I'm 54 and when I was a kid we had candies, sodas, cakes and ice cream, but we didn't have the epidemic of obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases we have now. Could it be that foods we commonly enjoy in this society, as ingredients or by themselves, have been adulterated, to prolong shelf-life, enhance visual appeal, or to lower calories or production costs, with additives that are, in fact, jeopardizing our health?

Have you read an ingredient list lately, and if you have, do you understand it?

How will it help?

Jeff Watson, my friend and journalistic partner, and I read labels when we go to various stores in the Lake Merritt-Grand  area of Oakland, and we are appalled by what we read. We are even more appalled by what we find out about certain substances when we look them up on the Internet. Most of you have heard of high fructose corn syrup, but have you heard of high maltose corn syrup, or sodium aluminum phosphate, or PGPR? You may use zinc oxide as a sunscreen, but do you know you might also be ingesting it in your favorite frozen dinner? And if you think the citric acid in processed foods comes from citrus fruit, guess again.

We find these ingredients in almost every grocery store we visited in Oakland.

Jeff and I are planning to examine 4-6 substances we have found on the labels of common food items and ingredients, and ask, for each one: why is it there, how long has it been used, what does it do, and what might it do to us? Also, are there any more healthy substitutes for some of these ingredients?

Our reporting will focus on the ingredients but we will tell its story starting from the grocery store and through sources we find here in the Bay Area.