Submitted by: Jim Anhk
We live such hectic lives today that we rarely get the chance to eat a healthy lunch let alone have a home cooked dinner. Most of our meals consist of take-outs, fast and convenient food and pre-cooked ingredients. Hamburgers and pizzas come immediately to mind when we feel hungry. At the same time, we are also fully aware of the poor state of health the world is currently in. The uneasy rise in obesity numbers and soaring rate in diabetes and related health diseases.
It is obvious we need to do something to reserve this health trend. Will eliminating junk foods like pizza and burgers be sufficient to put us back on track? Sadly, this is far from the truth. The real enemy in our poor diet today are not just in the fast food we consume but our dietary habit as a whole. The top assassin being processed foods.
Our supermarkets filled with processed foods it becomes difficult to avoid them at all even if we want to. The irony is that as we buy and consume all these junk foods. It would seem totally absurd to do so but the truth is that we are mostly deceived by the food labels.
Many of them state light, low fat or no sugar, statement of which are synonymous to healthy food although in truth they are far from it. When we see these words on the food labels we would not give any second thoughts in buying and consuming them. Would it not be a crime to misrepresent ingredients on the food labels? Morally, it is but technically it just means that other chemicals have been used to replace them. These replacement chemicals, however, may not be less harmful. It is low or no sugar because it has been replaced with artificial sweeteners like aspartame and other artificial sweeteners. There is quite a bit of literature going around that suggest that these ingredients are cancer agents. We commonly see labels that scream health, freshness and other misleading slogans all in the bid to capture sales. With the dieting industry becoming a billion dollar industry, we are increasingly becoming bombarded with these false and misleading statements. Honesty and integrity aside, profits are indeed fertilizers of creative thinking. Capturing the sales at all cost seems to be the company sales policy.
These foods are far from healthy but with their eye catching names, slogans and packaging they seem to be unlikely health hazards. With faces of celebrities consuming them on the boxes, it usually catches the potential customers with their guard down. A little discount or some freebies thrown in will easily trick you into buying them. Often times you may not even be able to differentiate the good ones from the bad ones. The rule of thumb is to understand what they tell you on the food package. These companies have to comply with FDA requirements and if you understand what it states on the food labels you will be able to see beyond the colours and wordplays.
Be warned that light foods will most likely make you gain weight as processed grains and sugar will make you gain weight instead of losing. Perhaps only your wallet will be lighter.
Fresh doesnt mean so despite its label. A simple calculation of the time it takes to travel from the farm to the factory to the distribution centre supermarkets then to your kitchen tables will serve as a good gauge to the degree of freshness. Check out the definition of the word fresh in the English dictionary, then do a little mental maths and you will know better.
The issue is that the more TV dinners, hot-dogs, hamburgers and other processed junk food you take on a daily basis the more you will be exposing yourself to all the chemical preservatives When natural ingredients are processed their texture is changed and nutritional values reduced to the minimal levels. Processed foods do not contain the normal natural healthy ingredients. The overall sum of the intake of foreign chemicals will harm your health although the overall fat might be lower. With the level of harm you might be better off just enjoying the fat, it might even end up better than the low fat items.
High fructose corn syrup, processed grains, refined sugars and other similar foodstuffs are highly dangerous to your health because these ingredients will increase your body fat and cause diseases like cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure.
The more you eat all these processed healthy foods the higher the chances are that your intake on preservatives on a daily basis exposes you to a host of diseases and ultimately paying for it with your life. Health is wealth, start eating fresh fruits and vegetables for a change. There are ingredients you should avoid and the reasons why.
For full article, www.juicerlist.com
About the Author: Jim is an advocate for healthy living. We are what we eat and to live right, we need to eat right. There is no necessity to indulge expensive diets to stay healthy. If fact, with a healthily fed mind, we would know how cater to our nutritional needs and stay healthy.You can find other useful articles at
juicerlist.com
Source:
isnare.com
Permanent Link:
isnare.com/?aid=960731&ca=Wellness%2C+Fitness+and+Diet}