How to tell if you are actually eating healthy....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 1-4-2011

Yesterday we did a post on:

“The most effective single way to lose fat permanently is to live a 100 % health supporting lifestyle in what you eat and drink and the exercise you get.”

Then today, two of my health news sources had the news that nearly 90% of people think they eat at least a somewhat healthy diet or better.

(To be fair, Consumer Reports Health who did the poll found that 52.6 %, or a bit more than half the people polled, did know their diet was only somewhat healthy instead of very healthy.)

As the other reports focused on how many people are obese and that a high ranking New Year’s Resolution is to lose weight, we will start there.

(About a third of Americans measure as obese on the scale by having a BMI of 30.0 or more and another sixth who are overweight by the BMI measure have large enough waist measurements from belly fat to also be considered too fat. That means that fully half the people today are too fat for good health.)

1. How to tell if you are consuming too many sweet things to avoid being too fat.:

The average adult consumes 22 teaspoons of sugar a day in some form according to the American Heart Association. (That’s a bit over seven Tablespoonfuls! So it’s small wonder many of us are too fat.) It’s a bit over 88 grams a day of sugar.

If you want to avoid being fat, taking in less than 20 grams a day is likely needed and averaging less than 10 grams a day is better.

a) Do you drink more than one regular soft drink or add sugar to tea or coffee once a week or more?

Do you average one a day or more? (43 percent of the people polled in this study did.)

Do you drink more than one diet soft drink a day? (Another study found that up to 60% of people do this.) (Because diet soft drinks despite having no calories are very strong appetite stimulators for other sugary foods, people who drink them are usually as fat as people who drink regular soft drinks.)

If you want to avoid being too fat without getting hungrier, the most certain way is to answer ALL these questions no.

(Water, tea and green tea with no milk or sugar, and coffee with no sugar; even fruit juices occasionally; and vegetable juices are all vastly superior choices.)



2. Do you ALWAYS read labels where the food or drink you ingest or might ingest has a label?

A No answer on this one is deadly.

a) It’s a bit sweeter (and therefore a bit more addictive), cheaper (so more may be in the food and it costs less), and 30% at random has mercury in it because of how it’s processed. So, a great way to cut back on sugar and benefit your health is to ALWAYS pass on buying or eating or drinking anything that has high fructose corn syrup or it’s proposed new name “corn sugar.”

It’s astounding how many packaged foods and drinks have this. And, you can’t tell unless you read the label.

b) As we just noted, limiting your real sugar intake helps. Unless you read the label, you likely have too little information about how many grams of sugar are in the servings you are likely to eat or drink.

c) An ingredient that is even more effective at producing heart disease than sugar and high fructose corn syrup and refined grains is hydrogenated vegetable oils. Because these are literally heart attack starter pills, you should aim at consuming absolutely none. (Research conclusively showed that hydrogenated oils or the artificial trans fats in them causes your body to release the small particle LDL that causes heart disease.) So, if a label has anything but zero in its transfats listing OR lists hydrogenated oil as an ingredient at all, always take a pass. (Since a food with a zero listing can actually have .499 grams per serving of trans fats and you may eat several servings, something containing any hydrogenated oil can LIST zero trans fats but actually deliver a few grams of it to you.)

Since hydrogenated oils and their transfats are still in SO MANY things, you literally cannot eat in a healthy way without reading labels to avoid it. The good news is that because most commercial packaged desserts still have this stuff, always avoiding it is another way to avoid the sugars and refined grains in those foods.

3. Name the kinds of fruit you normally eat or ate last week. Two or more is ideal.

Did you have at least one serving of fruit every day last week? A yes is a much better answer than a no. And, if any of them were berries that’s a plus.

You can overdo eating them. However, fruit helps you have good health and avoid losing it. Most fruit tastes really good and can replace eating sugary foods you are better off avoiding.

4. Do you drink one glass most days of an unsweetened real fruit juice or vegetable juice?

Yes is a far better answer. You do have to stop at one glass of fruit juice to avoid being fat. But drinking vegetable juice actually tends to cause weight loss. And drinking one of either most days strongly prevents mental decline studies found. Real grape juice and 100 % cranberry juice improve the health of your blood vessels. And, if you get used to the taste, cranberry juice has less than half the calories of grape juice.

5. Do you eat two other kinds of vegetables most days besides potatoes in some form or iceberg lettuce?

Eating raw broccoli or cauliflower florets just a few times a week helps prevent aggressive, invasive, and metatastizing cancers. I just read that’s because it helps prevent cancers from making stem cells to do these things.

Virtually all other cruciferous vegetables help prevent cancer generally. Brussels sprouts, cabbage, red cabbage, kale, water cress, and more all work. So do raw broccoli or cauliflower florets and radishes.

Do you eat fresh tomatoes or tomato slices?

These vegetables also fill you up with virtually no calories. If you eat several servings, you eat less fattening other foods with no willpower needed. It’s virtually automatic.

Both raw -- and for them even better -- cooked tomatoes, squash, pumpkin puree, sweet potatoes, yams, and carrots – and broccoli – all are high in several kinds of carotenes. A recent study found that people who eat these kinds of vegetables have high blood levels of alpha carotene. And, those people have better health and live longer than people who don’t. In particular, a high intake of these foods with their several kinds of carotenoids tends to prevent all cancers. And, the lycopene in tomatoes and tomato sauce prevents prostate cancer.

Do you eat several servings from this group every week or on most days?

Yes is a better answer!

Onions and garlic and related foods well used make foods taste good and well spiced. They both protect your heart and, I recently found out, strongly prevent cancer! Do you eat them every week?

(For more on how fruits and vegetables protect your health and prevent cancer, check out any of the Superfoods books. Dr Steven Pratt was the initial author and all of his information except for soy, is extremely good.

Anticancer, A New Way of Life, New Edition by David Servan-Schreiber is one of the most important books published on how people can stay healthy in the last 50 years. In addition, to his very complete list of vegetables and ranking them on how well they prevent cancer, he reveals two other key ways to prevent both cancer and heart disease.

6. There are several more categories of good for you foods:

Foods high in monosaturated fat such as nuts, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil.

Sources for animal based omega 3 oils such as sardines and wild caught salmon and purified fish oil supplements.

And even meats like beef, lamb, and buffalo that are only fed grass and never fed grain.

Do you eat those and avoid oils high in omega 6 like corn, soy, canola, and saffola?

Do you avoid all farmed fish?

Do you avoid meat from animals fed grain and either eat it very rarely or only in very lean form?


If you get good answers to these questions above, your health will be far better.

You’ll live longer and stay healthier a larger fraction of those years.

And, without hunger, you will be far less fat.