This post is all about which ingredients to avoid, no matter what. There are some ingredients that you should avoid that I won't put in here, such as refined sugar because realistically, you can't always get away from it and having something with refined sugar a few times a month won't really affect your body all that much. The key though is to only have a couple (a couple being TWO) things a month, not eating a bag of Hershey's miniatures in a day. So here are the all time worst ingredients you can ever see in your food.
1. Partially hydrogenated oils or hydrogenated oils - These oils, also known as trans-fat, are essentially engineered to make you gain weight where you absolutely do not want it: your stomach, the most dangerous place to gain weight loss. They are called trans-fats because the double bond is in a trans configuration (directly parallel to each other) instead of the cis configuration (opposite each other). You can find this murderer of thinness in things like commercial peanut butter, candy bars, fries, any sweets, highly processed foods, etc. Also, if the label says 0 grams of trans-fats, don't just take the company's word on it. Check the ingredients. The FDA allows companies to say that a product contains 0 grams of trans-fats even if it doesn't. The FDA states that "...trans fat does not have to be listed if the total fat in a food is less than 0.5 gram (or 1/2 gram) per serving and no claims are made about fat, fatty acids or cholesterol content".
2. High fructose corn syrup - Everyone should know this one by now. Essentially, high fructose corn syrup is a highly refined sweetener that causes massive blood sugar spikes. These blood sugar spikes are related to weight gain. You can find high fructose corn syrup in virtually any type of food product. Fortunately, this one, while it may seem hard to avoid, is not as hard to avoid as you think. In order to do it you will have to shop in the healthier sections of your grocery or start shopping at Whole Foods. Be warned though that even some products at Whole Foods have high fructose corn syrup in them most likely. Always read the ingredients label.
3. Enriched flour (any kind) - Enriched flour is essentially flour that has been stripped of all of its nutrition to get it that desirable white color so many consumers want, and then re-enriched with the things that were taken out of it previously. Enriched flour is bad because it is essentially like eating high fructose corn syrup - it turns to sugar in the body almost instantly and causes massive blood sugar spikes, which again, lead to weight gain. If you pick something up that says whole wheat flour in the ingredients, don't stop looking for enriched flour; often times a company will use both in order to save money or make the product taste better to the general over-developed sweet toothed population.
4. Canola oil (Rapeseed oil) - This will be a hard one to avoid, since it is in a lot of things. You are going to have to severely change your diet if you want to follow this list and follow your way to health and a thinner body. You see, canola oil is a made up name for rapeseed oil, because the companies who make canola oil figured no one wanted to consume something called rapeseed oil. I can't say I blame them, I wouldn't ever want to consume something called rapeseed oil either. The reason why it is so bad is that when it is used in processed foods that are heated, canola oil changed its' configuration into a trans-fat. While it is touted as having a beneficial omega-3 fatty acid profile (it does), it is often used in baked goods and things that are cooked because it has almost no flavor and is very cheap. So it essentially becomes a partially-hydrogenated/hydrogenated oil, which as you read above, is not a good thing to put into your body. The problem is that the bonds in canola oil are not stable enough to withstand the heat.
5. Artificial flavorings and colorings - Red 40? Yellow and Blue something? Imitation vanilla flavor? The scary part about these ingredients is you have NO idea what you are putting in your body. The imitation vanilla flavor could be cat piss for all you know. Never ever eat something if it has the words artificial anywhere on the package or in the ingredients. Not only do you spare your body from adverse effects, but you also eat better food. What do you think tastes better, imitation vanilla flavoring or actually Madagascar vanilla beans?
6. Artificial sweeteners - Again, same as the artificial flavorings and colorings - you don't really know what you're putting in your body and these sweeteners have not been tested for the long term; YOU are the guinea pig. Almost 99% of them have turned out to be awful for your health anyways and cause more weight gain that consuming actual table sugar (which is pretty awful for your health). So don't drink diet soda that contains any artificial sweeteners. You're better off drinking soda sweetened normal sugar or pure cane sugar. There are good sweeteners out that that are great for the people who want to diet and not effect their blood sugar spikes. I'll go into detail more about them in future posts, but I want you to know what they are now - Stevia and erythritol. They are both natural sweeteners and have been tested and confirmed safe. While the US may not think so, that is because large corporations lobby against allowing healthier alternatives on the market as they are afraid of losing the herd of sweet tooth sheep. Stevia has been used very safely in Japan for the past forty years or so.
7. Fructose and Agave Nectar - Despite what you may think, agave nectar is NOT healthy. I already wrote a post about this. You can find it here - Agave Nectar, Syrupy Poison?.
8. BHT - It was found to be an anticipated human carcinogen by the Department of Health; need I say more? I think not.
So this is the list of the top things to avoid. These are still other ingredients to avoid, but they're not nearly as harmful as the ones above. These are the disease-causing ingredients that find their way into billions of bodies around the world every day. My question to you is, do you really want to be one of those billion?
As the blog develops, I will go into more detail about other ingredients to avoid based on personal preference and give healthy alternatives. An example of this in the future article would be instead of cooking or baking with canola oil, use coconut oil or butter, which are both highly stable saturated fats. I wrote about why butter is good for you previously: here's the link - Butter, Healthy?
Be on the look out for future articles about: ingredients to embrace, certain healthy products, how to eat healthier and incorporate healthy eating into your lifestyle, and advice and tips on how to say no to that delicious looking piece of cake or cookie. Get ready to be the odd one out who doesn't eat birthday cake or dessert at parties! It's a good club to be a part of, trust me.
Eat healthy, stay happy!
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