What is Holistic Nutrition?

Most of us associate the word “holistic” with hippies, strange herbs, and being barefoot. But as it turns out, the father of holistic nutrition was no hippy at all. He was a lawyer and a politician, who also studied medicine and chemistry.

In the mid 1800s Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin was lying on his deathbed. It was two months before his death that his most famous work was published – a brilliant essay, not about politics, but about food. He titled it: The Psychology of Taste.

As a consumer today you no doubt have seen the marketing campaigns and labels that say 0 grams “Trans Fat.” So what is trans fat and what does that really mean. Well good question, because most people don’t really know.

Trans fat is really just another name for an unsaturated fat that contains trans-isomer fatty acids. So to start out, there are two type of fats. Saturated fats which are typically found in processed foods and animal products and unsaturated fats which are typically found in nature and in foods such as nuts, olives and avocados. These unsaturated fats are generally referred to as good fats and can actually help certain aspects of health. Another easy way to distinguish the two fats is a saturated fat is solid at room temperature and an unsaturated fat is liquid at room temperature, which also give you a pretty good picture of what that particular fat is going to do once inside your body.

Now, onto the Trans part, this is where it gets a little more interesting. Trans fat or “trans fatty acids” are not naturally occurring at all although technically classified as an unsaturated fat. It is manufactured in a lab by adding hydrogen to vegetable oils to make them more solid in a process called hydrogenation.

Hi and Welcome to the first installment in the “What The Hell is ____” Series

I decided to produce this series to start informing people what all those long names are on their food ingredients list. If you have ever seen maltodextrin, sodium nitrate or red dye #5 on your label then its time to read on.

Today we start with a classic and one that I found in a favorite food of mine the other day, maltodextrin. So what is it?

Well, for you chemistry majors out there, maltodextrin is short chained starch sugar with a gelatin hybrid base. So its a sweet polysaccharide and of course a variation of dextrin. Dextrins being a group of low-molecular-weight carbohydrates produced by the hydrolysis of starch. Maltodextrin is typically derived from either corn(no surprise here), rice or potatoes.

For everyone else, for all intensive purposes, its SUGAR.