Nutrients – Our Food Choices Matter
Contrary to many of the horror stories you hear, American soil is not depleted of nutrients. California, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Florida, and other states still have rich, fertile land that produces most of our fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds. America provides some of the most nutrient-rich produce in the world.
The US government publishes nutritional analyses of foods. It takes food from a variety of supermarkets across the country, analyses it, and publishes the results. Contrary to claims of many health-food and supplement enthusiasts, the produce grown in this country is nutrient-rich and high in trace minerals, especially beans, nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables. American-produced grains, however, do not have the mineral density of vegetables. Grains and animal-feed crops grown in the southeastern states are the most deficient, but even in those states only a small percentage of crops are shown to be deficient in minerals.
Thankfully, by eating a diet with a wide variety of natural plant foods, from a variety of soils, the threat of nutritional deficiency merely as a result of soil inadequacy is eliminated. Americans are not nutrient-deficient because of depleted soil, as some nutritional- supplement proponent s claim. Americans are nutrient-deficient because they do not eat a sufficient quantity of fresh produce. Over 90 percent of the calories consumed by Americans come from refined foods or animal products. With such a small percentage of our diet consisting of unrefined plant foods, how could we not become nutrient-deficient?
Since more than 40 percent of the calories in the American diet are derived from sugar or refined grains, both of which are nutrient- depleted, Americans are severely malnourished. Refined sugars cause us to be malnourished in direct proportion to how much we consume them . They are partially to blame for the high cancer and heart attack rates we see
in America.
It is not merely dental cavities that should concern us about sugar. If we allow ourselves and our children to utilize sugar, white-flour products, and oil to supply the majority of calories, as most American families do, we shall be condemning ourselves to a lifetime of sickness, medical problems, and a premature death. Refined sugars include table sugar (sucrose), milk sugar (lactose), honey, brown sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, molasses, corn sweeteners, and fruit juice concentrates. Even the bottled and boxed fruit juices that many children drink are a poor food; with no significant nutrient density, they lead to obesity and disease. Processed apple juice, which is not far from sugar water in its nutrient score, accounts for almost 50 percent of all fruit servings consumed by preschoolers.
For example, apple juice contains none of the vitamin C originally present in the whole apple. Oranges make the most nutritious juice, but even orange juice can’t compare with the original orange. In citrus fruits, most of the anti-cancer compounds are present in the membranes and pulp, which are removed in processing juice. Those cardboard containers of orange juice contain less than 10 percent of the vitamin C present in an orange, and even less of the fibre and phytochemicals. Juice is not fruit, and prepackaged juices do not contain even one-tenth of the nutrient s present in fresh fruit.
Processed carbohydrates, lacking in fibre, fail to slow sugar absorption, causing wide swings in glucose levels. Empty calories are empty calories. Cookies, jams, and other processed foods (even those from the health-food store) sweetened with “fruit juice” sound healthier but are just as bad as white-sugar products. When fruit juice is concentrated and used as a sweetener, the healthy nutritional components are stripped away — what’s left is plain sugar. To your body, there is not much difference between refined sugar, fruit juice sweeteners, honey, fruit juice concentrate, or any other concentrated sweetener. Our sweet tooth has been put there by our creator to have us enjoy and consume real fruit, not some imitation. Fresh-squeezed orange juice and other fresh fruit and vegetable juices are relatively healthy foods that contain the majority of the original vitamins and minerals. But the sweet fruit juices and even carrot juice should still be used only moderately, as they still contain a high concentration of sugar calories and no fibre.
Still not an ideal food for those desiring to lose weight. You may want to use these juices as part of salad dressings and other dishes rather than alone as a drink. Fresh fruits and even dried fruits do contain an assortment of protective nutrients and phytochemicals, so stick with the real thing. Enrichment with Nutrients Is a House Made of Straw. White or “enriched” rice is just as bad as white bread and pasta. It is nutritionally bankrupt . You might as well just eat the Uncle Ben’s cardboard box it comes in. Refining the rice removes the same important factors: fibre, minerals, phytochemicals, and vitamin E. So, when you eat grains, eat whole grains.
Refining foods removes so much nutrition that the US government requires that a few synthetic vitamins and minerals be added back. Such foods are labelled as enriched or fortified. Whenever you see those words on a package, it means “important nutrients are missing”!
Refining foods lowers the amount of hundreds of known nutrients, yet usually only five to ten are added back by fortification. As we change food through processing and refining, we rob the food of certain health-supporting substances and often create unhealthy compounds, thus making it a more unfit food for human consumption. As a general rule of thumb : the closer we eat foods to their natural state, the healthier the food.
Not All Whole-Wheat Products Are Equal.
Just because a food is called “whole grain” does not make it a good food. Many whole-grain cold cereals are so processed that they do not have a significant fibre per serving ratio and have lost most of their nutritional value. Eating fragmented and unbalanced foods causes many problems, especially for those trying to lose weight.
Whole wheat that is finely ground is absorbed into the bloodstream fairly rapidly and should not be considered as wholesome as more coarsely ground and grittier whole grains. The rapid rise of glucose triggers fat storage hormones . Because the more coarsely ground grains are absorbed more slowly, they curtail our appetite better.
Whole-grain hot cereals are less processed than cold cereals and come up with better nutritional scores. They can be soaked in water overnight so you do not have to cook them in the morning. Some recommended hot whole-grain cereals are oatmeal (not instant), Roman Meal, Steel Cut Oats, Wheatena , Ralston High Fiber, and Quaker Multigrain.
Unlike eating whole-grain foods, ingesting processed foods can subtract nutrients and actually create nutritional deficiencies, as the body utilizes nutrients to digest and assimilate food. If the mineral demands of digestion and assimilation are greater than the nutrients supplied by the food, we may end up with a deficit — a drain on our nutrient reserve funds.
For most of their lives, the diets of many American adults and children are severely deficient in plant-derived nutrients. Our bodies are not immune to immutable biological laws that govern cellular function. Given enough time, disease will develop. Even borderline deficiencies can result in various subtle defects in human health, leading to anxiety, autoimmune disorders, cancer, and poor eyesight, to name a few.
