Foods NOT to eat -- part 3

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In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Thursday, 7-6-2006

Foods NOT to eat -- part 3

Foods to hardly ever eat or stop eating, part A

Your best choice is to simply substitute a Supefood you like for this group of foods.

But, if you are in good health & getting enough exercise, it’s probably OK to eat some of them a few times a year.

A. Hambuger.

You may have heard of the French paradox. The French eat more cheese & butter than Americans & have half the heart attack rate.

I was privileged to see a list of the total amount of various foods consumed country-wide in France & in the United States over a year’s time.

(The areas in France that ate the most cheese & butter had the highest heart attack rate & the areas that ate the least cheese & butter had the lowest heart attack rates. So, it wasn’t that eating lots of butter & cheese is good for you.)

The French drank a lot less milk & virtually always only drank skim milk & never drank whole milk.

And, they ate quite a bit more vegetables & garlic & drank more red wine.

Those things are all protective & helped to partially cancel out the effect of their higher cheese & butter consumption.

But the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet.

Something else was happening to cut their heart attack rate to half of what it was in the U.S.

It was hamburger. Americans ate huge quantities of the stuff. And, at that time, it hardly showed up at all in the French diet.

Some health writers now believe that grass fed beef in moderate quantities can actually have health benefits, which is why we listed it as an eat in moderation Superfood.

But in that year, virtually 100 percent of the hamburger Americans ate was grain fed to penned cattle.

This data very strongly suggests to me that anyone who wants to avoid heart disease & related diseases should be very moderate in their consumption of cheese & butter & either never eat the grain fed beef hambuger that is now sold in almost every corner of the U.S. – or, they should eat it only once or twice -- or maybe three times a year at most.

What if you really like hamburgers?

In that case, still consider eating them once a week or less.

And, make sure to eat them with lots of onions; use the leanest ground grass fed beef you can find &/or ground turkey breast & substitute some extra virgin olive oil to compensate for the lack of fat; add some diced, dried cherries to the pattie or use quick oatmeal in a meat loaf; & cook at a medium temperature only & NOT over a hot grill.

That set of things makes eating hamburger about five times safer or more according to the reports I’ve read.

So, there is a way if you really love hamburger to eat some. Just avoid overdoing it. And, simply stop eating the kind that that is most harmful.

Since the kind of hamburger that’s most harmful is cheap, that’s why many people have eaten so much of it.

So, if cost is a consideration, eating a lot less hamburger of better quality works well.

But even better are beans & lentils. Those are Superfoods with tons of extra health benefits; & they are far cheaper than the cheapest hamburger.