NutritionQuarterly_Summer2020

I’m sure that there were always places and people around the country that resisted the packaged foods, but I didn’t really become aware of that resistance until the mid-1990s. I remember seeing a second “health food” store open in downtown Philadelphia and thinking that our city likely wouldn’t support a second store. A few years later, we had a Whole Foods Market and a Fresh Fields (another brand owned by Whole Foods) within 20 blocks of one another and that pendulum had begun to swing. Right around that time, the organic food movement was growing too. Now, to be clear, whole foods and organic foods are not necessarily the same thing. Whole foods can be organic and organic foods can be whole foods, but neither assures the other. Organic regulations cover how the foods are grown and processed, but they can be processed. Some of the benefits that are derived from whole foods can also be derived from organic foods, but that is another article. A few of the main reasons that whole foods and organic foods were gaining traction was that people started to learn and understand that all of this food processing was often leading to loss of vitamins, minerals and fiber, typically found in the food in its natural state. In addition to these things being removed, tons of stuff was being added to foods during the processing. Additives such as artificial colors and flavors, preservatives, and stabilizers pile in with added sugars and salt to keep foods longer and make them more palatable. The combination of all of this, in the foods that we consume every day, can’t help but have a negative effect on health. Continued on next page. Nutrition Quarterly · 2020 – Volume 3 9 What We’re Reading