Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Pet food ingredients listed alphabetically (to make it easier for consumers to reference ingredients they're curious about).
4) Worst pet food ingredients (which lists all the 1-star ingredients, indicating low- quality or hazardous ingredients).
"Given the atrocious track record of pet food safety in the United States, we felt an urgent need to publish a tell-all reference guide that had the courage to reveal the truth about commonly used pet food ingredients," said Mike Adams, the executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center. |
| To create the report, Mike Adams and the CWC analyzed the ingredients of 448 popular pet food products sold in the United States and organized the ingredients by frequency of appearance. Dr. Lisa Newman then provided a nutritional analysis and comment for each ingredient. Four lists were created:
1) Pet food ingredients by rating (from 5 stars down to 1 star, with 5 stars indicating the best quality ingredients).
2) Pet food ingredients by frequency (sorted by how frequently they appear in pet food products, from 96% down to 1%). |
| North America. The complete list has been posted at natural health news site NewsTarget.com: http://www.newstarget.com/Report_pet_food_ingredients_0.html
To create the report, Mike Adams and the CWC analyzed the ingredients of 448 popular pet food products sold in the United States and organized the ingredients by frequency of appearance. Dr. Lisa Newman then provided a nutritional analysis and comment for each ingredient. Four lists were created:
1) Pet food ingredients by rating (from 5 stars down to 1 star, with 5 stars indicating the best quality ingredients). |
| Worst pet food ingredients (which lists all the 1-star ingredients, indicating low- quality or hazardous ingredients).
"Given the atrocious track record of pet food safety in the United States, we felt an urgent need to publish a tell-all reference guide that had the courage to reveal the truth about commonly used pet food ingredients," said Mike Adams, the executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 In foods, companies pad the ingredients lists with healthy-sounding berries, herbs or superfoods that are often only present in miniscule amounts. Having "spirulina" appear at the end of the ingredients list is practically meaningless. There's not enough spirulina in the food to have any real effect on your health. This trick is called "label padding" and it's commonly used by junk food manufacturers who want to jump on the health food bandwagon without actually producing healthy foods. |
| Don't be fooled by fancy-sounding herbs or other ingredients that appear very far down the list. Some food manufacturer that includes "goji berries" towards the end of the list is probably just using it as a marketing gimmick on the label. The actual amount of goji berries in the product is likely miniscule.
4. Remember that ingredients lists don't have to list chemical contaminants. Foods can be contaminated with pesticides, solvents, acrylamides, PFOA, perchlorate (rocket fuel) and other toxic chemicals without needing to list them at all. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 We visit our co-packer twice a year to talk face-to-face with them and to see the ingredients and get certification on certain ingredients.
Everything that goes into our food has been certified. It has been analyzed to have the levels of nutrients required. Again, you can get an ingredient that's very old, like a grain especially. You can get a grade-one grain, and you want to make sure your grade-one grain is there at the mill. We analyze our food twice a year apart from when we go to the mill. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Every grocery store in America sells foods containing cancer-causing chemicals (sodium nitrite), heart disease promoting ingredients (hydrogenated oils), and drinks that promote osteoporosis and bone loss (carbonated soft drinks). It's almost like a disease store, not a grocery store, since most items on the shelves are actually "disease in a box" rather than real food.
In Washington these days, there's a lot of talk about "protecting Americans." But I say that if we really want to protect Americans, we need to start banning the food ingredients that are killing Americans. |
| To turn the tables on the food lobbyists, and in an effort to educate the public about the details of which grocery ingredients to avoid, I've written a book on the subject called "Grocery Warning." This book reveals all the dangerous ingredients to be avoided, along with which foods and beverages contain them. It presents shopping lists: foods to avoid vs. foods to buy, and helps shopper make informed, health-enhancing foods choices each time they shop for groceries. You'll find details on this book at TruthPublishing. |
| For example, did you ever look at the ingredients on those meal replacement shakes for diabetics? The first three ingredients are water, sugar and sugar (sucrose)! It's primarily sugar water, sold as a product for diabetics. With products like this on the shelves, even people who think they're enhancing their nutrition actually end up with a lifelong diabetes problem. (Sugar for diabetics... gee, can it get any crazier?)
On top of all this, virtually every grocery store in America sells a vast array of foods that promote chronic diseases. Foods made with white flour are very common. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Mike: So, without naming brand names, how prevalent are these kinds of ingredients in the popular supply of pet food?
Newman: I would say approximately 60 percent of the pet food that you can get at the grocery store has some sort of animal meat by-product in it.
Mike: Wow.
Newman: Now, that's not necessarily a euthanized dog or cat. It could be road kill, or it could be swamp rats. Nutria is a swamp rat that grows in Louisiana. It is all around and can be easily hunted, or gathered, if you will. They go right into the pet food ingredients as protein. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 To create the free consumer guide, Adams reviewed pomegranate juice product ingredients, comparing them to the claims implied by the pictures and words on the front labels of such products. Some products made primarily with apple juice show no apples at all on the front label, instead depicting pomegranates and blueberries while claiming "100% Juice!" in big letters. "This misleads consumers into thinking these products are one hundred percent pomegranate juice," explained Adams, "When in fact, they may only be five or ten percent pomegranate juice. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The trick is to get as much protein without spending any money on ingredients.
Newman: Exactly.
Mike: You said these foods are mostly vegetable-based and contain undesirable proteins for animals.
Newman: Yes, like swamp rats or like road kill.
Mike: So, there is crude fiber and crude fat. We see these on all pet food bags.
Newman: Exactly. Again, that is just the percentage of the fiber, the fat and the nutrients in that bag. It doesn't tell you the quality of those ingredients. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Mike: I've seen these ingredients, like corn syrup.
Newman: Yes, corn syrup and actual sugar is listed on the label. I couldn't believe it.
Mike: Why does your dog need sugar? Amazing...
Newman: He doesn't need sugar. He wants a good-tasting, highly palatable food that tastes like meat. That is what he's looking for.
Mike: There was a popular brand treat I bought at a big pet store. I'm not going to mention the name, but I bought this to do an article on it. The ingredients blew me away. Not only was there sugar, it had propylene glycol and artificial colors. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 So don't believe food claims -- even from natural product manufacturers -- that state they are "all natural" unless you also verify what's on the ingredients label. And if it has yeast extract, or autolyzed yeast extract, or hydrolyzed vegetable protein or any of these other ingredients that actually harbor MSG, then it is, in my opinion, a deceptively positioned product, because it claims to be natural but in fact uses highly potent refined extracts that don't occur anywhere near that concentration in nature. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 In this review I'll give you the straight-up answers about Trim Spa, and tell you what I think about the ingredients and the product.
First off, given all of the hype and promotion surrounding Trim Spa, you may be surprised to learn that this is, in fact, a well designed weight loss supplement that can support real progress for people trying to lose weight. So even though I don't appreciate all of the marketing surrounding this supplement, a closer look at the ingredients convinces me that this is, in fact, a very effective nutritional supplement for people working to lose excess body fat. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| We visit our co-packer twice a year to talk face-to-face with them and to see the ingredients and get certification on certain ingredients.
Everything that goes into our food has been certified. It has been analyzed to have the levels of nutrients required. Again, you can get an ingredient that's very old, like a grain especially. You can get a grade-one grain, and you want to make sure your grade-one grain is there at the mill. We analyze our food twice a year apart from when we go to the mill. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Virtually all hydrolyzed or autolyzed ingredients contain some amount of hidden MSG.
Don't be fooled by the name of the product
Did you know that the name of the food product has nothing to do with what's in it? Brand-name food companies make products like "Guacamole Dip" that contains no avocado! Instead, they're made with hydrogenated soybean oil and artificial green coloring chemicals. But gullible consumers keep on buying these products, thinking they're getting avocado dip when, in reality, they're buying green-colored, yummy-tasting dietary poison. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Surprisingly, one popular brand owned by Coca-Cola (Odwalla) performed very well in this consumer guide review, earning four out of five stars for its use of honest ingredients and product labeling. PepsiCo's Tropicana Pure brand, however, fared poorly, earning a very low rating and condemnation for its "deceptive" photograph on the front label that fails to accurately depict what's really in the bottle.
Consumers can view the complete guide, including information about the health benefits of pomegranate juice, at www.NewsTarget.com or by directly visiting: http://www.newstarget. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Sprouted grains and seeds are far healthier than non-sprouted. Raw ingredients are generally healthier than processed or cooked. Whole grains are healthier than "enriched" grains.
6. Don't be fooled by the word "wheat" when it comes to flour. All flour derived from wheat can be called "wheat flour," even if it is processed, bleached and stripped of its nutrition. Only "whole grain wheat flour" is a healthful form of wheat flour. (Many consumers mistakenly believe that "wheat flour" products are whole grain products. In fact, this is not true. Food manufacturers fool consumers with this trick. |
| Manipulating serving sizes
Food companies have also figured out how to manipulate the serving size of foods in order to make it appear that their products are devoid of harmful ingredients like trans fatty acids. The FDA, you see, created a loophole for reporting trans fatty acids on the label: Any food containing 0.5 grams or less of trans fatty acids per serving is allowed to claim ZERO trans fats on the label. That's FDA logic for you, where 0.5 = 0. But fuzzy math isn't the only game played by the FDA to protect the commercial interests of the industry is claims to regulate. |
| They claimed the ingredients were "proprietary knowledge" and that listing them would destroy their business by disclosing their secret manufacturing recipes. It's all nonsense, of course, since food companies primarily want to keep consumers ignorant of what's really in their products. That's why there is still no requirement to list various chemical contaminants, pesticides, heavy metals and other substances that have a direct and substantial impact on the health of consumers. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Likewise, the food companies aren't out to actually harm anybody, it's just that they are unintentionally accomplishing precisely that due to the biological cause-and-effect consequences of their product ingredients.
Which ingredients am I talking about? Sodium nitrite (cancer), refined white flour (diabetes), hydrogenated oils (heart disease), aspartame (nervous system disorders), red meat (colon cancer), excess sodium (hypertension), and the list goes on.
The American public is just now waking up to this reality. Study after study now shows the undeniable link between foods and disease. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Manufacturers hide so many dangerous ingredients in food labels that, unless you make a special effort to read them, you will inevitably end up consuming ingredients that are dangerous to your health, such as hidden hydrogenated oils and yeast extract -- which is an ingredient that contains monosodium glutamate -- or artificial colors and other similar ingredients. In fact, a lot of foods claim to be healthy on the fronts of their labels while hiding dangerous ingredients in the ingredients list. So for NewsTarget information to have helped 57. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| The guide not only reveals the tricks some companies use to deceive consumers, it also names the top recommended pomegranate and blueberry juice products that are made with honest ingredients.
Author Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and author of hundreds of books, guides and special reports on nutrition and disease prevention. Additional information about Adams is available at www.HealthRanger. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Manufacturers hide so many dangerous ingredients in food labels that, unless you make a special effort to read them, you will inevitably end up consuming ingredients that are dangerous to your health, such as hidden hydrogenated oils and yeast extract -- which is an ingredient that contains monosodium glutamate -- or artificial colors and other similar ingredients. In fact, a lot of foods claim to be healthy on the fronts of their labels while hiding dangerous ingredients in the ingredients list. So for NewsTarget information to have helped 57. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| The co-packer is responsible for ordering the different ingredients that go into the food. He is ordering them through the channels we've set up. It can make it very difficult. For instance, we had an ostrich and emu canned food, and we had to take it off the market because we couldn't get a reliable ostrich and emu supply. So, logistically, you can have a great product on the market and lose it, which is very frustrating to us. But we have managed to maintain the same meat supplier, and beef, chicken and lamb, for instance, are the meats we use in our foods. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| I was attracted to this product because of what is found in the ingredients. I would like to go through the first three or four, just to give people a sense of what is in this pet food.
Newman: It is a good way to educate people about their labels.
Mike: Absolutely. If they are not reading it, then they are just paying attention to the marketing claims on the front. Those are easy to distort.
Newman: Did you know that most of the money a company earns on its pet food goes into marketing? It doesn't go into the bag of food. There are literally pennies on the dollar of nutrition in the food. |
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