Doughnuts aren’t the only problem! The list of terrible things we mindlessly ingest might be longer than you think. What are these dietary culprits comprised of? What makes them so toxic? And, most importantly, what are processed foods doing to us?
Unfortunately, eradicating all processed foods from our diets is a difficult task nowadays but we can shed light on some of the dangerous ingredients we may be ingesting. Understanding the secret behind some of our favorite foods may change our mind and may even have us eating better.
What is processed food?
The term ‘processed food’ can really be divided into these three categories:
Processed food is made from real food that has been put through devitalizing chemical processes and is infused with chemicals and preservatives. Beef jerky, canned tea, jam, hot dogs, and low-fat yogurt with sugar or aspartame are a few examples of processed food. Preservatives are also used as a type of additive used to help stop food from spoiling. Junk foods contain very little real food. They’re made of devitalized processed food, hydrogenated fats, chemicals, and preservatives. Canned breakfast drinks, cold/sugary cereals, doughnuts, drive-through foods, and soda are examples of junk foods. Fake foods are made primarily of chemicals, and often contain gums and sugar fillers. Examples include bacon bits, bottled salad dressing, dehydrated soups, and instant coffee.
Energy Output > Exceeds Nutritional Input
These non-foods have one thing in common; it costs your body a great deal more to digest, absorb, and eliminate them than they offer your body in nutritional value - an extremely poor return on your investment that leaves your body sluggish and depleted.
Our ancestors preserved foods naturally, using salt, fermentation, and sun drying. Food processing has evolved away from these simple practices into more complicated and dubious methods. Today, nearly six thousand additives and chemicals are used by food companies to process our food. Many of them can have a devastating effect on our health.
It is important to note the fact that additives and preservatives cannot always be painted with a negative brush. The addition of vitamins to bread and milk is actually a positive contribution. Unfortunately, the good intentions that characterized the processed food industry during the early days have now de-evolved to finding ways to cheaply process food and manipulate buyers, regardless of the detrimental affects on the health of people.
Today, many additives and preservatives are harmful toxic chemicals as problematic as the decay they are used to prevent.
Coloring
How many times have you spent looking for the ‘perfect’ apple or orange at the grocery store? Unfortunately, this perfection comes with a high price on our health.
Though some artificial food dyes have been banned because they are believed to cause cancer, most dyes used today are of the artificial variety. They are also linked to allergies, asthmas, and hyperactivity.
The long list of foods and beverages in which color is altered includes butter, margarine, the skins of oranges and potatoes, popcorn, maraschino cherries, hot dogs, jellies, jellybeans, carbonated beverages, and canned strawberries and peas. Even the chicken feed on large-scale egg farms is colored so that chickens will lay golden-yolked eggs similar to those laid by free-range chickens.
Sweeteners
Most processed foods contain sweeteners, many of which are artificial sugar substitutes containing no natural sugars, such as saccharine and aspartame.
Artificial sweeteners are linked to behavioral problems, hyperactivity, and allergies. Because saccharin was shown to increase the incidence of bladder cancer in animal testing, all foods containing this sugar substitute are required to carry a warning label.
Flavorings
The most common food additive, flavorings - of which there are over 2000 in use - may be natural or artificial, and are usually comprised of a large number of chemicals. Peruse the ingredient list for the strawberry flavoring in one popular fast food outlet’s strawberry milk shake.
Artificial flavors are linked to allergic and behavioral reactions, yet these ingredients are not required to be listed in detail as they’re generally recognized as safe.
MSG (monosodium glutamate) is another popular flavor enhancer. Found to cause damage in laboratory mice, it has been banned from use in baby foods, but is still used in numerous others. It causes common allergic and behavioral reactions including headaches, dizziness, chest pains, depression and mood swings.
A Healthier Lifestyle
Eradicating every guilty pleasure in life is not the end goal here, nor is it a particularly realistic approach to making changes... But if we understand the consequences of making what ought to be an occasional treat into the mainstay of our diet, we can begin to make wise choices about how many of these things we are willing to eat.
When it comes to avoiding many of the questionable - and possibly deadly - additives contained in processed foods, we’re only human after all, so taking baby steps toward change is usually the best approach.
If you can accomplish just one of these 10 steps, you’re moving in the right direction.
1. As a general rule, if you don’t recognize - or can’t pronounce - the words on a label, don’t buy it, or eat it. Opt instead for the real thing!
2. Avoid products containing MSG (monosodium glutamate)
3. Don’t eat partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated trans fats
4. Don’t eat products containing sugar substitutes such as saccharine and aspartame.
5. Avoid products with a long shelf life - the better they do on the shelf, the worse they are for your body.
6. Avoid products that have been enriched. They have been completely devitalized during processing.
7. Avoid food that has been genetically modified or engineered. Nearly all processed food contains GMOs.
8. Avoid products made with ingredients euphemistically described as “natural flavoring” or “natural coloring.”
9. Avoid products with added sugar - watch for words with “-ose” endings such as glucose.
10. Incorporate a multi-vitamin into your health regimen.
If you’ve had a history of eating products high in sugar and are concerned about diabetes, incorporate disease-fighting products such as garlic, vitamin E, and aloe vera into your diet. Vitamin E supplements can also protect your body from the harmful effects of eating refined products that have been bleached with chloride oxide.
As you begin to eliminate processed food from your diet, and start to enjoy eating real food that has not been processed to death, you will be on your way to optimizing your health, making an investment in your body’s future.
