A way to drink and stay healthy....

Why potato chips & French fries are unhealthy....

Today's post: Thursday, 3-26-2009

It‘s been known for some time that foods made with peeled potatoes are as high glycemic as refined grains because potatoes are so starchy. So potato chips and French fried potatoes would already be suspect for that reason. (Other kinds of chips and similar snacks ARE made from refined grains & are high glycemic for that reason.)

And, until recently almost all potato chips and French fries were made with transfats.

(Research has found that transfats are heart disease starters.

If you eat them, the research found, your dangerous small particle LDL will go up and begin to cause heart disease in you. You can tell this by measuring your blood lipids. Your beneficial HDL will go down & your triglycerides will go up because this happens when your dangerous small particle LDL goes up; & that’s further confirmed by your overall LDL readings going up.)

It’s better now, particularly for packaged chips & fries, as the manufacturers have reduced the amount of partially hydrogenated oils that contain transfats to 0.49 grams per serving; because that allows them to put 0 transfats on the label. But the “servings” can be a fifth of what most people eat. So not only is the 0 transfats not true, if you eat the normal five “servings”, you can be eating 2.45 grams of transfats !!

So, to NOT eat transfats, you not only have to not eat anything that has a transfat reading of anything more than 0, you also have to read the label & NOT eat anything that has any kind of hydrogenated oil in it.

Unfortunately, except for places like New York City that have banned the practice, many restaurants still fry foods in transfats because they are cheap to buy. So, to avoid transfats, you have to ask what they fry their fried foods in.

So we already know that chips and French fries are made with high glycemic foods and often fried in transfats.

Now, it seems they are unhealthy for yet a third reason. When you fry starch, which is what potato chips and French fries are made of, it produces a carcinogenic by product, called acrylamide.

In addition, a study was done which found that people who ate a surprisingly small amount of potato chips or French fries not only likely had more of the small particle LDL, it was the most dangerous kind as they were measured as having their oxidized LDL go up, which makes it even more reactive and damaging. These people were also measured as having their CRP inflammation go up. (Elevated CRP inflammation readings are predictive of heart attacks. And, other studies, show that if you lower such readings your risk of heart disease decreases.)

That’s just about absolute proof that eating chips and French fries is a reliable way to cause heart disease. And, unfortunately, microwave popcorn, and popcorn at the movies, is a very similar food.

Here’s the Early to Rise Health article where I found this new and even more incriminating information.:

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com .”

"Edible Cancer Sticks

By Craig Ballantyne

You are not going to like this, but I refer to French fries as "edible cancer sticks." Here's why...
Polish researchers studied the effect of potato chip consumption on otherwise healthy volunteers. Potato chips and French fries are close cousins. Both contain relatively high concentrations of acrylamide, a potentially carcinogenic compound found in starchy foods that have been cooked at a high temperature.

Fourteen subjects consumed 160 grams of chips daily. That's about 3/4 of a large bag, containing 157 mg of acrylamide. At the end of four weeks, they all had increased levels of oxidized LDL and C-reactive protein (a measure of inflammation). They also had a significant increase in free radicals and a massive immune system response. It was as if their bodies were being attacked.

The researchers did a follow-up on the subjects four weeks after they stopped eating the edible cancer sticks. Their systems were starting to come back to normal, but hadn't yet fully recovered.

Nasty stuff.

If you eat fries or chips every day, even if you are eating just a small amount, you are killing yourself slowly. As the Polish study shows, not only are you consuming a potentially carcinogenic substance, you are increasing your risk of heart disease. Now that's a two-for-one special you should pass on.

[Ed. Note: Extending your life and living out your years in tip-top health is really a matter of making simple lifestyle choices - like choosing salad or fruit instead of chips or fries….]"

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This is very important stuff to know if you eat out for lunch at all often. Most restaurants that serve sandwiches automatically serve a small bag of some kind of chips with them.

And, since most people don’t yet have a clue how dreadful these chips are for their health, I still find servers are astonished when I firmly decline the chips that are offered with sandwiches or even guacamole, which is otherwise a health promoting superfood.

Their attitude is clearly, “Why on earth is this man turning down part of the food he has already paid for?”

Obviously most people don’t know why.

Now YOU do know.