Even if you make no other changes to your diet, avoiding the following four foods will go a long way to support your health. These foods are all major culprits in many of the diseases afflicting the modern world: obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer, heart disease.
  • Soft Drinks/Sodas
  • Sugar (and High Fructose Corn Syrup)
  • White Flour Products
  • Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils/Trans Fatty Acid

Soft Drinks/Sodas

  • Soft drinks and sodas are an empty food, supplying only calories, but nothing of nutritional value.
  • They supply either, or both:
    • a huge dose of sugar (8-10 teaspoons per can!)
    • artificial sweeteners (like aspartame and acesulfame) that are linked to neurological problems (from headaches to seizures to cancer). They are loaded with phosphoric acid, which is extremely acidic and flushes much-needed minerals (like calcium, magnesium and zinc) out of the body.
  • They directly contribute to obesity, diabetes and osteoporosis.
Sugar (and High Fructose Corn Syrup)

 

Sugar (mainly in the form of glucose) is not, inherently harmful and plays a legitimate role in energy production. However, the real problems stem from extracting natural sugars from their food base (such as sucrose from sugar cane, or high fructose corn syrup from corn); thereby removing the very vitamins and minerals that sugar needs to be properly metabolized in the body. Sugar therefore depletes the body's own nutrient reserves, while contributing to weight gain, dental caries, blood sugar imbalances, and suppression of the immune system.

Sugar (especially high fructose corn syrup, used widely in processed foods) tends to stick to proteins to form non-functional hybrid molecules (appropriately known as AGEs) which hasten the aging process and tissue destruction.

Cancer is a sugar-loving disease, sugar feeds tumour growth.

 

White Flour Products

 

Grains have been part of the food supply for about 10,000 years, but the refining of grains to make white flour products is relatively modern.

As well as removing the fibre, most of the B-vitamins, essential fatty acids, and amino acids are lost in the process, leaving behind the starch, which rapidly breaks down into glucose in the body, contributing to much the same problems as sugar, especially weight gain and blood sugar imbalances.

If you eat grains, eat them whole.


Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils

 

These are polyunsaturated or monounsaturated vegetable oils (soy, corn, sunflower, safflower, canola, peanut or cottonseed oil)

Partially hydrogenated oils are found in most processed and fast foods (chicken nuggets, French fries, etc.), most commercial baked goods (crisps, biscuits, crackers, croissants, donuts, etc.), margarines, movie popcorn, processed cheese, and peanut butter.

They have been subjected to an industrial process designed to indefinitely extend their shelf life. The structure of their constituent fatty acids (the building blocks of oils and fats) become irreparably damaged in such a way that they lose whatever nutritional value they had in the first place, and, more than that, become extremely toxic in the body.

Carefully read the labels on all packaged foods (even those in health food shops, some of which also contain these oils).

Do everything you can to avoid these toxic and extremely dangerous fats, they have no place in a human body.


Trans Fatty Acids

 

The process of partial hydrogenation (which uses extremely high heat and heavy metal catalysts like nickel and cadmium) is a form of artificial saturation that creates trans fatty acids, a type of fatty acid found almost nowhere in nature.

Structurally, they resemble naturally saturated fatty acids, but with a crucial difference. Their molecules have been rearranged (from the normal cis configuration to the unnatural trans configuration) so that they function very differently in the body from a natural saturated fat.

Many mainstream dieticians and food scientists gloss over this crucial distinction, resulting in natural saturated fats being unfairly blamed for the evils of trans fatty acids.


Effects of Trans Fatty Acids

 

They disrupt the functioning of the cell membranes, interfering with their ability to take nutrients into the cell and let metabolic wastes out. This process can seriously disrupt the cells' ability to produce energy.

Speed up the process of sugar metabolism imbalances setting the stage for Type II diabetes

Irritate the inner lining of the arteries, contributing to cardiovascular disease.

Interfere with the body's ability to properly use the vitally important essential fatty acids (omega-3 and -6)
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