Good Health is not valued until sickness comes knocking!
1. Banish Bad fats
What: Trans-fats. These are formed when vegetable oils are made into solid form through a chemical process called hydrogenization. They are by far one of the most seriously damaging part of our diet!
Where: Used for many processed foods especially snacks, candy bars, and fast foods industry. Also found in margarine and buttery spreads. Trans-fats are cheap; they lengthen the shelf life of foods and they keep flavours stable – but at the price of your health.
Why: Natural vegetable oils have gone through a harsh chemical process in order to be transformed into trans-fatty acids. These acids not only block us from absorbing and using essential fatty acids that we do need, they also disturb the make up of our cells and are linked to a host of serious diseases, including cancer and diabetes. BAN IT FROM YOUR FOOD!
Avoid: Nutritional labels are required to include trans-fats. Start checking the ingredients for the word hydrogenated, look at the caloric breakdown and see how many everyday items are full of them. Restaurants, including fast-food joints, are harder to police.
Instead: Use real butter, not margarine, at home; avoid commercially produced snacks, baked goods, and fast food. It’s not just solid trans-fats you have to be wary of.
The poly-unsaturated vegetable oils that are touted to be super healthy, such as safflower, sunflower, canola, and so on, have a downside; they can easily go rancid, which creates damaging free radicals that can harm your cells. They get damaged by high- eat cooking and further disrupt your cellular function.
One great change you can make in your diet is to switch your fats. Stick with good quality olive oil (Extra Virgin is best because it is processed in a gentler way). Buy only “expeller-pressed” or “unrefined” vegetable oils and good quality butter (organic or, better yet, raw organic if you can find it, full of essential, fat-soluble vitamins and delicious taste).
Try a new contender in the health field: coconut oil, which is a healthy saturated fat that is great for high-heat cooking. Also try walnut oil and almond oil for dressings and baking. Always store all cooking oils in dark containers so they don’t go rancid.
2. Cut chemical additives
What: Synthetic colours, flavours, and preservatives added to processed food to make them more appetizing or more flavourful or to last longer than nature would allow. Where: In many processed foods, from cereal to condiments, to ice cream.
Why: Can build up in your intestines and cross through into your blood stream, taxing the liver, which must detoxify them. If the liver gets over-loaded with toxins from prolonged consumption of these foods, the additives start to circulate in the blood stream and can lead to problems like skin disorders, weight gain, and possibly auto-immune disorders. In some cases, if you eat a lot of highly refined foods and stimulants, your body starts depleting its own mineral supply.
Also factor in the trash and waste that you are adding to landfills from packaged, processed foods. Consuming lots of prepackaged food is not good either for your body or for the environment.
Avoid: Eat meals of whole foods closest to their original state whenever possible (like a home-roasted chicken, not boxed chicken stir-fry). Veto foods that look like nature wouldn’t have made them that way, and check the ingredients list for suspicious activity. Harmful nitrates, for example, are added to many lunch meats to make them look pink. Nix those brands.
…TO BE CONTINUED
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