What the Food Industry Doesn't Want You to Know

Hey everyone. I’m Dr Angela Zechmann.

Have you ever heard of the bliss point? Probably not – because the food industry doesn’t want you to know about that. It’s one of their dirty little secrets.

Today, I’m going to give you some insight into the food industry and the things that they don’t want you to know, and why that matters in your weight loss journey. If you don’t know me, I’m a medical doctor specializing in weight loss, and I’ve also founded and created “Journey Beyond Weight Loss” (see footnotes), which is an online program designed to help people lose weight and keep it off.

So the “Bliss Point,” what is the bliss point? The bliss point is the magical amount of sugar, not too much, not too little, just right to get you hooked. It turns out – sugar’s a powerfully addictive drug! And so the food industry has spent billions of dollars doing research to figure out what amount of sugar works best to stimulate the addictive part of the brain in people to get them hooked.

The amount of sugar is going to vary depending on the recipe of the product. So, for example, the amount of sugar in a Coca-Cola is going to be different than the amount of sugar in Captain Crunch, which is different than the amount of sugar in your yogurt. But all of it is designed very carefully to make sure that you get addicted. It gives new meaning to the word ‘sweet spot,’ don’t you think?

Just so you know, the food industry isn’t just doing this research on adults. They’re doing this research on children as well. And here’s how they do it. This is very well documented in a book by Michael Moss called “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.” So let’s say that the food industry has a new pudding and they want to market it to children, and they want to find out what’s the right amount of sugar to put in this pudding. Say they have 20 different recipes. They take the pudding recipes, little samples, two by two, and they place it in front of the child. They’re doing this research on very, very young children, and sometimes children who don’t really know how to use language very well. So they give the child a stuffed toy, like a Big Bird. And they tell the child, ‘have a taste of each one of these things and whichever one you like best, you give it to Big Bird’ and they’re watching the child while they’re doing this. They’re watching the expressions on the child’s face and the one that they give to Big Bird, great. They know that one was the preferred one. So two by two, two by two, two by two, they give the child the samples and they figure out which one the child likes best.

Then they do this experiment on hundreds of other children and then they come up with a formula for the amount of sugar that should be in the child’s putting. Now what they’ve discovered is that children like more sugar than adults do. So children’s stuff is sweeter. They’ve also realized that when you sensitize a child’s brain at a young age to sugar, you can get them addicted for life.

This is the kind of stuff that’s going on guys. And if you’re wondering why you’re having a hard time with your weight, I have to tell you, this isn’t your fault! The food industry has done a brilliant job experimenting on adults and children and getting people hooked at very young ages.

Now, my patient, Sherry, decided that she was going to start looking for sugar just like a hawk, and I call it ‘stealth sugar.’ So what kinds of places did she find sugar where she was not expecting it? Ketchup! Ketchup has four grams of sugar in a tablespoon. Now who eats one tablespoon of Ketchup? If you’re going to have French fries, you’re going to probably have quite a few tablespoons of ketchup. So maybe, you’re into 12, 16 grams of sugar just in the ketchup.

How about your favorite light low fat yogurt? This thing just wants you to know the first ingredient here is cultured, pasteurized, Grade A non-fat milk. The second ingredient is high fructose corn syrup! This thing has 14 grams of sugar in it. This is your ‘healthy’ yogurt!

What about this one? Autumn Squash Soup by Panera. This one my daughter brought home one night and she said, “Mother – this stuff is wonderful! I absolutely love it.” And she thought to look to see if there was any sugar in it. It turns out there’s 30 grams of added sugar in this container of autumn squash soup!

What about drinks? What about stuff like Gatorade? If your children are in sports or maybe even you’re in sports and you’re trying to rehydrate. Gatorade’s got this awesome reputation. This is some lemon-lime Gatorade. This has 34 grams of sugar in this! You’re going to get a lot of sugar in with those electrolytes. I have a patient named Sarah who had been doing really, really well and then her weight loss slowed down. I asked her what she was eating and she said, “I don’t eat that much.” And I said, “well then, what are you drinking?” And it turned out she was going to Jamba Juice and getting a smoothie every morning. And what we discovered when we looked it up online is that her morning ‘healthy’ smoothie actually had 90 grams of sugar in it! (22 1/2 teaspoons of sugar!) So this is her Jumba Juice ‘healthy’ smoothie!

To put that into perspective, the World Health Organization recommends no more than 50 grams of added sugar per day. And if you want to be healthy, no more than 25 grams of added sugar. (see footnote) Thats a lot of sugar! Once Sherry and Sarah became aware of their blind sugar consumption, and the stealth sugar that’s in stuff, they started watching like hawks! Watching their food labels to find out where is it that they were being bamboozled.

So if you want to give the food industry the proverbial finger, join me in my Facebook group! It’s called the “Sugar (and Flour!) Buster’s Society.” And we’re talking about this stuff all the time. The other thing you can do is to just go look at foods that you think are healthy.

So we all know doughnuts have got a ton of sugar in them. What about foods that you think are healthy like that yogurt. Check them out. See if there’s any stealth sugar in it. If you find added sugar in foods that you think are healthy, please take a picture of it and post it in the comments to this video. This way you can help educate other people about what the food industry has been doing.

Share this video with your friends. I really want people to understand more about the “Bliss Point” and let’s see what we can do to get wise to what the food industry has been up to. Okay?

I’ll see you next week with a new video. In the meantime, have fun getting healthy! Take care. Bye Bye.

xxx – Dr Angela

Footnotes:
World Health Organization