Are Your Food Choices Trending Toward Health?

Hippocrates said

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”

This is to say that our food should contain the vital nutrients that are necessary to maintain good health and not things that undermine our health.

The food industry is growing and manufacturing our food on industrial farms so that it contains less vital nutrients and has added chemicals that threaten our health. These chemicals allow food producers to produce our food with higher yields, longer shelf life, and less waste, making food cheaper and more profitable. It makes food production more profitable while it puts our health in jeopardy.

Our health is being traded to make corporations wealthier and make shareholders more money. It compromises our health in many ways:

• Food has less of the vital macro and micronutrients that the body requires to maintain health
• Chemicals are added to our food that allow it to be produced with less loss to pests or plant issues.
• Food is produced in less-than-ideal soil conditions, environments or weather with artificially extended growing seasons,
• GMO food is produced in uniform sizes, which helps with automation.
• Food preservatives are added to reduce spoilage, giving food a longer shelf life and allowing it to be shipped further.
• It allows farmers to receive higher government subsidies for producing our food, making it more profitable.
• Farmers now grow only higher-yield food products, eliminating lesser yield choices and verity.
• Seed companies only make GMO seeds that do not germinate new seeds, requiring farmers to repurchase them only from them. This eliminates variety and non-GMO crops
• Industrial farms are putting neighboring smaller farms out of business to acquire land to expand their farms.
• Foods containing toxic chemicals can cause foodborne diseases
• Chemical waste from industrial animal farms leaches into adjacent vegetable farms, causing FOODBORNE OUTBREAKS such as E. coli, bacteria, viruses, and parasites.
• Contamination which causes human illness and death:
  https://wwwn.cdc.gov/foodborneoutbreaks/
  18,211 Outbreaks, 358,391 Illnesses, 13,715 Hospitalizations (3.8%), 318 Deaths (.1%) …1998 -2014

This leaves us with a food supply that:

• 66% of Americans are obese or overweight
• 51% want to lose weight
• 26% are making a serious effort to do so
• 95% who lose the weight will put it back on within 1 year

Things that trend you away from good health can be described as less healthy. They

• Are not performance-enhancing
• Are not energy-giving
• Do not support healthy aging
• Do not support athletic recovery
• Do not support body functions
• Diminish the quality of life 
• Are life taking
• Are health undermining
• Add to health challenges
• Are non-value-adding
• Add to health deterioration
• Complicate health
• Are disease generating

I am sure you can add to this list!

Ironically, if many of these things that jeopardized your health were labeled clearly, we would avoid consuming them. We all know or have heard about most of these toxic things but are not given the ability to make choices with current labeling requirements. Many toxic chemicals are added to our food that we are not aware of and without us having the opportunity to eliminate them from our diet.

People who claim … “everything in moderation” generally have no idea that the makers of our food have made this an impossible scenario. The human body is overwhelmed with getting toxic chemicals out of our bodies. As a last resort, your body encapsulates toxins it cannot remove in fat and places them in your fat stores to protect itself. Your fat actually pulses around your body, like a heartbeat, to keep toxins from lying against vital organs that might cause disease. Losing weight (fat) re-releases these toxins into the bloodstream, and if you still cannot get rid of them, re-threatens health, and your body must re-encapsulate it, re-create more fat to protect itself… this explains YO-YO dieting! You lose 10, then gain 10 over & over again!

Be aware of these items that TREND your health in the negative direction:

• Salt or added salts … can raise blood pressure
• Added sugars … addictive
• Artificial sweeteners … addictive
• MSG … addictive
• Hydrated oils … are solids at 98.6° F
• Saturated oils … easily stored
• Ground meats & Cold cuts … amino acid (protein) bankrupt
• “Low-fat items” (contain chemical additives)
• Alcohol consumption (90 cal/ounce)
• Caffeine …only low caffeine 80 -160 mg daily (organic blended with green tea extract, trace minerals to neutralize acidity) with coconut oil (Up to 400 milligrams (mg) of caffeine a day appears to be safe for most healthy adults. That’s roughly the amount of caffeine in four cups of brewed coffee)
• Fried foods multiply calorie intake (more than doubles) with fats stabilized to cook making them hazardous to our health.
• Bromated Flour … Bread made with Potassium Bromate (carcinogenic)
• No GMO products … studies have indicated they affect RNA in your cells
• No Soy products … linked to metabolic disorders
• No products treated with antibiotics (produce or livestock/fish/poultry) … super stains of antibiotic resistance diseases & affect humans digestive tract
• No products treated with hormones (livestock/fish/poultry) … Hormones are our body function regulators
• No farm-raised fish … often GMO, often raised in harbors, often fed from their feces
• No large deep swimming wild-caught fish … mercury
• Only farm raised free range poultry
• No denatured whey products 
• No high fructose corn syrup …
• No carbonated products … compromise the immune system (especially those mixed with sugar)
• Avoid nightshades … cause inflammation.
• No chemically enhanced food to preserve it … preservatives are mostly toxic
• Artificial colors … often toxic
• Poorly processed food to increase its profitability … grinding/blending foods longer than 20 seconds will denature them and remove nutrient content

Eliminate as many as you can, as often as you can!

With current labeling laws, this is almost impossible. Remember … as a consumer … You vote for how they produce our food with your $$$$. I avoid doing business with food companies that do not honor my health commitments to myself and my family!