Do you ever eat cake? Why don’t you just learn to appreciate wheat and baking soda in their natural state instead of making them into something they’re not?
How about this one?
Whole grain oats, sugar, oat bran, corn starch, honey, brown sugar syrup, salt, tripotassium phosphate, canola oil, natural almond flavor, Vitamin E (mixed tocopherosis), Calcium Carbonate, Zinc And Iron (mineral nutrients), Vitamin C (sodium ascorbate), A B Vitamin (niacinamide), Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), Vitamin B2 (riboflavin), Vitamin B1 (thiamin mononitrate), Vitamin A (palmitate), A B Vitamin (folic acid), Vitamin B12, Vitamin D3.
I see a lot of overlapping ingredients between the two lists. The one I posted is for Honey Nut Cheerios. Perhaps not
the absolute healthiest thing one could choose for breakfast, but also not generally seen as grossly unhealthy either. Plenty of people consider it a decent breakfast option for themselves and their children.
And look at this abomination of an ingredient list I found:
Marine Lipid Concentrate, Gelatin, Purified Water, Glycerin, Ethylcellulose, Calcium Carbonate, Microcrystalline Cellulose, Magnesium Oxide, Ferrous Fumarate, Ascorbic Acid, dl-Alpha-Tocopheryl Acetate, Medium Chain Triglycerides, Oleic Acid, Sodium Alginate, Stearic Acid, Beta-Carotene, Biotin, Cholecalciferol, Croscarmellose Sodium, Cupric Oxide, Cyanocobalamin, D-Calcium, Pantothenate, FD&C Red #40 Dye, FD&C Red #40 Lake, FD&C Yellow #6 Lake, Folic Acid, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Niacinamide, Polyethylene Glycol, Polysorbate 80, Potassium Iodide, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Silicon Dioxide, Stearic Acid, Thiamine Mononitrate, Titanium Dioxide (color), Vitamin A Acetate, Zinc Oxide.
Whew!
Who would ever put all that garbage in their body? Oh, that’s the ingredient list for One A Day Prenatal Vitamins. Prenatals, considered essential for mother and baby’s health and universally recommended for daily consumption by doctors across the board.
Long ingredient lists and big words are par for the course with processed and fortified products (and it doesn’t automatically indicate something is evil or unhealthy either). If you wish to avoid that and take a more unrefined, whole foods approach to your diet, that’s fine. But for comparison’s sake, make sure you’re comparing like items — the issue is processed vs. unprocessed, not plant-based vs. animal product.
It’s not uncommon for foods to be fortified — milk, cheese, yogurt, juice, rice, cereal, bread, pasta, flour, margarine, cooking oils, table salt. They all routinely have additional vitamins and nutrients added. Even our drinking water is fortified with fluoride. It’s generally seen as something done in the interest of public health, not evidence of over-processing or “frankenfood.”