Overfed … But Malnourished
The key for longevity, weight loss and good overall health is the nutrient density of your diet. In other words, you must eat a diet rich in nutrients and fibre, with a very low percentage of foods that are not nutrient – and fibre-dense. To help you learn how you can do this in practice, you first need to understand how most people eat in reality and what they gain or lose from such eating practices.
Humans and primates are the only animals on earth that can taste sweet and see colour. We were designed by our creator to see, grasp, eat, and enjoy the flavour of colourful, sweet fruits. Fruit is an essential part of our diets. It is an indispensable requirement for us to maintain a high level of health. Fruit consumption has been shown in numerous studies to offer our strongest protection against certain cancers, especially oral and oesophageal, lung, prostate, and pancreatic cancer.
Thankfully, our natural sweet tooth directs us to those foods ideally designed to satisfy this craving — fruit … which thankfully also provides many other valuable and powerful health-giving benefits
Researchers have discovered substances in fruit that have unique effects on preventing ageing and deterioration of the brain. Some fruits, especially blueberries, are rich in anthocyanins and other compounds having anti-ageing effects. Studies continue to provide evidence that more than any other food, fruit consumption is associated with lowered mortality from all cancers combined. Eating fruit is therefore vital to our health, well-being, and long life.
Regrettably, our human desire for sweets is typically satisfied by the consumption of products containing sugar, such as candy bars and ice cream — not fresh fruit. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates that the typical American now consumes an unbelievable 32 teaspoons of added sugar a day. That’s right, in one day!
As we shall see, we need to satisfy our sweet tooth with fresh, natural fruits and other plant substances that supply us not just with carbohydrates for energy but also with the full complement of indispensable substances that prevent illness.
Nutritional Lightweights: Pasta and White Bread
Unlike the fruits found in nature — which have a full ensemble of nutrients — processed carbohydrates (such as bread, pasta, and cake) are deficient in fibre, phytonutrients , vitamins, and minerals, all of which have been lost in processing.
Compared with whole wheat, typical pasta and bread are missing:
•62 percent of the zinc
•72 percent of the magnesium
•95 percent of the vitamin E
•50 percent of the folic acid
•72 percent of the chromium
•78 percent of the vitamin B6
•78 percent of the fibre
In a six-year study of 65,000 women , those with diets high in refined carbohydrates from white bread, white rice, and pasta had two and a half times the incidence of Type II diabetes, compared with those who ate high-fiber foods such as whole-wheat bread and brown rice.
These findings were replicated in a study of 43,000 men. Diabetes is no trivial problem; it is the fourth-leading cause of death by disease in America, and its incidence is growing.
Walter Willett, M.D., professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of those two studies, finds the results so convincing that he’d like our government to change the official “Food Guide Pyramid”, which recommends six to eleven servings of any kind of carbohydrate. He says, “They should move refined grains, like white bread, up to the sweets category because metabolically they’re basically the same.”
These starchy (white flour) foods, removed from nature’s packaging, are no longer real food. The fibre and the majority of minerals have been removed, so such foods are absorbed too rapidly, resulting in a sharp glucose surge into the bloodstream. The pancreas is then forced to pump out insulin faster to keep up. Excess body fat also causes us to require more insulin from the pancreas. Over time, it is the excessive demand for insulin placed on the pancreas from both refined foods and increased body fat that leads to diabetes. Refined carbohydrates, white flour, sweets, and even fruit juices, because they enter the bloodstream so quickly, can also raise triglycerides, increasing the risk of heart attack in susceptible individuals.
Every time you eat such processed foods, you exclude from your diet not only the essential nutrients that we are aware of but hundreds of other undiscovered phytonutrients that are crucial for normal human function. When the nutrient-rich outer cover is removed from whole wheat to make it into white flour, the most nutritious part of the food is lost. The outer portion of the wheat kernel contains trace minerals, phytoestrogens, lignans, phytic acid, indoles, phenolic compounds , and other phytochemicals, as well as almost all the vitamin E in the food. True whole grain foods, which are associated with longer life, are vastly different from the processed foods that make up the bulk of calories in the modern American diet (MAD for short!)
Medical investigations clearly show the dangers of consuming the quantity of processed foods that we do. And because these refined grains lack the fibre and nutrient density to turn down our appetite, they also cause obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and significantly increased cancer risk.
One recent nine-year study involving 34,492 women between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-nine showed a two-thirds increase in the risk of death from heart disease in those eating refined grains.
Summarizing fifteen epidemiological studies, researchers concluded that diets containing refined grains and refined sweets were consistently linked to stomach and colon cancer, and at least twelve breast cancer studies connect low-fiber diets with increased risks. Eating a diet that contains a significant quantity of sugar and refined flour does not just cause weight gain, it also leads to an earlier death.
Refined Foods Are Linked To:
•Oral cavity cancer
•Thyroid cancer
•Stomach cancer
•Colorectal cancer
•Intestinal cancer
•Breast cancer
•Respiratory tract cancer
•Diabetes
•Gallbladder disease
•Heart disease
If you want to lose weight, the most important foods to avoid are processed foods: condiments, candy, snacks, and baked goods; fat- free has nothing to do with it. Almost all weight-loss authorities agree on this — you must cut out the refined carbohydrates, including bagels, pasta, and bread. As far as the human body is concerned, low-fiber carbohydrates such as pasta are almost as damaging as white sugar. Pasta is not health food — it is hurt food.
Now I can imagine what many of you are thinking: “I love pasta. Do I have to give it up?” I enjoy eating pasta, too. Pasta can sometimes be used in small quantities in a recipe that includes lots of green vegetables, onions, mushrooms, and tomatoes. Whole-grain pastas and bean pastas found in health-food stores are better choices than those made from white flour. The point to remember is that all-refined grains must be placed in that limited category — foods that should constitute only a small percentage of our total caloric intake.
What about bagels? Is the “whole-wheat” bagel you just bought at the bagel store really made from whole grain? No; in most cases, it is primarily white flour. It is hard to tell sometimes. Ninety-nine percent of pastas, breads,cookies, pretzels, and other grain products are made from white flour. Sometimes a little whole wheat or caramel
colour is added and the product is called whole wheat to make you think it is the real thing. It isn’t. Most brown bread is merely white bread with a fake tan. Wheat grown on American soil is not a nutrient-dense food to begin with, but then the food manufacturers remove the most valuable part of the food and then add bleach, preservatives, salt, sugar, and food colouring to make breads, breakfast cereals, and other convenience foods.
Yet many Americans consider such food healthy merely because it is low in fat!
