Friday Fast Food to Forget - Totino's Pizza Rolls

Are we all so desperate that we have to rely on frozen processed food to feed our kids and ourselves? There are many products I can (and most likely will) speak on for being unhealthy snack options for anyone, but today is just Totino's.

Totino's is owned by General Mills, which, to me, is better than Kellogg's, but still a brand I don't care for.  I do like the Corn and Rice Chex though, but why the sugar and not enough whole grain? Anyway, have you seen the Totino's commercial with a mom on the phone with her hungry kids?

The kids are looking for something in the freezer and are saying there's nothing to eat, but of course Totino's is right in front of their face. Apparently her kids are too dumb to see the bright yellow packaging until she tell them the exact location.  Then they are all happy and the kids go off to make their crap stuffed crap pizza rolls.

Here is the nutrition info for their basic cheese party pizza...

....and that's the one with the least ingredients!

The seemingly most popular pepperoni pizza rolls look even worse....

....and you know being little bites that most people unknowingly eat more of them.

So, kids, parents, childless adults, and well, everyone.....avoid these pizzas and pizza rolls for your life; literally.

You can quickly make your own pizza or pizza rolls that can be frozen or cooked as needed with simple ingredients. Here are a few easy and healthy recipes to try with whole grain tortillas:

Tortilla Pizza

No-Bake Spinach Pizza Rolls

Another Easy Pizza Roll for the Road

I want to start making quick posts like this where I focus on unhealthy processed food and better options.  The key is to make it a quick, but informative post.  I will usually get an idea from some ridiculous commercial or ad.

What do you think?  Do you like quick posts like this?  Please let me know since I like to make my readers happy and give good info.

Happy Friday!!

Thoughts for Thursday: Sugar Consumption > Obesity?

How conscious are you of the sugar content in your food? Are you aware of the growing epidemic of diabetes in children and adults? Many of us are quick to point a finger at obesity (myself include), but a new paper from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have labeled sugar consumption as the culprit. This is an interesting article to read, and I thank Heather, a friend of ours, who shared an article on this topic with me yesterday.

The Fooducate Blog posted on this article today and helped summarize the main points. Here is the body of their post:

"Our daily sugar consumption today stands at 22 teaspoons. At 4 grams per teaspoon, 4 calories per gram, that works out to 352 calories! The most shocking fact is that just 30 years ago the average consumption was only a third of what it is today.

Instead of silly educational campaigns that are no match for corporate advertising budgets, the scientists suggest a set of drastic measures, mimicking the regulatory governance of alcohol and tobacco. 

- Heavy taxation on sugary foods and beverages
- Removing sugar from the FDA’s “generally regarded as safe” (GRAS) list of ingredients
- Removing all sugary foods and drink from schools and nearby
- Prohibiting the advertising of sugary foods and drinks to kids and teens
- Banning the sale of sugary drinks to children"

Basically, the researches who published the paper say the government needs to step in to “help” consumers. While I don’t agree with the amounts of sugar in packaged foods, consumers can and should still make their own choices. Playing the ignorance card is just ridiculous in today’s world; you hear about obesity, diabetes, and unhealthy food consumption everywhere. Although taxing sugary food and drink may keep some consumers from buying the products, this is still not a good fix to me.

Education and awareness are the best options without controlling too much of our “freedom” in America. I understand this is an uphill battle and many parents are reluctant to learn anything on food and nutrition to teach their children. Thus, it’s a continuing cycle as these kids are raised without considering what is going on inside their bodies from the food they eat.

The majority of us complains about government intervention, but then look to them to solve many of our ongoing problems through regulation. There are more levels to how the government works than I can comment on, but I am sure their views on food and nutrition are skewed with the big money business that produce packaged foods. I say stick to educating yourselves, family, and friends; if others don’t catch on, then their loss. It’s harsh, but Darwin’s “Survival of the Fittest” comes to mind here.

I found this video ad against childhood obesity that aired in Australia and wanted to share it here.



I hate to see that children, whose capacity to learn most of life’s lessons from their parents, are unable seek knowledge on something they don’t know to look for. I agree with proper nutrition education and the ban on junk food in schools, but as I said before, the big money companies will fight against this.

A great start would be to eliminate nationwide sales of things like Girl Scout Cookies (hydrogenated fats included!); instead, have the Girl Scouts help support locally farmed food or minimally processed whole grain products. I’ll have a giant smile on my face when I actually want to stop and look at what foods the little scouts have to offer as I am walking into a store.

What are your thoughts on sugar consumption? If you haven’t already, is there anything you plan on changing to help better your health? Please post to comments and let me know your thoughts.

Organic Orthodox

The word Organic is being tossed around by the media and corporations without any context just to get noticed and increase profits. This has created an orthodox where many believe all things organic are unsurpassed in quality and nutritive value. The following article published on Fooducate.com brought this up and it compelled me to make it part of today’s post.

Organic Junk Food is Healthier !?

When it comes to health halos, arguably the biggest one is “Organic”. Please don’t get us wrong, the organic food movement is fantastic, and eating organic food has a multitude of benefits – health, social, and ecological. However, the term “organic” has been hijacked by the processed food industry to the point where junk food is deemed healthful simply because it is organic.

Don’t believe us?

Check out an experiment carried out at Cornell University by graduate student Jenny Wan-chen, who discovered that

…cookies and chips have fewer calories, less fat and more fiber when they are organic.
She discovered this myth when she offered 144 mall shoppers samples of yogurt, chips and chocolate sandwich cookies. Each shopper was given two samples of each food — one that was supposedly organic and one that was allegedly of the conventional variety. After tasting the food pairs, the shoppers were asked to score both samples on a 9-point scale for qualities including taste and fat content. Wan-chen also asked the shoppers to estimate how many calories were in each food.


Overall, shoppers consistently said the organic foods were tastier. They also estimated that the organic foods had more fiber, less fat and fewer calories. They even said they’d be willing to pay more for the “organic” snacks than the “regular” ones. Read more from the Los Angeles Times…

What you need to know:

“Organic” slapped on a processed food product does not immediately imply “healthy”. Take Health Valley Organic for example. They make products such as the Organic Multigrain Strawberry Cobbler Cereal Bars.

Here is the ingredient list:

Strawberry filling (organic cane juice, organic apple powder, organic strawberries, organic rice starch, natural flavor, pectin, citric acid, red cabbage extract for color), organic flours (organic wheat, organic oat, organic corn), organic cane juice, organic expeller pressed canola oil and/or sunflower oil and/or safflower oil, organic oat fiber, organic wheat bran, organic wheat gluten, organic inulin, natural flavors, organic honey, organic nonfat dry milk, organic butter flavor, cream of tartar, baking soda, organic acacia gum, soy lecithin, sea salt.

The pros:
no artificial colorings
No trans-fats

The cons:
Mostly added sugar – 4 teaspoons per bar. Organic Cane Juice is a fancy name for sugar.
refined flours provide very little fiber
The fiber is added using inulin

I was happy to see this article as it’s bothersome to see people change their diets by choosing something "healthier" like Nature’s Path Toaster Pastries over the Kellogg’s Pop-tarts. Sure, the ingredients are cleaner and definitely the lesser evil when comparing the two, but as seen below, the nutrition facts are still similar.

I understand people can eat what and when they want, but many are trying to make a change for the good and are being misled by these Organic processed foods. Organic is not the end all be all way for nutrition! A conventional apple would still be the more nutritional choice over organic apple crisps.
Speaking of fruit, there are some types of produce you can get away with buying conventional and save money in the process.

Here’s a list of 15 produce items that are lower in pesticides and therefore safer to buy non-organic:

1. Onions
2. Avocado
3. Sweet corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mangos
6. Sweet peas
7. Asparagus
8. Kiwi
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Cantaloupe
12. Watermelon
13. Grapefruit
14. Sweet potato
15. Honeydew melon
Download a pocket version or iPhone app of the foods to buy and not buy organic here.

Getting back to processed foods, forget what the front of the package says and go directly to the ingredients to see if it’s worth buying. Organic or not, sugar is sugar and it carries little, if any nutritional value. If you must get your sweet fix, I would suggest honey as it has the most to offer along with its sweetness.

Look out for some of these ingredients when deciding on a packaged food to help make more informed decisions:

1. Partially Hydrogenated Oils (aka Trans Fats): These are abundant in most processed, packaged food and fast food. Hydrogenated fats keep these foods stable and extend their shelf-life to longer than a natural food would have. Yeah, great, but what you get as a result is inflammation, impaired immunity, arthritis, cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, liver damage, and the list of risks go on and on.

2. Natural Sweeteners: If you see sugar as one of the top three on the list, chances are there’s a lot of it since ingredients are listed by volume in products. Be weary of the many names sugar has on labels too! Some of the common names are barley malt, corn syrup, dextrose, fruit juice concentrate, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, maltose, molasses, raw sugar, sucrose, and turbinado sugar. Go here for a full list of 69 different names for sugar.

3. Artificial Sweeteners: Chemical sweeteners like aspartame, Splenda / sucralose (yellow packet), Sweet’N Low (pink packet), and Equal (blue packet) are hundreds of times sweeter than sugar. Like sugar, they make things sweet and offer no nutritional value. You would be surprised at how many items have these added, with low calorie diet foods being the main culprit. Major side effects from artificial sweeteners include bloating, seizures, cancer, increased cravings, headaches, skin conditions, weight gain, and even Alzheimer’s disease. To enjoy a sweet taste without the added calories and side effects, try using stevia in powder or liquid form.

4. Enriched Flours: These are a result of processing a grain into flour and stripping it of the germ and bran; the parts that contain most of the nutrients. The flour is then “enriched” by companies adding a small amount of vitamins and minerals back in to the product. Enriched flour is similar to sugar in that it has a low nutritive value and is essentially an empty carbohydrate. Don’t believe the front of the package claiming “Made With Whole Grains,” as that just means whole grains are somewhere in the product. Make sure to scrutinize the ingredients label and look for the whole grains listed at the top. A good check is to look at the fiber content; if is low or <1, whole grains are not present. As seen above in toaster pastry labels, neither have enough fiber to sneeze at.

There are many other ingredients that are ill-advised on actually ingesting, but these seem to be the most common. The best way to avoid harmful ingredients is to consume whole, unprocessed foods like those found around the perimeter of the grocery store.

It takes me 2+ hours on shopping trips because I read the labels religiously, but it pays dividends in the form of health and happiness. Kelley refuses to go with me because I take so long, but it’s probably for the best, and I’m always happy to see her after being gone for so long! I don’t think everyone should take as long as I do, but reading more labels and being conscious of what you put in your body will keep your body happy and healthy.

What do you do to steer clear of harmful ingredients? Post your ideas to the comments section to share your ideas.