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Top Five Worst Foods You Can Eat
By Suzanne Dixon on 06/07/2010
I know what you’re thinking. I think it myself all the time. “Not another one of those food police types telling me what I can’t eat.” It’s rare that you’ll hear me say a particular food has no place in a healthy diet. I am the queen of moderation. As long as your “dietary vices” aren’t contributing more than five to ten percent of your dietary intake, no sweat.
Spend Wisely
But I do believe that an informed consumer is a wise consumer. Nothing is truly off-limits. But knowing which foods and ingredients are the worst for health can help you decide where you’d like to “spend” your vices and which foods simply aren’t worth it.
Think of your body as a bank account. To keep the account balance healthy, you need to make regular deposits. It’s OK to make the occasional withdrawal. Too many withdrawals, however, and you’re headed for overdraft fees.
With health, overdraft fees come in the form of fatigue, excess body fat, and aches and pains. In the worst case, small overdraft fees add up to a large penalty. This might come in the form of heart disease, cancer, or diabetes.
Avoid Large Penalties to Your Health
Don’t worry about the occasional overdraft fee. Food is to be enjoyed. A piece of cake or a French fry now and then never killed anyone. To avoid a large penalty, however, keep the following five foods and ingredients out of your diet. (Next week we’ll cover foods and ingredients six through ten of the Top Ten Worst Foods and Ingredients to Avoid.)
The Top Ten Foods and Ingredients to Avoid: One through Five
1. Soda
Soda is the frequent target of healthy eating campaigns. This is not arbitrary. There is absolutely nothing of any nutritional value in soda. Worse yet, our bodies aren’t particularly good at registering liquid calories, like those in soda.1
When we take in sugary, solid calories (think jelly beans), we typically end up eating less later in the day to compensate. People do not eat less after they’ve taken in excess liquid calories. With soda, you take in extra calories, but your body doesn’t even know it!
Soda makes up between 10% and 14% of the calories consumed by the average American. That’s hundreds of sugary, liquid calories per day – fifty gallons of soda per person per year in the US! No wonder two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. It’s time to drop the pop habit.
2. Hydrogenated Fat
For years, health experts admonished Americans to eat less saturated fat. Butter was a target. Margarine was promoted as the healthy option.
The only way to make vegetable oil into margarine is to process it with hydrogen and a metal (catalyst) under high pressure. This is hydrogenation. This creates hydrogenated fats, which sometimes are called trans fats.
When you replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated vegetable oil fats, this does lower heart disease risk.2 But not if the vegetable oil hydrogenated! In fact, hydrogenated fat is far worse for health than saturated fat. Some saturated fat can be part of a healthy diet. Hydrogenated fat cannot.
Hydrogenated fats are linked with an increased risk of heart disease – the number one killer in the US. For every 2% increase in energy intake from trans fat there is a 23% increase in cardiovascular risk.3 If that’s not motivation to avoid hydrogenated fats (read labels), I don’t know what is!
3. Synthetic Yellow, Red, and Blue Dyes
If I want my food to be yellow, orange, purple, red, green, and blue, I’ll stick to bananas, mangos, eggplant, apples, broccoli, and blueberries. Unfortunately, most processed food companies don’t feel the same way. And given that 90% of all food dollars in the US are spent on processed food,4 that’s an awful lot of synthetic dye we’re eating.
Consider Yellow Dye #5, which also goes by the names tartrazine, FD&C yellow No. 5, yellow lake, and yellow oxide. Yellow #5 appears in products such as candy, yogurt, frozen desserts, soda, sports drinks, snack chips, salad dressing, and even medications.
Tartrazine causes the most allergic reactions of all the colorants known as azo dyes. It may be particularly likely to cause problems in people with asthma or aspirin intolerance or allergy.5 Allergy symptoms such as hives and wheezing can occur from ingestion (eating) or topical (on the skin) exposure.
According to the Environmental Working Group, a commonly used red colorant called D&C Red 28 Aluminum Lake shows strong evidence of neurotoxicity (toxic to nerves) and may be cancer-causing.6
4. High-Sodium Processed Foods (Soups, Microwave Dinners, and More)
We’ve all heard how important it is to reduce our sodium intake. The reason goes far beyond blood pressure concerns. From worsening of metabolic syndrome to kidney damage and heart disease, sodium is public enemy number one.7
The most amazing part of the sodium picture is how easy it is to avoid. I was working on a menu project recently. I was tasked with creating menus to meet nutrient intake guidelines.
When I calculated the sodium in my menus, I found, much to my dismay, that the levels were very low. I even paused to momentarily look up the minimum amount of sodium needed for good health. Imagine that…a diet so low in sodium. The reason why sodium was so low in my menus? No processed food!
The average American gets 10 to 12 grams of sodium per day. This is about 5 to 6 times the highest recommended intake (2.4 grams, or 2,400 milligrams) for good health! And it’s all due to processed food.
5. Cured, Smoked, and Salted Meats
There are two main reasons to steer clear of cured, smoked, and salted meats. One is sodium (see #4 above). The second reason is because these foods contain carcinogens. Carcinogen is a fancy way of saying, “causes cancer.”
Compounds called nitrosamines and nitrosamides are formed during the meat curing, smoking, and salting process. They cause cancer.8-9 No ifs ands or buts. If you are interested in avoiding a known carcinogen in the foods you eat, give processed meats a pass.
For article references visit www.appleboost.com.
Printer-friendly versionAbout the author
Suzanne Dixon, MPH, MS, RD, is an internationally recognized expert in nutrition, chronic disease, cancer, health and wellness as well as the Executive Editor of Nutrition Intelligence Report, a free natural health and nutrition newsletter.
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Comments
EddieW
I understand ALL meat is now irradiated, which kills all the enzymes, but cooking would kill them anyway! so that's no great loss.
The big question now is GMO Foods, I will no longer eat any corn, for fear it's GMO but it's almost in all foods now! The FDA (Federal DEATH Administration) will OK any product that will bring harm to people, because it will be a bonanza for big Pharma...They don't even pretend to protect the public!!!
Anonymous
dear eddy.w, compliment for your words, and a great invention: the meaning of FDeathA. also: i had the same thought - the more people are sick, the more business for pharma... nobody up there is interested in healthy people.
m.c.
You know, it's quite ironical, i have noticed that these Institutions in Our Society, what ever their Title, seem to Act the Opposite of what they "Claim" to be, This is very Decietful, as We, The General Public seem to be Totally Mislead by the "Label" that these Institutions and Departments give to themselves, thereby Creating a Totally Misleading Concept/image to The General Public, I wish to extend my Gratitude to the Wonderful and Courages People who give their time and energies, and have such Great Honour, as to put our Health First, and deliver to us the Truth, m.c.
isabelle
thanks for saying what I believe is true in our foods. Natrual foods, greens etc. are still man's best friend. However how can we be sure even fresh produce is safe from the chems?
Anonymous II
Isabelle, the best you can do unless otherwise is to go organic or grow your own!XeGP
Amanda
Not ALL meat is irradiated. You can buy meats from local farmers that have not been processed in this way. (I'm not certain that ALL supermarket meat is irridated either... I noticed that Wegmans, a grocery store chain on the eastern seaboard, labels some of it's beef as "irridiated" but not all. Don't know if this is an accurate assertion to assume that the remainder is not. Don't usually buy grocery store meats.) Anyway, for locally raised meats, check out http://www.eatwild.com/ for a farm near you. Most indicate how their meats are raised and processed. Those that don't will let you know if you ask.
Dr. N. W. Miller
You mean I have to give up pepperoni pizza? Ouch. As to dyes, I have developed a taste for M&Ms. Taking a look at the ingredients, this is what I find: "Coloring (includes blue 1 lake, yellow 6, red 40 lake, yellow 5, red 40, blue 1, blue 2 lake, yellow 6 lake, yellow 5 lake, blue 2)." Should I give up swimming, too?
Anonymous
I don't think Safeway irradiates their meat either...yet..I wish there were more healthy food markets in my area..it's tough living so far from places where they sell good food..man is always trying to improve on net sales instead of improving the quality of food. how terribly sad. so it is definitely up to you to take charge of your own health and well being because no one else has your good health in mind!!
Dave
Sodium is NOT bad for you at all, sodium chloride IS in it's refined form, denuded of all it's health-giving associated elements. Try Himalayan rock salt and normalize your blood pressure. Too little real salt and you will damage your kidneys, don't let all the new age government health gurus tell you salt is bad for you. Why don't they just put healthy non toxic rock salt and sea salt in our foods, why do they put toxic refined salt in and then tell us salt is bad for us, this is some typical sick joke from the sadistic retarded idiots that control their slave populations' food intake to keep them perpetually neurotic and diseased. If salt was bad for you, why did the Roman army receive unrefined salt as pay (salarium); you never saw them dropping dead from salt, they recognised it as necessary for life and to maintain a strong healthy armed force to run a whole empire. For bullshit free info on salt, and it's many health benefits, try a good book, for instance 'Water and Salt-The Essence of Life' by Dr. Med. Barbara Hendel and Peter Ferreira. Salt is bad for you my arse-do some real study you people up there before you print these articles. Big pharma gives out crap like coffee is supposed to be good for you when it is in truth highly toxic and stops your brain developing normally by interfering with the production of various neurotransmitters, no coincidence that it reduces fertility by 50%; they say sunshine is bad for you, you know, the usual rubbish, and sell you cancer-inducing sun screens that prevent you absorbing healthy sunshine that actually stops you getting cancer! We live in very sad and perverse times when those above try to grind us down with ignorance and disease instead of trying to lift us up. A genuinely spiritual society would reflect that of heaven, where everyone seeks to encourage the uplifting of everyone else in true knowledge within God, the natural spiritual higher self communal to all souls in all species.
Jenhill
This is a very good post, since these days we are seeing lots of cases of people discovering they have cancer or any illness not knowing this was caused by the food they had been taking! For some food that we intake, they have immediate effect like if we experience adverse reactions after eating, we take it as food allergy, although this could also be a food intolerance - important to check with the doctor. I once had this experience, too, and my friend recommended Histame, which relieved my discomfort. I also want to get doctor's advice on this.
susanh110
I have a question about birth control pills I have been forced to take a different pill called Gianvi and when I was looking at the ingredients it has a lot of colors labeled as aluminum _____: aluminum lake, as one of the colors does it contain aluminum or is it just part of the name....
Abe
I agree with most all of you. Some very good posts. I have come to the terrifying conclusion that most all authorities with titles in front of or after their names are self promoting and could care less about the people they supposedly serve. If their mouths are moving; 1) don't believe it, 2) If there is a smidgen of truth then watch out for the other shoe to drop because it's not always what they tell you but what they're not telling you.
sanaajeet
All I can say is great article and I have learned much from reading the comments, thank you for the information :)
Anonymous
I know what you said about processed foods having "nitrosamimes", but doesn't this only occur when the sodium nitrite in them is heated to over 400 degrees F? So then, isn't microwaving them ultimately safe, then, from this carcinogenic standpoint?
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