Whole Foods is a grocery store famous for their list of banned or unacceptable ingredients to use in food.

This is one of the major draws for people who shop there religiously and may provide some explanation to those who were wondering why some people love the place so much.

The place definitely gives off the vibe that they’re looking out for you with their list of over 100 banned ingredients. As a shopper trying to watch out for certain ingredients for the sake of yourself or your family, it’s nice to know that the place you’re buying from is doing part of the work for you. This is actually one of the things that got me to start shopping there when I was in the area.

Another thing is that they are a very conducive store when it comes to specialty diets. They will really make the process easier for some people to find specific options like when I ate a vegan diet several years ago.

After falling out of my honeymoon phase with Whole Foods, I started to notice there were some ingredients in the foods they sold that didn’t have the best reputation. Years later with many more things taken into account, I do believe Whole Foods does a nice job of presenting their customers with mostly healthy options in their stores.

But in my opinion, they should add some more ingredients to that “banned” list if they’re really serious about health. If I still have to turn around every item at the store and sniff out bad ingredients, there may be more items to consider. Here are a few that I’ve found:

Industrial Seed Oils

Industrial seed oils are an enormous problem in our food supply today and have been cited for causing numerous health complications in people.

The ones I have noticed at Whole Foods include canola oil, soybean oil, and corn oil and there may even be more sold there.

In my opinion, this is very disappointing and I genuinely hope they are looking into these ingredients because the place sells countless things that I would love to buy….and then I read that it was cooked in canola oil. These seed oils are a complete dealbreaker for me at this point in my life as multiple sources of current health information have noted that they wreak havoc on the body.

Chris Kresser put together an incredibly information-dense post here that explains everything you need to know about why they are bad (and more). From that same post, Chris lists,

1. The consumption of industrial seed oils represents an evolutionary mismatch.
2. Eating industrial seed oils raises our omega-6-to-omega-3 fatty acid ratios, with significant consequences for our health.
3. Industrial seed oils are unstable and oxidize easily.
4. They contain harmful additives.
5. They’re derived from genetically modified crops.
6. When industrial seed oils are repeatedly heated, even more toxic byproducts are created.

From the extremely high heating temperatures of the plants, to the chemicals used to extract the oils, to the lack of nutritional value, these oils are an absolute no-go.

I would tell anyone and everyone to steer clear of these if you can and watch out for them on the back of your food packaging. 

Sugar

Whole Foods has banned lots of different types of sweeteners like aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, and sucralose. But it seems they’ve forgotten about the ringleader of them all – bleached, white, table sugar.

There are plenty of other healthier options available like sugar alcohols: stevia, monk fruit, erythritol. There are even better conventional sugar options available such as my favorite, coconut sugar. It is a lower glycemic sugar option so it won’t give you that nasty high followed by a crash that you can get from other sugars.

Anyways, I think we all unanimously know that sugar is a bad thing and the amount of it we eat in today’s age is about as unnatural as anything. Mark Sisson provides an incredible breakdown of sugar as a whole and why it’s so harmful in his post here. From that same post, Mark says,

• Sugar stimulates a physiological stressor-reaction cascade that provokes adrenaline and cortisol release and thickens the blood.
• Sugar effectively disables your immune system by impairing white blood cells’ functioning.
• Sugar decreases your body’s production of leptin, a hormone critical for appetite regulation.
• Sugar induces significant oxidative stress in the body.
• Sugar appears to fuel cancer cells.
• Sugar promotes fat storage and weight gain.
• Sugar disrupts the effective transfer of amino acids to muscle tissue.
• Sugar intake over time spurs insulin resistance, subsequent Type II diabetes and the entire host of related health issues like nerve damage and cardiovascular disease.

Yes, sugar is one insanely powerful drug. Addictive, to boot.

Carrageenan

Carrageenan is a food additive derived from red seaweed which is used as a thickener/stabilizer or as a preservative.

This is why when you notice it in an ingredient list, it is typically in something like shelf-stable non-dairy milk like almond or coconut. It is relatively common, and used to be even more so, to see these used to give more body to beverages like this that would be very thin otherwise. I have also noticed carrageenan in two other Whole Foods products recently, although it’s not a common occurrence. 

This ingredient is a tricky subject still because there isn’t enough available evidence out yet to say wholeheartedly that it is safe or that it is dangerous.

What most people are concerned about with carrageenan is the fact that some studies have found it to possibly contribute to the formation of ulcerations, inflammation, and cancerous lesions. However, some studies have found this not to be the case.

The research at this point is minimal, but one thing is sure with me, I don’t need to be eating anything else that can cause more inflammation, among other side effects, if I don’t have to. I already enjoy sugar too much and that’s a battle in itself.

Ingredients that were found in animal studies to have seriously adverse effects are convincing enough to stay away from. Especially when it’s used as a stabilizer ingredient.

On the subject of consuming carrageenan, Chris Kresser has stated, 

“However, I do still think caution is warranted. If I had to rank additives, I’d say carrageenan is a bit more concerning than the other two additives we’ve discussed so far (magnesium stearate and soy lecithin) because of its association with gut issues. Remember, in cases involving modern ingredients, the burden of proof should be on manufacturers to prove that they’re safe, rather than on consumers to prove that they’re harmful. Because the evidence isn’t conclusive either way, I recommend avoiding carrageenan, especially if you have a history of digestive problems.”

I couldn’t agree more. There’s no reason to take on the risk of an additive that most evidence is showing to be potentially harmful.

I think with more emerging evidence, Whole Foods may be keen on eliminating this ingredient from their personal usage. 

Natural Flavors

“Natural flavors”, as they are called, are a very common ingredient added to packaged food products.

When you pick up a food item that has any kind of flavoring to it like strawberry, vanilla, etc, you can almost guarantee natural flavors is in the ingredient list. The Environmental Working Group found among 80,000 food products studied, only salt, water, and sugar appear more frequently in ingredient lists than natural flavors.

To avoid this, I try to buy plain foods as much as I can. Instead of buying vanilla flavored yogurt, I always buy plain and just add granola myself.

Natural flavors are a different prospect on a list like this because they don’t have any obvious adverse effects. The reason why is because natural flavors can contain any number of hundreds or thousands of singular or combinations of flavors. 10best.com has noted,

“But things get even trickier still, as manufacturers aren’t actually required to list which of the oils, distillates, essences, juices or other food products are included to create a discernible natural flavor. And up to 100 different sources can be used to create a product’s singular natural flavor. Complicating matters even further, the FDA considers more than 3,000 chemical food additives to be, you guessed it, natural flavors.”

The singular term “natural flavors” encompasses a seemingly limitless amount of sources of food, food derivatives, and combinations of these flavorings that are hardly regulated at all.

When this ingredient is listed in your food, you can’t have any idea of what it is other than that it was used to add to the flavor advertised on the front of the package.

As I mentioned before, taking this chance with ingredients that are risky at best is not something I like to do, so I avoid it when possible. I would be thrilled to see regulations tighten up on matters like these, or at least see stores and companies take stands against vague descriptions of what they’re selling us.

Soy

Soy is another topic, similar to carrageenan, that has far too many murmurs of discontent surrounding it to ignore.

I’ve already written about the more easily identifiable perils of soy here but I will touch on some other important things as well.

One of these things is that soy itself contains phytoestrogens which are found in some plant foods. Phytoestrogens are concerning of late because there is the possibility that they have hormone disrupting tendencies in the body.

Phytoestrogens can mimic our naturally produced estrogen within the body and can therefore disrupt our hormone production and regulation. I have talked about how common this is with sunscreens as well and why you need to be careful of what you put on your skin. 

Another point about soy is that it is 94% GMO-grown is the U.S. which is a terrible statistic to hear. That means all soy products: soy, soybean oil, soy lecithin, etc. that is not “Non-GMO” is derived from these low quality, mass-produced soybeans.

When they are GMO-grown, they have worse nutritional value and are known to be contaminated with harsh pesticides like glyphosate. 

Another terrible aspect of this is that most of our livestock is actually raised eating soybean and corn, which are not their natural diets. As you can imagine, they’re not getting top of the line feed either, which means that it’s going to be GMO-grown soy.

So we eat it and the animals we raise to be eaten also eat it and it’s incredibly low quality and contaminated. That’s not a recipe for success.

 

I think Whole Foods sets a good foundation in general for people to have access to quality ingredients.

Does it cost a lot of money? Of course it does. But I would rather have the option than not.

The store has a great opportunity with so much new, emerging research to set a new standard for better health protocols. Banning, or even just choosing not to work with certain ingredients, speaks volumes about the integrity an organization works with.

I would love to see them think twice about the ingredients listed here.