Life Extension Magazine®

Do Consumers Really Want Healthy Food?

Cruciferous vegetables combat a host of age-related diseases, but you won’t find them in most popular “vegetable” soups. Instead, commercial soups are packed with cheap fillers like corn, potatoes, rice, and pasta. Find out about two new cruciferous soups loaded with cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts plus extra-virgin olive oil with no glucose-spiking starches. The question Life Extension® asks is: will typical consumers want them?

Scientifically reviewed by Dr. Gary Gonzalez, MD, in October 2024. Written by: William Faloon.

William Faloon

I don’t know if you are as frustrated as I am, but I find it nearly impossible to buy healthy prepared food at grocery stores.

The front side of labels promotes many foods as being healthy, but a quick look at the ingredient panel reveals the opposite.

We know that eating certain vegetables is associated with reduced risks of some cancers. Commercial soups, however, contain virtually no cauliflower,1 broccoli,2-6 asparagus,7 Brussels sprouts,8-10 or other vegetables that provide these benefits.

In fact, most vegetable soups are loaded with starches (potatoes, rice, or pasta) that spike blood sugar levels and contribute to many health problems. The glycemic index of cruciferous vegetables, on the other hand, is extremely low.11

My aggravation with processed food companies motivated me to commission a chef to prepare soups that contain ingredients that protect against disease. The objective is to provide a broad-spectrum of cruciferous and other low-calorie vegetables with absolutely no starches, preservatives, or added sugars.

As you will read, we have developed two recipes that provide the healthy vegetables that nutrition experts recommend Americans consume more of.

Not the First Time My Frustration Has Yielded Member Benefits

Back in the early 1990s, Life Extension® identified a host of vascular disease risk factors that could be measured in the blood.

The problem I and many members had was that doctors refused to prescribe blood tests to measure C-reactive protein, homocysteine, hormone levels, etc. Even when a doctor was willing to prescribe these blood tests, the cost of getting them done at commercial labs was outrageously high.

Not the First Time My Frustration Has Yielded Member Benefits

My reaction to this physician arrogance and laboratory inefficiency was to set up a nationwide blood testing network in 1996 whereby our members could choose whatever blood tests they wanted, have their blood drawn at their convenience, and pay a very low price.

The motivation in setting up this blood testing network was not economic. I simply wanted members to be able to find out their disease risk markers so they could take corrective actions in time.

I cannot tell you how many people have thanked us for making blood testing so convenient and affordable… and saving their lives in the process!

The frustration I had in the 1990s over difficulties our members experienced in accessing life-saving blood tests is the same motivating factor behind the development of two new soups that contain only healthy ingredients.

Extra-virgin Olive Oil

The multiple benefits of the monounsaturated fats and other constituents of olive oil continue to be documented in published scientific studies.12-14

Findings reveal that consumption of virgin olive oils results in reductions in markers of atherosclerosis,15-22 cardiovascular diseases,23-27 osteoporosis,28-31 chronic inflammation,32-36 senility,37-40 and certain cancers.41-47

The favorable effects on human health from virgin olive oils are so persuasive that Life Extension® long ago added a standardized olive fruit concentrate to the popular Super Omega-3 fish oil supplement. We reasoned that any member seeking the benefits of highly-concentrated fish oil would not want to miss out on the additive protective effects available from the olive fruit.

We start our recipe for the two vegetable soups with extra-virgin olive oil to provide both taste fullness and health benefits.

Cruciferous Vegetables

A huge volume of scientific data documents how cruciferous vegetables protect against a wide range of age-related diseases.48-59 Since the early 1980s, Life Extension has published the results from findings showing that those who eat cruciferous and certain other vegetables have low rates of common cancers.60-77

The problem is that most Americans don’t consume broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage on a regular basis to obtain these disease-preventing effects.

You would think that at least one commercial food company would recognize that when consumers are choosing a vegetable soup, they would want a variety that contains cruciferous vegetables with proven disease protective-effects.

On the contrary, profit-hungry processed food companies use the lowest-cost ingredients they can find. Since high-calorie potatoes, rice, pasta, and corn can be termed “vegetables,” these are often the dominant ingredients in soups consumers are saddled with. Remember that corn is fed to cattle to fatten them up.

The two new soups you will learn about contain cruciferous vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage along with other healthy plants and extra-virgin olive oil.

Healthy Non-cruciferous Vegetables

The plant kingdom provides aging humans with a wealth of nutrients that scientists have identified as having potent disease-preventing properties.

The soups that our chef formulated contain asparagus,78-80 peppers,81-85 celery,86-90 carrots,91-93 garlic,94-99 spinach,100-103 thyme,104-110 parsley,111-113 basil,114-116 and tomatoes117-122 to provide the greatest variety of health-promoting plants in one satiating recipe.

Fighting Back Against Food Fraud

The “food fraud” perpetrated by processed food companies is unconscionable. They load supposedly healthy vegetable soups with rice, potatoes, pasta, and other high-glycemic ingredients.

As Life Extension members are aware, the American diet is already saturated with dangerous sugars that contribute to the growing epidemic of metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes.123-126 By intentionally spiking vegetable soups with cheap sugars and starchy ingredients, processed food companies reap enormous profits while consumers pay the price with a shortened life span. Is it any wonder why Americans are accumulating so many fat pounds?

A pouch of Life Extension Vegetable Soups provides more than one-pound of vegetables that will satiate most appetites—while delivering only 80 to 90 calories per serving.

There are 3.5 servings in each pouch, with each serving providing a full serving of healthy vegetables.

Life Extension’s Vegetable Soups can be used as a mini-meal by those seeking to reduce their calorie intake, or as a vegetable side dish to serve three or more people with a single pouch.

Compare the healthy calories in these soups to the garbage foods you see endlessly advertised on TV. You’ll easily see how commercial food companies are robbing Americans of their health by promoting foods that create degenerative diseases rather than protecting against them.

Why We Don’t Use Cans

There is a growing concern that the lining of canned foods with bisphenol-A or BPA (found in 57% of canned foods) represents a health risk.145,146 It has been shown to be an “endocrine (hormone) disruptor,” which raises concern about potential cancer risk.147,148

The FDA says bisphenol-A is safe, but we have little confidence in a government agency that is so beholden to the financial interests of processed food companies.

We have therefore decided to package Life Extension’s new Vegetable Soups in an advanced BPA and phthalate-free polymer pouch to not only preserve the integrity of the cruciferous vegetables, but also protect our members against bisphenol-A exposure.

Do Consumers Really Want Healthy Food?

The title of this editorial is “Do Consumers Really Want Healthy Food?”

I ask this question because the price of cruciferous vegetables and extra-virgin olive oil is higher than pasta, potatoes, rice, corn, and the other cheap ingredients found in vegetable soups sold by processed food companies.

For the first production run of Life Extension’s Vegetable Soups (described fully at the end of this article), we need to charge a retail price of $11.95 per two-pound pouch. Members pay $8.96 for either of these Vegetable Soups. If six pouches are purchased of any assortment of these two soups, the member price drops to $8.44 per pouch.

Even at the discounted member prices, these vegetable soups are higher priced per pound than what is typically found in grocery stores. The question is: do consumers want to continue buying vegetable soups laden with sugar-starches and other mediocre ingredients?

I frankly don’t know the answer. After all, for $5 nowadays, you can buy a big submarine sandwich and believe the advertising that eating one every day will enable you to lose weight and stay healthy.

As far as taste is concerned, I believe these soups are superior to anything on the market. But I am a poor judge of taste, as I have subconsciously trained myself to enjoy eating foods that are healthy.

I look forward to hearing feedback from members who try our new Cruciferous Vegetable and/or Asian Cruciferous Vegetable soups. If these are well received by the membership, we will expand into a broader line of health promoting foods… and lower the price in the process.

What’s Missing From Cooked Vegetables?

There is one important caveat that I have to tell you here. During the cooking process required to make any soup, some of the beneficial compounds contained in the vegetables are invariably lost.

Those concerned about certain cancers often rely on supplements that contain standardized potencies of nutrients found in healthy vegetables such as indole-3-carbinol,127-130 diindolymethane,131-135 sulforaphane,136-140 and apigenin.141-144

Even when including cooked vegetables in your diet, it is still important to obtain standardized potencies of cruciferous and other vegetable extracts from your supplements and/or carefully steamed vegetables.

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