WHOLE FOODS? CHEMICALS? or SOMETHING IN BETWEEN?
Decoding Food and Supplement Labels to Feed a Healthy Microbiome
To balance and support a healthy body with a complex microbiome (your microbiome includes
the entire community of microbes that live in and on your body) your goal should be to consume
the freshest, most nutritious whole foods you can.
When it is necessary to purchase processed foods it is important to read labels and distinguish
between whole foods, extracts of whole foods, or added chemicals.
What standard nutrition labels won’t spell out for you is whether an individual ingredient is a
whole food, an extract from a whole food, or a chemical. One reason they won’t tell you this is
because the boundary between these categories is not very distinct. Processed foods are almost
always mixtures of whole foods, extracts of foods, and chemicals. Whole foods and whole food
supplements will have the greatest naturally compatible biocomplexity, making them the
best choice for balancing your diet and nutrition. Purified chemicals (which may be naturally
occurring or man-made) will offer the least. The generalizations below are not carved in stone,
but they offer general guidelines that can help you distinguish whole foods from other
ingredients found on food and supplement labels.
Whole foods come from living plants and animals (including fungi and a host
of invisible micro-organisms)
Most of us easily recognize common dietary staples, such as beef, apples, mushrooms, corn, or
fish as whole foods. Difficulty arises when we encounter ingredients whose names we can’t
pronounce and want to decide whether they represent whole foods, extracts, or added chemicals.
If you are lucky, the manufacturer included the scientific name on the label (Panax ginseng or
Chlorella vulgaris). When present, the Latin words in the scientific name (eg. Chlorella
vulgaris) give you an immediate clue. Scientists give all identified plants, animals, fungi, and
microbes a Latin binomial (a name with two words) to represent the genus and species living
things belong to. So when you see two words in Latin representing a single ingredient on a
packaged food or supplement label, the odds are good that you are looking at either a whole food
or an extract from a whole food, rather than at a chemical. Beware, however, of apparent
“binomials” that contain “acid”, as a word or -ate, –ide, -ite as suffixes. More on this in the
section on chemicals. Of course, identification of food items you are not familiar with becomes
harder if the label doesn’t show the scientific names. Fortunately, we live in the information age,
so when all else fails, so if you really want to consume a food you have never heard of, you can
always Google it to learn more.
Food or Natural Product Extracts represent part of the whole.
Extracts offer us an enormous grey area because extracts represent fractions that have been
removed from whole foods or natural products. Often extracts are concentrated, making them
more potent than the food they originated from.
Some extracts, like essential oils, retain sufficient biocomplexity to promote balance. For
example, a typical essential oil (an extract) may contain hundreds of unique compounds that coevolved within a plant in ratios that are compatible with living cells. Others can be purified to a
single chemical or drug, like sugar, corn starch, or cocaine. In general, purification increases the
toxicity of a compound. For example, a coca leaf is less toxic than cocaine. It also disrupts the
balance of your microbiome by benefitting a few microbes while harming many.
Since extracts can run a broad spectrum, ranging from mixtures with remarkable nutritional or
biochemical complexity to highly purified compounds, like sugar or corn starch, the term
“extract” on an ingredient list, while perfectly legal, does not provide enough information to help
you assess whether the ingredient has the biocomplexity and balanced proportions that support
microbiomes.
Unfortunately, this may be all the information you have access too. Our labeling laws were
simply not designed to help us make holistic decisions about feeding our microbiomes. If you
are dealing with a transparent company, you can call their customer service to find out more
about their extraction process. When choosing products that contain extracts, look for those that
retain biochemical complexity (ex: choose dehydrated cane juice over white sugar).
Added Chemicals
To support balanced nutrition and a healthy microbiome, your goal should be to reduce exposure
to any chemical that has been added in ratios differing from those found in whole foods or
natural living systems. This obviously includes reducing exposure to drugs, chemical
preservatives, and pesticides, but it also includes reducing exposure to isolated compounds many
view as food or nutrients, like white sugar or ascorbic acid (aka Vitamin C).
The good news is that added chemicals must be listed on the label. Because chemicals are often
added in soluble forms, they can often be identified by the word “acid,” or by suffixes like –ide
or –ate. For example, pantothentic acid, magnesium citrate, niacinamide, and monosodium
glutamate are all chemicals that might be found on food or supplement labels.
Every guideline has exceptions
These are general guidelines. They will help you start looking at labels from a whole foods
perspective, but they won’t help you identify every chemical or every whole food. In the end,
your willingness to do your own research and become an informed consumer will be your best
guide. Learn more about supporting healthy microbiomes at endofite.com
Restoring Microbiomes for Food Security, and Integrated Health Dr. Mary Lucero
End-O-Fite Enterprises LLC
www.endofite.com
575-649-3955