Pandora's Lunchbox Quotes

“The avalanche of prefabbed, precooked, often portable food into every corner of American society represents the most dramatic nutritional shift in human history.”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“The unintended consequences of global corporate growth are already evident and depressing. China, for instance, has just passed the U.S. for Type II diabetes prevalence: 11.6 percent of Chinese adults have the disease, compared with 11.3 percent here. In 1980, the diabetes rate in China was below 1 percent.”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“Two recent additions worth mentioning: Mr. Zee’s Apple Factory, a free e-book that teaches young kids about how processed food is made and cleverly marketed to them, and Unjunk Yourself, a series of highly watchable music videos about the pointlessness of eating food that’s “deep fried, modified, hydrogenized.” Along”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“While most large packaged-food companies are traded on stock markets, there is one that isn’t. And not only is Mars, the candy and chocolate purveyor, not public, it’s private in the best possible way. Its stockholders, who have been members of the Mars family for the past 102 years, tend to be patient and long-term, willing to give the company’s management a generous leash.”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“The thing about major food manufacturers that you hardly ever hear is that they do already sell bona fide healthy products. Just not very many of them. Kraft’s Planters brand and Pepsi’s Frito-Lay division make bags and tins of nuts; ConAgra sells David’s sunflower seeds; Smucker’s makes peanut butter that’s nothing more than peanuts and salt; General Mills’s Cascadian Farms brand offers an array of frozen fruits and vegetables, as does Pinnacle Foods’s Bird’s Eye brand.”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“Eating healthy, at least for many women, is bound up in the stories we tell ourselves. The”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“Many consider veggie burgers better for you than hamburgers, owing to their minimal fat content and perhaps the descriptor “veggie.” Yet hamburgers look like Brussels sprouts compared to the nutritional vacancy of soy protein. And”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“Half a dozen Chinese companies, for instance, are making 90 percent of the vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, that goes into food as both a vitamin and a preservative.”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“That the marketability of added nutrients is at an all-time high is evidenced by the fact that artificial sweeteners now contain them. Packets of Splenda Essentials have B1, B5, and B6 “to help support a healthy metabolism.” In fact, vitamins and minerals are so thoroughly embraced that they’re the only synthetic ingredients with carte blanche approval for inclusion in certified organic products, even when those vitamins and minerals are produced with genetically modified (GM) bacteria or have been synthesized from noxious petrochemicals. GM technology and toxic chemicals are otherwise banned from organics. Vitamins”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“When consumed in excess, sodium-based additives are troubling because they bypass the body’s ability to detect and regulate sodium intake. Oversalt your food at home, and it’s unlikely you’ll be able to remain unaware. Probably you’ll end up finding something else to eat. The”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“The use of sodium-based ingredients—there are dozens in our food supply—is part of the reason the lion’s share of sodium we ingest comes from processed foods, not the saltshaker. Besides sodium citrate and sodium phosphate, there’s sodium acetate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium alginate, sodium caseinate, sodium hexametaphosphate, sodium nitrate, sodium stearoyl lactylate, and Harvey Wiley’s favorite, sodium benzoate, to name a few. The”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“Sellers of traditional cheese held fast to their beliefs that natural, aged, nonsterilized varieties offered a superior taste. But in 1932, University of Wisconsin researchers published a study revealing that most Americans didn’t necessarily agree. In blind taste tests, two thirds of people preferred the flavor of the processed variety.”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“using fat-free dressing on a salad can prevent you from absorbing many of the vegetables’ healthy (fat-soluble) phytochemicals. At”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“You probably don’t think of your lunch as being constructed from powders, but consider the ingredients of a Subway Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sandwich. Of the 105 ingredients, 55 are dry, dusty substances that were added to the sandwich for a whole variety of reasons. The chicken contains thirteen: potassium chloride, maltodextrin, autolyzed yeast extract, gum Arabic, salt, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, fructose, dextrose, thiamine hydrochloride, soy protein concentrate, modified potato starch, sodium phosphates. The teriyaki glaze has twelve: sodium benzoate, modified food starch, salt, sugar, acetic acid, maltodextrin, corn starch, spice, wheat, natural flavoring, garlic powder, yeast extract. In the fat-free sweet onion sauce, you get another eight: sugar, corn starch, modified food starch, spices, salt, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate and calcium disodium EDTA. And finally, the Italian white bread has twenty-two: wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, sugar, yeast, wheat gluten, calcium carbonate, vitamin D2, salt, ammonium sulfate, calcium sulfate, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, potassium iodate, amylase, wheat protein isolate, sodium stearoyl lactylate, yeast extract and natural flavor. If”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“The amount we pay for our food has declined dramatically over the last six decades, from 20.6 percent of disposable income in 1950 to now 9.8 percent. This is lower than at any other time in our history and less than any other country.”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“You might think that having a product contain actual tomatoes or real blueberries would be a good thing. But when processed food is concerned, fruits and vegetables cause problems since they contain water, which can cause spoilage or ice crystals when products are frozen—not to mention that these whole-food ingredients are expensive for food manufacturers.”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“processed food is something that could not be made, with the same ingredients, in a home kitchen. Your home kitchen. I”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“pasteurized milk, let’s be clear, is not a processed food. Nor are frozen peas, canned beans, washed and boxed spinach, bags of baby carrots, packages of aged cheese, or boxes of raw, frozen ground beef shaped into hamburgers. At”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“In total, some 70 percent of our calories come from this sort of (ultra) processed food.”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

“As a population, we ingest double the amount of added fats, half the fiber, 60 percent more added sugars, three and a half times more sodium, and infinitely greater quantities of corn and soybean ingredients than we did in 1909. The”
― Melanie Warner, Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal