Processed Food.

One of the reasons why people are overweight and have bad health in America is processed food. The stomach is supposed to do the processing. When a manufacturing plant takes plants or animals and processes them, nutrition is lost. It is not the same as eating fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, or cooking beans, meat or fish.

A good rule of thumb, when you buy food, if it grew from the ground, it's okay to eat. If it's from a manufacturing plant or fast food restaurant, either don't eat it or limit the amount of processed food you eat.

Cigarettes have a warning label as to their health hazard to people. (And in the U.S. the warning label on cigarettes is small and unobtrusive—this is wrong! But that's a topic for another blog entry.) If the F.D.A. were ethical, they would put a health warning on most processed foods and fast food restaurants stating the food is not healthy to eat. In fact, the warning label would say the food is dangerous to eat.

Here is a quote from the Puristat web site describing the dangers of processed food.

"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.

Junk foods contain very little real food. They're made of devitalized processed food, hydrogenated fats, chemicals, and preservatives, and include anything made with refined white flour. 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.

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."

From: http://www.puristat.com/standardamericandiet/processedfoods.aspx

Another web site talks about eating a raw food diet. When raw foods are heated past 118 degrees, enzymes necessary for our stomach to digest, start to breakdown.

See: http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/enzymes.htm

What about soda? (Written by Kathy Loidolt)

"We Americans love a soda! And no wonder! It tastes great, gives us a boost and feels like a celebration drink. I don't want to rain on your parade, but do we know what we are drinking? Most of us are aware that there is a lot of sugar in soda (High Fructose Corn Syrup is a concentrated sugar) that's why it tastes so good, right? Sugar, among other things, lowers our immune system, making us susceptible to illnesses.

The bad news is, sugar is the least of our concerns when we drink soda. Many sodas contain color dyes, which have been known to cause ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and impotence. Another common soda pop ingredient, sodium benzoate, is a chemical compound that has it's own MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) filed with OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Organization). The MSDS for sodium benzoate states "Caution! Harmful if swallowed or inhaled!" The manufacturers are instructed to wear protective goggles, lab coats, gloves and use a vented hood. Now, I know we all drink sodas and feel fine right after, but what is this chemical doing to our bodies, soda after soda, year after year?

The "natural and artificial flavorings" is ingredients code for MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) which has been linked to migraines, MS, IBS, fibromyalgia, anxiety, seizures and depression. If you are drinking diet soda, you are getting lots of MSG, as it is a flavor enhancer used to make foods and drinks without sugar still taste good.

Of course, we all know that soda also contains carbonated water. Soda pop has been nicknamed "osteoporosis in a can" because the carbonation in the soda takes calcium out of our bones through a three stage process:

1. The carbonation irritates the stomach.
2. The stomach tries to cure the irritation by secreting the only antacid at its disposal, calcium. It gets this calcium from the blood.
3. The blood, now low on calcium, replenishes its supply from the bones. If it did not do this, muscular and brain function would be severely impaired.

Osteoporosis has been shown to be five times worse in kids and women who drink dark cola than in those who drink other types of soda.

So next time you have the kids at a restaurant and they ask if they can order a pop, pull this article out and read it to them! Maybe they'll choose water."

Written by Kathy Loidolt, author of Shopper's Guide to Healthy Living.
See:
http://ezinearticles.com/
?Stop-Drinking-That-Soda-and-Prevent-Osteoporosis&id=1526465
(This URL address is very long and I had to break it into two sentences. If you want to view the article, you'll need to copy and past both sentences without spaces and place into the appropriate place in your browser.)

Isn't it time the F.D.A. puts warning labels on most processed foods and food from most fast food restaurants and all carbonated drinks?