Conscious Choice: Beating the Food Giants

March 1996

Beating the Food Giants

by Bobbye Middendorf

With bread and grains the basis of a healthful diet, it stands to reason that the higher the quality of the grains you eat, the better you’ll feel. Longtime food activist, entrepreneur, baker, biochemist, and author Paul Stitt has put his lifelong passion for feeding people nutritiously at the heart of his award-winning company, Natural Ovens of Manitowoc. Says Stitt, "To me, making food for another is a sacred duty. Whether you are helping to feed one person or a million, feeding another is a calling."

Natural Ovens’ breads, muffins, bagels, granola, waffle mix, and energy drink mix are widely available throughout northern Illinois, southern Minnesota, and most of Wisconsin. National publicity, such as a segment on 48 Hours, has helped the firm expand their sales to all fifty states via a toll-free order number. "You can’t get bread like this for love or money," claims Stitt.

Paul Stitt trained as a biochemist and went to work at various "food giants" before starting his own company. His book, Beating the Food Giants, offers a former insider’s critique of the food industry giants, along with the story of the founding of Natural Ovens, discussions of the biochemistry of nutrition, and recipes featured in the firm’s cafeteria. In this eye-opening account, Stitt paints a no-holds-barred portrait of a society whose food is literally killing them. The book indicts Americans in general for our addiction to junk food and the food giants in particular for betray our health in order to increase their bottom line.

It is both horrifying and fascinating to read this chilling account of greed and duplicity, even as we consumers play into the game by consuming ever-more products with ever decreasing nutrition. Stitt comments, "The Food Giants, having discovered that they can no longer sell the quality of their products, are trying to change the criteria upon which people base their food choices." Be it fun or convenience or some mythical texture that becomes the hook, it has less than nothing to do with nutrition.

Did you know, for example, that vitamins are sprayed on cereal that is itself nearly devoid of nutrients? Or that the reason some foods have a long "shelf life" is that they cannot support even the life of a microbe? At the same time, if one observes various food industry statistics, the total amount of prepared foods we eat as a nation is increasing dramatically. If Paul Stitt is even half right, the picture becomes very grim indeed, and our bodies and our brains are being systematically destroyed. "Health care," claims Stitt, "is not the problem — sickness care is. Health care is free to everyone because it’s cheaper to eat healthful foods than junk foods."

Beating the Food Giants involves a compelling David-and-Goliath saga, a story of a young biochemist eager to do research that would help feed the starving millions of the world. "I felt that by producing new sources of protein and other nutrients, enough food could be produced to solve the starvation problems of the entire world," says Stitt of the beginning of his odyssey.

He happened upon a research team project "which would attempt to make protein out of methane — natural gas" at Tenneco in 1968. "I don’t think anyone in the company outside the research team expected us to succeed." But succeed they did. In a year (half the time allotted), they produced an inexpensive protein that test animals could thrive on. With this glow of success, the team’s project was terminated.

"It seemed to me that I was the only one left who still believed in the project. The starving people...were still out there, still hungry, still dying by the thousands. And here in our very grasp was the means to end their suffering, to rid the world of hunger and its resultant diseases and to bring new hope to millions of people. With this heart-quickening prospect right in front of them, how could Tenneco possibly‘terminate’ the project? No matter what angle I viewed it from, it seemed unbelievable."

Stitt moved on to Quaker to continue similar research on synthesizing protein. Before his equipment arrived so he could begin the research, he discovered a study that reported the process of puffing grain "may produce chemical changes which turn a nutritious grain into a poisonous substance." Stitt reports that since publication of his book, Quaker has tried to discredit him, although he notes, "It has yet to demonstrate that its puffed cereals can support life of any kind."

Stitt remained passionate about his calling, but was learning from the inside just what the food giants were about: What they called research had nearly nothing to do with nutrition; rather it is about "cutting the costs of production. In corporate lingo, it’s called‘product differentiation.’... The result is a cheaper, less nutritious product that costs the consumer more.... Yet for all this concern over taste, not a single study was done to determine how the foods affected the health of humans or even whether they were safe to eat," claims Stitt.

Stitt was eventually fired from Quaker for not playing the game, and pursued his protein research independently. On his own, he created Royal Protein Flour. "In the reflective clarity of my unemployment, I realized that there was no receptive audience in the food industry, and there never would be.... I saw at last that good, whole foods and healthful eating habits had been available to everyone all the time. It was only our own misconceptions about food, fueled by the opportunistic propaganda of the food monsters we were foolish enough to believe, that led us to think of food as sweet-tasting stuff that has no effect at all on our health, our emotions, or our view of ourselves and one another."

Stitt took his nutrition talk to the radio and won a very positive local reception. Then opportunities opened up in Manitowoc, first as he started a store selling healthy foods and snack mixes, then when a local bakery went up for sale. He grabbed it as an opportunity to create the kinds of whole grain breads he had nearly despaired of being able to carry in his store. Touch-and-go at times in the early days, Natural Ovens has now become a national model for the creation of highly nutritious foods.

Stitt continues his indictment of the food industry while offering explanations of the biochemistry of the foods and the body’s reaction to the chemical feast in a chapter called "’Can’t Eat Just One’ Syndrome." He also offers a key test to consumers interested in health. "Food...should have to meet a very simple and very high standard. It must nourish the human body. In chemical analysis, it must be shown to contain significant amounts of vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein, essential fatty acids and all the other growth factors which are so vital to life.... True nourishment — that’s my definition of food."

I caught up with Paul Stitt by phone to ask him a few questions and find out what new initiatives Natural Ovens of Manitowoc is pursuing as the company turns twenty. Outspoken and passionate, Stitt says he originally wrote the book "to let the world know what’s really going on with the greed and corruption of the food giants. They’re toying with our lives as if we’re disposable," he claims.

Stitt wants everyone to realize how important nutrition is. To that end, he has created and is funding the Peak Performance Program, a demonstration project designed to show the difference nutritious foods can make. This recent initiative of Natural Ovens is dramatically demonstrating, (and teachers and counselors are reporting and measuring) the old saw, "You are what you eat."

Currently the project includes 89 classrooms, totalling 2500 students from all segments of the population throughout the area served by Natural Ovens. In return for a teacher’s interest in nutrition and willingness to go to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, for nutrition seminars, Stitt makes available to students all the bagels they can eat.

"We haven’t been able to change the breakfast or lunch programs," says Stitt, "but even this is making a remarkable difference. The teachers are blown away by its effect on students. They learn better, and they behave better." (Currently the program costs $1700 per classroom. For information on helping sponsor a classroom, contact Stitt at Natural Ovens.)

Part of the nutrition demonstration project includes an all-you-can-eat junk food day after a period of eating the bagels. "This is a way of letting the children see for themselves, and experience the benefits of a healthy, nutritious snack, versus the violence they experience on the junk food days."

Stitt reports that his most satisfying moment was hearing from a teacher the following anecdote. "A teacher told me that before introducing the bagels, she had a boy in her class who was sent home every day for some kind of violence or misbehavior. He has never been sent home once since starting the bagels."

Stitt also notes in the book, "We want all people everywhere to be able to buy breads like ours." To this end, he offers a bakery training program for those who want to bake and sell nutritious breads based on the models and recipes formulated by Natural Ovens. "We need more companies out there doing this. A lot of other people could do this too. The possibilities are enormous."

His mission is to get the word out: It is possible to make money and sell a nutritious product. "We want to do a lot more of what we’re doing, enlisting others to do what’s best for themselves. They can have the limelight."

In fact, the national publicity has enabled Stitt to tell his story to a wide audience, and inspire others to do similar things to make a difference. "Most people who start out with these ideas end up bankrupt. We’ve been very lucky to be doing well enough that we can give something back."

Beating the Food Giants is available at local health food stores or directly from Natural Ovens, 800-558-3535.

Bobbye Middendorf is a writer and artist living in Chicago.

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