker Jacks, they were brilliant. Just like the people we're talking about today. Do you know what the brilliance was in their strategy? There was a hidden prize in the cracker jacks box. Okay. It might have been a little sticker. It might have been a little toy. There was always something incredible down in the side in the crackerjack box, and you can open it up and you ate all the cracker jacks look and look and looking for the prize. Maybe did that with your cereal, too?
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Yeah, eight cracker jacks.
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Please don't judge me for it. I didn't know any better. You don't know what you don't know.
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Okay. But anyway, it was all about the prize. And it was the most exciting part. Well, today, we're talking about a special prize that the manufacturers of your feed put in there. You know why? It's a surprise because you don't know what it is. Stick around for it. Because you don't want to miss this. You're listening to the smarter Healthy Living podcast where we firmly believe that getting healthy should never feel like torture.
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We're your host, Jared and Anita Roussel were college sweethearts, and health professionals who help you redefine what getting healthy looks like using a whole food plant based lifestyle. It's time to hear from the experts and learn the best tips and tricks that helped others get me on the overwhelm, to create a vibrant life they love. If you're sick and tired of being sick, and tired, you're in the right place. So pull up a virtual chair, grab your matcha latte.
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And let's get started. Now, I'd like to say that things like eating Cracker Jacks didn't come with long term side effects for me, but they did I had a health crisis around 40. Thankfully, then I'm nearing 50. Now 10 years later, I have so much energy after forcing myself to go to bed at night. And thankfully, a lot of my pains and all those side effects have gone away. And I'm feeling so much better. And we all have things that we're still working on. I definitely have things I'm still working on my health. But the the cracker jacks are what helped to get me to where I was, and I'm not I'm not hating on the cracker jacks people. It's just I didn't know I didn't have a choice because I wasn't. I wasn't informed. I didn't know nobody was telling me I shouldn't be eating these things. But I ate them for the prize. Right? There was that secret ingredient in there? I didn't know what it was. Okay, today we're talking about another secret ingredient. You don't know what it is. And you may never know what it is. So you don't need to be eating it.
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It's all hidden under the term natural flavors.
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Yeah, you know, maybe you stay away from artificial flavors. Because you know, those aren't healthy for you there aren't healthy for your family.
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Because they're artificial, right? Nothing artificial is going to be good for you and your health conscious Mom, you're not going to buy anything that says artificial on it. But what about natural, natural sounds good, natural sounds like nature. It's nice. It
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almost sounds like a warm hug.
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Natural warm hug, right?
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So you're on the box that tells you so if it's natural, it must be good. It
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must be good. It must be healthy, or at least not be harmful. And with that type of word. We just wouldn't question it. It's natural, right? We're trying to eat natural foods, natural living in a natural way.
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And so it must go right along with that
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kind of like getting back to nature really,
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exactly.
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It's you know, it's not really regulated. It's not really regulated by the government. What goes under the term natural they have some loose rules in there that they have to follow. But natural flavors can refer to anything that comes from a spice of fruit or fruit juice, vegetable, vegetable cheese, and edible yeast or bark bed root or leaf and get this meat, seafood, poultry, egg dairy, okay, or anything fermented from these foods. So you're eating natural, you're eating more whole plant foods, and you maybe you're even vegan and you just decide you're not making any meat you're not going to eat any seafood, you're eating natural flavors, which can I have made in there. I mean have meat products have if they have milk products they have to tell you, and it's usually in small print below down below the ingredients it says it may cause allergies. So that's
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the big thing is that they have to reveal anything that's a common allergens of it maybe has peanuts or milk or something of that sort, then they have to reveal. If it's an uncommon allergen, though they may not, if you are an individual that has an uncommon allergy, you might want to well, we highly recommend you stay away from natural flavors.
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Yeah. And really, honestly, as a health conscious mom and feeding your kids well, and wanting to eat more fruits and veggies and wanting to get away from things that are artificial, natural and artificial flavors are both made in a lab. It's really not natural. It's a really dry
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shock to me,
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extracted made in the lab. So it's like a flavor lab.
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They have specific flavor labs.
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So whatever is the big flavor, what they do is they take and they try to make the up and coming flavors or the things that are really popular. And they have flavors that they call What do they call them,
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they call them crave ability experts.
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There you go. flavorist are drivability experts. So they are hired and their specific job is to make foods that are not desirable and taste craveable to you not just tastes good, but craveable. So they might add milk in there. Because milk and dairy have a protein called casein that we know affects your morphine receptors in your brain, it affects you and causes pleasure. And so therefore it brings you back to food again and again. Now I don't know about you, but I don't want to give my child a food that is can cause them to be addicted to it and crave it. That's why I had such a strong addiction to cheese. I mean, I'll just be straight up. It was an addiction. We ate dairy at almost every meal. I loved it. I didn't think I would be able to live without it. I was the Dairy Queen. And now I make all kinds of cheesy things. We cheesy sauces, we make nacho cheese sauce we have we eat lasagna, I mean it has still has cheese in it. But I make it I know what's in it is super quick and easy to do. And I don't feel guilty about it. And I know I'm feeding my kids something that's going to prepare them to be healthy and feel great. But it allows me to do the same.
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Well, this isn't unique to you either. Everybody we hear that eats a lot of cheese. And we mentioned about how we don't you just get this stare from them. And they don't. It's almost like I can't do that. I can never give up my cheese.
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What I have to do that. Nope, can't do it. Yeah, like said it's a shock.
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Yeah. Because you can't ever see when you're addicted to it, how you could ever give it up. I couldn't possibly be addicted. But you start giving it up and you say what in the world. But the key is finding those replacements. The reason you can't get it up is because you want also you want those creamy things and you want those flavors and textures and you've got to have the replacements or it will never ever work. Okay, eventually, maybe you won't have to have the replacements. But I'm telling you, you need those things. Like if you like creamy soups, I do, I've got to have my creamy soups, I love them, I'm not addicted to them anymore.
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They don't have a hold on me, but I enjoy them. They're my comfort fades. You know, I like sometimes to have the baked potato that has something like sour cream on it that's creamy, or maybe a nacho cheese sauce on it that doesn't have any cheese in it or ranch dressing. Right.
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And, and it's veggie bass and I know what's in it, and it took me less than five minutes. I mean, that's the way you make yourself well. But you guys need to know these things. We want you to understand what's in your food so that you can make the decisions. Maybe you decide, you know, it's not really that big of a deal for me. Well, that's your choice, but you need to be informed enough to make it you need to know these things.
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Now, what about organic, organic natural flavors? There has to be better, right?
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Well, actually, I don't know if it's more regulated, but supposedly the rules are that it has to come from organic sources. So I think only 5% can be non organic in it, it has to be right 95% has
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to be organic, and there are no solvents or it cannot be irradiated,
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which tells you that the ones that aren't organic are being irradiated and they are using solvents to extract them.
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So that's really not good. But I'm also not telling you that natural is good. I mean, think about all the things we've just talked about with natural flavorings and thinking that you can still have made in there and you still have dairy in there and all these things you're trying to get less and less of in your life. You don't The thing is, is it's your Cracker Jacks surprise, when nothing happy about it. You don't know what you're eating. If it says natural or artificial flavor.
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You don't know what's in there.
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That's just the straight up fact. It can be anything that they deem that needs to be in there to make you crave their product or to hide a foul smelling or foul tasting food that you would normally eat without the flavorings. Well, why does it need that? Because it doesn't have the good stuff in there that your body craves.
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And it's not fit for human consumption apart from having all the flavorings method, and that's why they do it.
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Another example would be is if you have fruit that's been picked before it was right maybe shipped halfway across the world and it doesn't have the bright colors and the flavor. Well how are they Going to then sell this product. I mean, you might buy it once. But if it's not any good, you're definitely not coming back for it again. So to be able to still market these items, they will then maybe put some type of coating on it or infuse the product with a specific color, or put the flavor enhancers back into it.
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So it's almost like you've taken the flavors out, or the flavors never make it in there because you pick it too early. But then you have to artificially put it in there to get it to be palatable, right. And like you're saying, sometimes in certain food products, you're having to hide some of the yucky flavors that may make their way in there, because they're overly processed.
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So here's another interesting fact for you.
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McDonald's french fries. No, it's not that we recommend any kind of french fry. But you need to know what you're eating. And thankfully, a lot of places now put online what their ingredients are. So I'm sitting here looking at McDonald's, McDonald's franchise and you think vegan,
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right? Well, you're on the road and french fries. Yeah, and you've got maybe you're on a long stretch of highway and McDonald's is the only thing you see anything okay, well, not gonna eat a burger. But hey, they got french fries, I'll just get a couple large fries. And,
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and I'll just have the oil this time, you know, I know that was terrible. It's gonna clog my arteries, but that's okay. No, it is not good for you the vegetable oil, the canola oil, corn oil, soybean, hydrogenated hydrogenated soybean oil. These are the ingredients that are listed on their website, you can look at their french fries for yourself potatoes, the number one ingredient, thankfully for that, but then you've got the vegetable oil. But then right after that is natural beef flavor. So if you're vegan or vegetarian and you're not eating meat, you might want to know that. But who knows what that is? I mean, what have they extracted from the beef?
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I don't know.
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So I don't want to be eating natural beef flavor. I don't want that. And it also says hydrolyzed milk as starting ingredients for this natural beef flavor. So now we know it has milk, and some kind of beef extract. We don't know what and that's in your french fries that you would assume would be vegetarian, but is not now it's not like they're trying to hide it. It's right here on their website. But we're busy. We're in a hurry. We don't know these things. So this is one ingredients list is really, really important.
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And I think that some of the places probably know that this is going to fly under the radar. Because we're not thinking, hey, my french fries have some form of beef extract in it. And we're not going to ask, I can't Well, it's been years since we've been in a McDonald's but I can't remember there ever being a sign across the front saying, hey, by the way, just want to let you know our fries have some beef flavoring.
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Yeah, and it's the cashier gonna know that if you ask, I mean, you're not going to stand there and hold on anyway.
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Because the school best have 100 kids just pulled out misstated behind you and they need their fries. Right? They don't need them. But I'm just saying like, this is real time real time scenario. Yeah. So I remember back in the day, I mean, it was always crowded. And if it wasn't, there was a school bus pulling in two minutes after I got there, and they were all waiting. So I'm not gonna stand there and ask the cashier who's about to pull her hair out, because she's gonna be dealing with all those kids for the next two hours, I digress. But anyway, you she's not gonna know most likely, most likely, she just is there to check you out and put your order in and get the order to you and make sure you're relatively happy with it.
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So she's not going to know most likely you'd need to pull out your phone look it up.
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But natural flavors, and we want you to know one that they're they're generally not natural. I mean, many of them are made in a lab, but they may mimic the natural flavors. These things are not very well regulated. They're not there's not much oversight, and what constitutes a natural flavor and whether or not it's safe.
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There's a term called grass gra s. And that means generally recognized as safe. There have been 2600 different chemicals that are generally recognized as safe since 1960. But how it derives that label is is in question. I mean, there's not these very long, detailed studies done that will prove a certain safety is just from what I've seen, can almost even be auto regulated, meaning the businesses will regulate themselves as to whether or not they think it's an acceptable molecule or not for flavor.
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Exactly. So you don't know what's in there. It's a surprise, it's just not good.
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Like the cracker, Jacqueline won't be a good thing to find out what's in there. So you just don't want to know Don't eat it.
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Don't eat it. It could be anything. Surprise. I'm not gonna eat natural flavors anymore.
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So what we want you to know is that it's probably best to avoid natural flavors all together. And we want you to know that there are going to be natural flavors and a lot of things that you may not automatically assume. So you need to start asking So we don't want to overwhelm you, we don't want you to almost get into a paranoia or panic mode. But we do want you to be aware. And a great place to start would be with the products that you buy, start looking at the ingredients label, everything that's in there has to be listed, except for like natural flavors that may be hidden. But if there's a natural flavor in there, it has to be listed. So look and see.
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And we recommend that if you have that, avoid that. Then as you start to get your habits of the products that you buy, then if you have to go out and about, you know, in a restaurant, you're on the road traveling, whatever, then you start to question that, like Anita said, the stuff for the McDonald's french fries. It wasn't hidden, it was just on a website, but you can look at it, you can look it up, you just have to take the step, take a moment or two to look that up.
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But the easiest way to cut them out of your life is if you're buying any packaged product at all, look at the package ingredients, just read it like Jared said, see what's in there. If it says natural, artificial flavor, choose another option. There's so many great options out there now. And better yet, eat less and less of the packaged products and more of the whole foods. You can combine them together in ways that tastes amazing that not only tastes amazing, but make you feel good. They make you feel great.
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And so your body will tell you,
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you have energy till the night time you have to force yourself to get a bed at night.
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That is a great thing, especially when you're getting close to 50.
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I think it's a great thing at any age that I really I wish I felt like this at 40 and 30.
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It's amazing what whole plant foods can do for you. And it really shouldn't surprise us because that's what we were created to eat. We hope you have a great takeaway here and that you've learned something wonderful that you can take in and use to make your health better and your family's health better. Be plant powered well and until next time, we hope you're having a great week and we'll see you on the next episode.
