JUNK
Eat to nourish the cells of your body, keep yourself in good health and maintain an ideal weight
|
|
|
||
|
JUNK |
|||
|
Eat to nourish the cells of your body, keep yourself in good health and maintain an ideal weight |
|||
|
|
Click on the book cover to purchase the book
Want to know more about the effects of a diet based on flour and sugar go to www.mercola.com
|
JUNK, JUNK, ALL IS JUNK Just about everyone these days thinks they know what junk food is. Usually they point the finger at fast food outlets. However, I can tell you one thing; there's more junk food sold in supermarkets and more junk food is eaten in homes than is ever purchased from take-way joints.
Even the supermarkets who pride themselves on the freshness of some of the food they sell, make the lion's share of their income from junk (and cigarettes and alcohol). Their aisles are full of it. Aisle after aisle of junk drink, processed flour in the form of bread, pasta, biscuits, cake and breakfast biscuits, side by side with chips, confectionery and chocolates.
Take a look at what fills up your average shopping trolley. If it's in a cardboard box, plastic container, cellophane wrap or bottle it's probably junk. And the junk food culture is so seductive that even people who can hardly raise the money to rub two sticks together, stuff their trolleys with the most expensive, manufactured food, in the main robbed of all it's goodness. They're left starving themselves with full bellies.
So what is junk food? How can you discern the difference between good food and junk food.
JUNK FOOD DEFINITION 1. Junk food is food that’s been through a manufacturing process. It's food that's been through the mill, the oven or, in the case of the rissole, the piece of fish and the potato, the fat bath.
The food manufacturing companies, big and small love it. The more they can manufacture and sell the more money they make. The secret of sales success is to get some fat, flour and sugar, mix it up, and cook it.
The human species is genetically wired to love the taste of it and become addicted to it. But in the history of human nutrition it's a very recent phenomenon and the human body is not yet adapted to living on it. The result, an epidemic of body system dysfunction.
If the nutritionists who concoct these health-destroying recipes were lawyers they'd be disbarred; if they were doctors they would be struck off, such is the enormity of the disservice they do to their community.
2. It’s food that contains over 250 calories (1000Kj)/100gms. Immediately that captures the garbohydrates; - bread, pasta, breakfast biscuits, sweet biscuits, dry biscuits, cake, chocolate, chips (any potato will provide the body with an unnecessary glucose dump), some ice cream and all confectionery and chocolate.
The exception to this calorie rule is fat, which contains 3400Kj/100gms. The body needs something like 20% of our food intake as fat in order to function properly. Over than amount and you may be doing yourself a disservice. You need fat in your diet and the message to strip all of it out of your diet is a dangerous one indeed. It can lead to all manner of body system dysfunctions.
3. It’s processed food that comes out of the udder of members of the bovine family and designed for calves of that species and not the calves and adults of the human species.
4. It’s food that has been denatured and lacks living enzymes.
5. It's food containing empty calories, that fill up the stomach but fail to nourish the cells of the body.
6. It’s food that’s loaded to the gills with food additives – preservatives, flavourings, colourings, emulsifiers, surfactants, thickeners … Just look on the side of the packet at what's in banana cake or hot cross buns and you'll probably die with your legs in the air!
7. It’s junk drink that contains bubbles, caffeine, alcohol, sugar and/or aspartame. Can anyone tell me why any food nutritionist working for any junk drink company would recommend the addition of caffeine to the product? So much for nutritionists!
8. It’s food that comes in fancy packets and wrappers, in bottles, cardboard boxes and plastic bags.
9. It’s food that is marketed to fools and children as being nutritious and wholesome.
10. It's food that's associated with the latest Shrek, Spider Man or Simpsons promotion; that contains cartoon characters on the outside of the packet and baubles and premiums on the inside.
If you want to get fat; if you want to get high blood pressure, cardiac dysfunction, depression or diabetes, eat junk, lots of junk. And where do you buy it? From the Junk Food People.
In the long run you're going to have to make up your own mind about what's good for your body. The best way to do this is by experimenting on yourself. Go for a month without the junk foods, in particular products made from wheat and sugar - and see what happens to you. There’s a good chance you’ll feel better.
IS THAT A FAT GUTS OR A STARCH GUTS? It's incongruous that whilst people report that they are eating less fat they're getting fatter. The number of people who are 10 Kg fatter than they were 10 years ago is enormous. Ask any group. A sea of hands goes up. There's something wrong with current eating habits.
What's happened over the last 30 years is that the species that spent thousands of years learning how to adapt to scarcity hasn't learnt how to live in harmony with affluence. We're suffering from affluenza, which leads to dysfunction in all the body systems.
We eat too much for the level of energy we expend. In particular we eat too much high density carbohydrate (CHO) in the form of starch and sugar, singly or in combination. We eat too much of the wrong food at the wrong time (for both short and long periods). It's too easy to eat too much high density food, which is why, if you want to slim down, I recommend you cut it out of your diet for a while.
We all know that if you want to get fat, eat lots of fat. What is less well known is that if you want to get fat eat lots of starch and sugar, particularly in combination with fat. As well as that, many people are being taken in by the low fat hoax, little realizing that the fat in the packaged food has often been replaced by refined sugar
THE JUNK PYRAMID Why the junk pyramid? Because it's a model designed and promoted by food manufacturers, aimed at encouraging people to eat more high density garbohydrates and dairy products.
Remember the diet pyramid beloved of the dairy and grain and breakfast biscuit industries? It's promoted in a myriad of forms in books, posters and particularly on the backs of packets of junk food. It receives the highest of endorsements from departments of health and nutrition professional bodies and health charities.
When it comes to eating wisely in an affluent society it's a limp and useless tool.
The experts say that it's advisable to eat less from the top of the pyramid and more from the bottom. It sounds like good advice, except that for many people that advice has been translated into eating more of the high density garbohydrates (read flour-based products) and drinking more milk. Hence the epidemic of all manner of body system dysfunctions; headaches, tiredness, arthritis, asthma, crook guts, high blood pressure, adult onset diabetes, not to forget obesity.
Have you ever heard of a gut or heart foundation receiving an indulgence from a bread or dairy company? Have you every heard of a dieticians organisation being sponsored by a company that makes muesli bars? When it's all boiled down, the diet pyramid has become the Junk Pyramid particularly in it's encouragement of the milk and garbohydrate industries.
The call to eat less fat is usually drives people into eating more of the energy dense, cereal derived carbohydrates on the bottom left hand corner of the pyramid - from now on called garbohydrates. That's why as a community we're fattening ourselves up. If the pyramid concept worked we'd all be at our ideal weight and there wouldn't be a range of epidemics that have a food-related connection.
In the first instance the junk pyramid places too great an emphasis on the ingestion of high energy-dense garbohydrates in the diet, particularly those with a white flour base. The call to eat more grains invariably ends up with people eating lass whole grains and more bread, white rice, pasta, breakfast biscuits, muffins and muesli bars. The multi-grain breads that are supposed to be good for us are often no more than processed flour with a few handfuls of chook food tossed in for appearances!
Whilst there are a lot of good doctors around who are thoughtful in their prescription of food as your medicine, there are a lot of junk doctors who more likely to prescribe a junk pharmaceutical, designed to mask the symptoms of the body system dysfunction caused by a poor diet. There is likely to be no diet prescription which would have you eating more of some things, eating less of others, and supplementing your diet with nutraceuticals. This is one of the great tragedies of modern medicine.
NUTRITION 101 If a particular body-system dysfunction has been caused by a poor diet, then only a good diet will fix it up. Metabolic dysfunctions need metabolic cures, not a junk pharmaceuticals. Always remember, the pill designed to take the place of wholesome food hasn't yet been developed.
If you're over weight, the dieticians will usually tell you to eat more cereals, (code for 'eat more bread and pasta', which in turn is code for 'eat more flour'.) 99% of the cereals eaten in this country comes in the form of flour baked up into either a loaf or a biscuit. Eating more wheat flour-based products doesn't take into account the sizable proportion of people who are intolerant of these products. They get fatter, blood pressure goes up and feel tired and miserable.
You'll get the same message from the heart, diabetes, gut and arthritis charities. You'll even get the same message from the Department of Health (who have the same people advising them as the health charities). They'll even subsidize the cost of poor diet when ever you visit the doctor or the chemist. Seems bizarre!
NATUROPATHY 101 The interpretation of which foods are good for you and which foods are doing you harm seems to be secret naturopaths business. It hasn't leaked out into Nutrition 101 yet, and probably never will.
REDUCED FAT AND SUGAR INTAKE Much of the starch we consume is eaten in combination with fat and sugar, thereby boosting the density and the energy level. So if you cut down on starch you'll probably cut down on fat and sugar as well.
DAIRY FOODS Is there anyone out there who can tell me why or how the dairy industry got a food group all of its own? In the main, milk is only an ordinary source of protein and you can get more readily absorbable calcium from other sources. Just think about it, cows don't drink milk and can still get enough calcium into their system to share it around to other species! There are better sources of more readily absorbable calcium that we can access.
JUNK MARKETING You can rest, assured that the major purveyors of food are more interested in selling junk than they are selling good food. As I write this I'm pleased to let you know that in my neighborhood, national chain supermarket store, (the junk food people) the front panels of their aisle shelving is packed with junk food. These people don't give a stuff about the health of their customers, just making a quick buck by selling junk. Here's the list, full of the usual suspects:
When I notice that these front of aisle promotion spaces are full of fruit and vegetables I'll report back. Don't hold your breath, and remember that every grain of sugar and every drop of aspartame is doing you harm.
These are the foods that members of the nutrition profession get awards to develop. If you go to their websites you'll find that they pride themselves on their research and development. These are the people responsible for the epidemic of chocolate, sugar and caffeine ingestion. First person to find a picture of a fat slob on their website wins a prize!
FLAVOR OF THE MONTH If it weren't enough to fill fools and children up with fat and sugar, now the flavor of the month is adding alcoholic flavorings. It's dreadful, bloody dreadful; on the part of the nutritionists who design the stuff, the companies that make it and the shops that sell it and the mugs who load it into their shopping trolleys.
JUNK FOOD SPONSORSHIP If deeds be anything to go on, the largest sponsor of the junk food industry is the Government's Agriculture Department, responsible for funneling huge subsidies into the wheat, milk and sugar industries. Want to know what sugar does to you? Whilst this is going on the Department of Health lies doggo. The last industries taxpayers should be supporting are the flour, milk and sugar industries. If these are inefficient industries, then let the consumers pay for them, not the taxpayer. In the meantime the broccoli and carrot growers have got their heads down and bums up, toughing it out on their own.
To cut a long story short, the community is getting fatter and unhealthier by the day, in great measure because of a poor diet, a diet increasingly reliant on the garbohydrates, washed down with milk, and the rest of the junk drinks. They are being seduced by the marketing companies into believing that junk food is a normal part of a healthy life.
The message that Hippocrates delivered 2,500 years ago - 'Let food be your medicine' - has been drowned out by the voice of a hoard of blow-ins from the nutrition, industrial and pharmaceutical industries whose pontifs, cardinals, bishops and parish priests have forgotten everything that people have done to keep themselves fit and healthy since that time. The modern mantra has become 'Eat junk and let medicine be your food.' That it should come to this.
Stop press And now, (roll on the drums) witness the most amazing exhibition of what can only be described as pure magic in this whole junk food saga.
With the touch of the magician's wand, out of the box springs the junk pharmaceutical industry to the rescue, ready to save the world; peddling drugs to mask the symptoms of the body system dysfunctions caused by junk food diets (and motion starvation), and subsidized by the taxes paid by the very people who eat the stuff in the first place.
What an amazing system, to build fabulously wealthy businesses at the place in time and space where the interests of the junk food, junk medicine, junk pharmaceutical and junk marketing industries intersect.
What an amazing feat to indoctrinate world into believing that body system dysfunctions caused by malnutrition and sitting down can be fixed up with a tablet, creme, syrup or suppository. As if high blood pressure was due to a lack of Avpro, depression due to a lack of Prozac, attention deficit due to a lack of Ritalin, a crook back due to a lack of Celebrex, reflux due to a lack of burp emulsion, a crook guts due to lack of Zantac, a headache due to a lack of asprin, or piles due to a lack of Anusol. It's nonsense.
What gullibility on the part of the public, its legislators and health practitioners?
Who will be the first bureaucrats and legislators to expose this hoax?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
