Foods to avoid
(A general overview)
It may be a cliché, but it is absolutely true: you are what you eat. Your body uses the food you eat to build, repair and generally function.
The new fad is ‘five a day’ of either fruit or vegetables. The problem is, the proportions are not specified. Moreover, there is a problem with the ‘fruit’ part.
Fruit itself is not actually good for you, however much people want to believe it, because all fruits are filled with sugar, fructose to be exact. More than that, modern day fruits are cultivated to have a higher sugar content. In the past, apples would have tasted slightly bitter and strawberries would not have tasted anywhere as sweet as they do nowadays.
Sugar in any form is bad. There are several types, but the main ones are processed sugar (white), fructose (found in fruits), glucose (found in carbohydrates like corn) and lactose (found in milk). Only a small amount of it is used in the immediate to give you energy and the pancreas has to work overtime to convert it into something useable: fat, which is stored, not used. This is why people on high carbohydrate diets tend to be overweight.
Sugar is actually a poison and is so bad that the white blood cells in your body that are normally used to fight infections will go after sugar before they will go after viruses. Sugar is also more addictive than cocaine. Tests done with animals showed that they would go for the sugar in preference to cocaine, even when both were available. Cocaine only lights up part of the brain, whilst sugar lights up the entire brain. So it is not the fact that your body wants or needs sugar, it is that your brain is addicted to it, craves it. The next time you want something sweet, remember it is just your brain trying to trick you into having a ‘fix’.
Second to sugar in their addictive qualities are carbohydrates. These include such things as pasta, bread, potatoes and rice. All of these turn into sugar when they are digested by the body which makes them highly addictive. This explains why so many people find it difficult to come off a high carbohydrate diet. However, it is possible to do. I have done it myself.
The most overused carbohydrate in our society is wheat. It is used to make many products: pastries, bread, pasta, noodles and it is also used in many sauces, so always look at the ingredients. There are many problems with wheat.
Firstly, the wheat that is consumed today is not the same as the wheat our ancestors ate. It has been bred to yield more and in a shorter time. Secondly, certain chemicals are used to speed up ripening so that a second crop can be grown within a year. Thirdly, the new breed of wheat has a far higher gluten content. Gluten is a protein found not just in wheat, but also in barley and rye and it causes most people a lot of problems, but because these problems are not obvious, people don’t realise they have them. I will write more on gluten intolerance and ceoliac’s disease in a separate article.
Gluten can also be found in oats due to the way they are harvested. Unless, specifically stated as ‘gluten free’, this means that the machines used to harvest wheat, barley and rye, have also been used to harvest the oats. The oats will not be different, just the machines used to harvest them.
Another overused food in our society is potatoes. Potatoes are part of the nightshade family, as are peppers, aubergines and tomatoes. The deadly nightshade is a plant which, as its name suggests, is deadly. All of the foods that are part of the nightshade family are mildly toxic and should only be consumed rarely as a general rule.
Corn, which is another carbohydrate, is not easily digested by the body. Moreover, there is the risk that it is genetically modified (GM), even in the UK. There is strong evidence to support the idea that GM foods are carcinogenic, meaning they cause cancer. As for corn syrup, which is found in sweets, sauces and other processed foods such as salami, this has been highly processed and should be avoided as much as possible.
Soy is also problematic. It is found in so many different products including chocolate. Soy is predominantly oestrogen-based. Oestrogen is a female hormone. When overly consumed by women it can cause imbalances in the body which may include fibroids. When consumed by men it can cause many other problems. Avoid soy milk like the plague. Soy milk is the toxic derivative of the soy bean and is carcinogenic.
Finally, I would like to write briefly about pasteurisation. Some foods that are pasteurised include milk, eggs and honey. The process of pasteurisation requires heating the food to a high temperature to kill off bacteria. The problem is, it also denatures the food, essentially killing everything good about it. Pasteurised milk, for example, has very few nutrients in it and ultra-high temperature (UHT) milk has no nutrients in it whatsoever. This pasteurisation and, therefore, denaturing of food causes a lot of problems for people’s bodies as the body has to use its own resources to digest it, hence the body reacts negatively and you get such things as lactose intolerance.
Now that we have established what is not good for you and briefly why, find out what you CAN eat in Part II: The good foods.