I’m just going to throw this out there: Kashi sucks.
As a brand, as a product, as a health food, they suck. Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of commercials in which Kashi is touted as an acceptable replacement for an egg, with the tagline “Kashi: as much protein as an egg!” Yeah, and as many processed ingredients as an Oreo. Get it together, Kashi.
Kashi uses genetically modified “foods” including soy, canola, triticale (a sketchy hybrid grain produced by crossing wheat and rye), corn and other GMO products.
By buying Kashi, you are supporting giant corporations that not only destroy the environment but also put small family farms out of business. By this I mean, you’re kind of a jerk if you buy Kashi.
Soy protein concentrate is the third ingredient.
Soy has a whole host of issues, including a high phytic acid content which blocks mineral absorption, it contains phytoestrogens that mimic estrogen in the body, and drastically lowers fertility in both men and women. You can read more about that here. Soy is one of the biggest nutritional scams introduced to the American public.
Kashi also contains canola oil.
Even if it weren’t genetically modified, it is still extremely dangerous. Canola oil is a highly toxic industrial oil. It is low in saturated fat (the good fat) and is extremely high in polyunsaturated fat (PUFA, the fat that will give you heart disease and kill you). It has an extremely poor omega 3 to omega 6 ratio, making it an oil that causes inflammation in the body. I am a huge advocate of the Perfect Health Diet, which emphasizes a low toxin diet. From the Jaminet’s site,
If you feed lab animals high doses of polyunsaturated fat (either omega-6 or omega-3 will do) along with high doses of either fructose or alcohol, then fatty liver disease develops along with metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a major risk factor for obesity, and it’s not very difficult to induce obesity on these diets.
Most Americans consume a large number of vegetable oils in addition to fructose. Fructose from high fructose corn syrup, agave nectar and even from an over-consumption of fruit. America rides an extreme fructose high. Doubled with a diet high in grains, it’s not hard to see how so much of this country is obese.
Kashi is based on 7 whole grains.
Grains naturally carry toxins to protect them from potential threats. These toxins block mineral absorption and damage the lining of the gut. Furthermore, grains spike blood glucose levels, which can lead to insulin resistance (and eventually diabetes). Don’t get me wrong, glucose is necessary for the body, but considering the fact that most Americans are on an extremely high carb diet already, Kashi only adds to the problem. The grains in Kashi are not safe starches (potatoes, taro, white rice, etc) but they are toxic starches.
Now, let’s look at this guy:
- Ingredients: an EGG!
Eggs are rich in choline, omega 3s, and vitamins A, E, D and K. No sketchy ingredients, no GMOs, no antinutrients. Cereal grains are hands down one of the most unhealthy food products. They are toxic and useless to the body. Eggs are easily digested, and the nutrients are easily absorbed. Don’t fall for Kashi, it ain’t real food.
21 Comments
Love this! Love the delivery and the information presented. It really is maddening watching all of these companies out there trying to get one by the consumer, but especially so for a company like Kashi which touts itself to be a healthy and consientious choice.
Choke on an egg. An organic one.
I HATE YOU JESSE!
… by this I mean, you’re kind of a jerk if you buy Kashi…
Yup. This article made me smile. And be absolutely, positively, 100% sure that I would never, ever, EVER buy anything from Kashi. Ever. Not that I have, but still…
Preach Dani! This was great! I have one friend who went lacto-vegetarian about a year ago and forgoes eggs at breakfast for a gigantic bowl of kashi heart to heart with skim milk -shudder-
Thank you! And yikes, that is such a bummer for your friend.
A nutritionist who recommends saturated fat as healthy? You give me hope for your profession, it’ll take a lot of people like you who have actually stopped to think critically about nutrition to change our system for the better. Keep fighting the status quo!!!!! 🙂
After reading your first sentence I thought you were going to be one the anti-fat people! So appreciate of your comment. I remember in school learning about cholesterol and how crucial it is to the body and was like, wait, what the hell? How can saturated fat be so bad? I then had to delve into doing my own research to figure it out.
I’m currently in biomedical studies (though I may be switching into nursing) and during my first year I came across the movie ‘Fat Head’. I started watching the movie in a bad mood basically wanting to watch it to rip it apart (but in my defense the description for the movie was so done that it was clearly by someone who hadn’t watched the it) but ended up being surprised when I saw his argument made scientific sense. It kind of threw me off that everything my profs were teaching me was wrong, so I decided I’d learn some basic statistics and check the studies out for myself. After connecting the dots for all the science I started ranting to my family how we needed to start eating this way, and coincidentally my grandma received advice from a forward thinking doctor to start eating this way to combat diabetes. A year previous to this visit with a new doctor my grandma had had a diabetic attack while I’d been spending the night and my grandpa was out of town. If I hadn’t been there my grandma likely would have gone into a coma before anyone knew anything was wrong and likely would have died. Within a month of starting this diet my grandma was on the lowest dose of insulin that doctor’s bother to prescribe and had her diabetes firmly under control. Hearing both long winded lectures from me and hearing my grandma’s results my family decided to try it out. Since then my grandma is still only taking the minimum dose of insulin she needs (how scientists rationalize fat causing diabetes is anyone’s guess), my uncle went from 140/100 blood pressure to 120/78 (his face is much less flushed now 🙂 ), having one aunt regain her monthly cycle (she wasn’t able to have kids before), and another whose cycle became less violent (she was having to consider surgery before), and all of us have lost weight. The kicker being that for my Anatomy and Physiology lab we were able to get a bonus mark for blood screening. I don’t put much stock in LDL levels as they don’t reveal much, although they were in “normal levels” (they were actually too low to measure, but from what I’ve read that’s okay), my total cholesterol (also not too important) was 198mg/dL, my triglycerides were 70mg/dL and my HDL was 70mg/dL (1:1 ratio, yay!) 🙂 According to conventional wisdom, the lipid hypothesis and the ‘artery-clogging-saturated-fat’ hype I should be a heart attack waiting to happen, but according to anyone’s measure of heart health I’m apparently the gold standard 🙂 Bit of a long winded message, but I wanted to remind you of the amazing impact people like you, who take the time to spread the truth no matter how hard it is going against the grain (no pun intended) can have. Keep changing lives (like mine and my family’s has changed) one reader at a time 🙂
This comment seriously makes me want to cry! You really have no idea how much I appreciate it. I am SO glad your grandma was okay! Thank god you were there. And I’m with you on the fat/diabetes debate, makes no sense! Fat is so important for our bodies to function properly, it’s great that your aunt was able to regain her cycle – not all women are as lucky. If you don’t mind I would love to know about your progess in school, whether you choose biomedical studies or switch to nursing. Keep up the good work and thank you again!
More than happy to share my story, I figure its the least I can do for how much has been given back to my family 🙂
I’ve been accepted into nursing and I’m deciding to pursue it (our current government in Canada is putting some ridiculous stipulations on scientific research that essentially makes the finished product have to pass through them to be published, and seeing as my views are rather counter-cultural I don’t see myself finding much funding/work in the biomedical field). 😛
Sorry for the delayed response! Between the chaos of exams, then moving home and having a number of job interviews and whatnot I haven’t had much time to catch up on blogs! Hope you’ve had a wonderful month, looking forward to catching up on your articles! 🙂
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Love to know what you think about Quest bars.
Not a fan. I believe they contain sucralose as well.
Actually, it depends on the Quest bars you choose. For some reason, some are sweetened with stevia while others contain that wretched sucralose. Some even have both – excessive much!?
I make sure to only grab the stevia-sweetened Quest bars anymore. There’s quite the selection! Double Chocolate Chunk, Banana Nut Muffin, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Cinnamon Roll, Coconut Cashew, Strawberry Cheesecake, and Lemon Cream Pie.
Thanks Megan! Good to know. Do you know if their whey protein is grass-fed? I’m going to email them and ask.
Genuine question, Kashi has a tag that says “Non GMO Project” which I’ve seen on many different foods purporting that the companies that make them do not use GMO products. In that case, is that an outright lie? Or a tag that means nothing? Just asking, because I love the Kashi Berry Fruitfull cereal with a big bowl of almond milk in the morning, and I hate GMOs (and I’m terrified of soy and avoid it like the fucking – excuse my French- plague), and I’d be really disappointed if I found out that it was actually GMO just like all the other stuff I avoid. :/
I wrote this article a while ago and Kashi has since made an effort to go non-GMO. That being said, even if they were 100% organic, the ingredients are still overly processed and not healthy.
And no worries, I love the F word!
I agree with you wholeheartedly. After drastically changing my diet to reverse autoimmune diseases, I will never eat cereal again (or most things that are sold at run of the mill grocery stores.) I eat eggs from chickens who live in my friends backyard, every day. They are the best eggs I’ve ever had in my life! Now that I eat “clean” I have gotten off medication and I no longer have autoimmune diseases. Watch out for canola oil in almost everything out there. Canola oil is toxic as hell and it’s sold at health food stores! What’s a canola? Exactly my point. 🙂
I live in Europe so I can’t buy Kashi. However, eggs cannot officially be touted as healthy. Check out these clips:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtGf2FuzKo4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnMAUxh8lhQ
Youtube is not a legitimate source.