Want help turning down office goodies? Part 2
Welcome to our health & self help blog.
Focus on Your Health:
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: Friday, 9-22-2006
Want help turning down office goodies? Part 2
This continues yesterday’s post. So, if you didn’t see it, start there.
(And, it might even help if you saw it earlier to scan through it before reading this part.)
I saved the muffin label & its list of ingredients. There were several more ingredients in them probably best left uneaten, particularly in foods frequently eaten.:
Soybean oil. Because it is high in polyunsaturated omega 6 oils, so it’s not a good oil to cook with as they breakdown into forms that can damage your health over time.
But of more immediate importance, your body needs a balanced intake of Omega 3 & Omega 6 oils; & the great majority of people in the US get five times too much omega 6 oils & 4 times too little omega 3 oils which results in a higher rate of depression & lower quality of life & poorer health than a balanced intake.
So, if 95 to 100 percent of the time, you pass on foods containing soybean oil, corn oil, & safflower oil, you’ll be happier & healthier.
Propylene Glycol Monoesters. I’ve read recently that this one is harmful to your health. And, it’s NOT used in home cooking by any cooks I know about.
Sodium Aluminum Phosphate. It’s still controversial whether or not ingesting foods with aluminum tends to cause Alzheimer’s disease. But the most knowledgeable Doctor I’ve read recently on protecting your brain from such diseases is one who recommends you avoid consuming aluminum.
This ingredient is also in many double action baking powders -- including those many people use at home & is, as listed on the label I read, a leavening agent.
The good news is that an effective double acting baking powder that DOES NOT have this ingredient is readily available in most stores & is made by Rumsford.
Artificial flavors & colors. These may not be harmful to your health. But they are not really food or ingredients we have evolved to process well. If you eat a colored candy a few times a year, my bet is you are probably OK. But my bet is also that if you eat them several times a week, as most people do in the US now without reading labels on the foods they eat, that you will harm your health. So, it has to be a special occasion or a very special treat before I will eat a food with these things.
Sodium Benzoate & Benzoic Acid, preservatives. These are a bit of a mixed review.
They are added, like transfats have been, to improve the shelf life of the food. So, if these muffins were baked nearly a week, or maybe more, before people ate them in my office, they still taste good.
However, unlike transfats, preservatives also have some value in preventing bacteria that might make you sick from growing in the food.
But these particular ones may be carcinogenic when heated, I’ve read recently.
So, you are better off with home-made or freshly baked muffins that don’t have these ingredients.
So, when you add up the parts, these muffins were definitely a food you would do well to not eat. And, you’d be better off to wait until you have a chance to occasionally eat muffins from a recipe you really like that avoid ALL these ingredients.
The bottom line is if you avoid eating foods with problem ingredients, you will have better health; & your waistline & appearance will show it.
Here’s the other major reason I was easily able to pass on those muffins.:
2. The way I eat now, I enjoy my food; it fills me up; & I simply wasn’t hungry.
I’d eaten a breakfast with plenty of fiber from whole grains & with plenty of protein.
(If, as many people do, I’d not had ANY breakfast & was starving hungry, it would have been a LOT harder to pass on these muffins.)
And, studies show that NOT eating breakfast reliably produces this effect.
In fact, eating such office goodies from hunger from not eating breakfast, may be the explanation for the study finding that women who aren’t fat or who lose extra fat successfully virtually always DO eat breakfast.
And, I knew I had a lunch with a lot of flavor & fiber & with walnuts & pecans that I enjoy eating to look forward to about the time I was getting hungry.
And, my lunches fill me up enough, I had no interest in getting over-stuffed for muffins of marginal or health harming quality.
And, since these were commercially baked, I’d have only tasted one or two of the three kinds of these muffins, ONLY IF I’d read the label & only found health OK ingredients.
As I predicted & you’ve seen, their ingredients proved these NOT OK to eat.
In our next post, we'll cover something found in many baked & roasted, carbohydrate containing, foods that's a good bit more challenging to avoid.
Focus on Your Health:
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: Friday, 9-22-2006
Want help turning down office goodies? Part 2
This continues yesterday’s post. So, if you didn’t see it, start there.
(And, it might even help if you saw it earlier to scan through it before reading this part.)
I saved the muffin label & its list of ingredients. There were several more ingredients in them probably best left uneaten, particularly in foods frequently eaten.:
Soybean oil. Because it is high in polyunsaturated omega 6 oils, so it’s not a good oil to cook with as they breakdown into forms that can damage your health over time.
But of more immediate importance, your body needs a balanced intake of Omega 3 & Omega 6 oils; & the great majority of people in the US get five times too much omega 6 oils & 4 times too little omega 3 oils which results in a higher rate of depression & lower quality of life & poorer health than a balanced intake.
So, if 95 to 100 percent of the time, you pass on foods containing soybean oil, corn oil, & safflower oil, you’ll be happier & healthier.
Propylene Glycol Monoesters. I’ve read recently that this one is harmful to your health. And, it’s NOT used in home cooking by any cooks I know about.
Sodium Aluminum Phosphate. It’s still controversial whether or not ingesting foods with aluminum tends to cause Alzheimer’s disease. But the most knowledgeable Doctor I’ve read recently on protecting your brain from such diseases is one who recommends you avoid consuming aluminum.
This ingredient is also in many double action baking powders -- including those many people use at home & is, as listed on the label I read, a leavening agent.
The good news is that an effective double acting baking powder that DOES NOT have this ingredient is readily available in most stores & is made by Rumsford.
Artificial flavors & colors. These may not be harmful to your health. But they are not really food or ingredients we have evolved to process well. If you eat a colored candy a few times a year, my bet is you are probably OK. But my bet is also that if you eat them several times a week, as most people do in the US now without reading labels on the foods they eat, that you will harm your health. So, it has to be a special occasion or a very special treat before I will eat a food with these things.
Sodium Benzoate & Benzoic Acid, preservatives. These are a bit of a mixed review.
They are added, like transfats have been, to improve the shelf life of the food. So, if these muffins were baked nearly a week, or maybe more, before people ate them in my office, they still taste good.
However, unlike transfats, preservatives also have some value in preventing bacteria that might make you sick from growing in the food.
But these particular ones may be carcinogenic when heated, I’ve read recently.
So, you are better off with home-made or freshly baked muffins that don’t have these ingredients.
So, when you add up the parts, these muffins were definitely a food you would do well to not eat. And, you’d be better off to wait until you have a chance to occasionally eat muffins from a recipe you really like that avoid ALL these ingredients.
The bottom line is if you avoid eating foods with problem ingredients, you will have better health; & your waistline & appearance will show it.
Here’s the other major reason I was easily able to pass on those muffins.:
2. The way I eat now, I enjoy my food; it fills me up; & I simply wasn’t hungry.
I’d eaten a breakfast with plenty of fiber from whole grains & with plenty of protein.
(If, as many people do, I’d not had ANY breakfast & was starving hungry, it would have been a LOT harder to pass on these muffins.)
And, studies show that NOT eating breakfast reliably produces this effect.
In fact, eating such office goodies from hunger from not eating breakfast, may be the explanation for the study finding that women who aren’t fat or who lose extra fat successfully virtually always DO eat breakfast.
And, I knew I had a lunch with a lot of flavor & fiber & with walnuts & pecans that I enjoy eating to look forward to about the time I was getting hungry.
And, my lunches fill me up enough, I had no interest in getting over-stuffed for muffins of marginal or health harming quality.
And, since these were commercially baked, I’d have only tasted one or two of the three kinds of these muffins, ONLY IF I’d read the label & only found health OK ingredients.
As I predicted & you’ve seen, their ingredients proved these NOT OK to eat.
In our next post, we'll cover something found in many baked & roasted, carbohydrate containing, foods that's a good bit more challenging to avoid.
posted by David at 12:54 PM
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