Get health BENEFITS from the substitutes for soft drinks & other fattening foods....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 3-19-2013

We post often about the health harm of regular and diet soft drinks and such foods as those made from refined grains – mostly GMO wheat – or that include ingredients such as hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, excessive real sugar, excessive salt, and oils too high in omega 6 such as corn, soy, and canola – again mostly from GMO corn, soy, and rapeseed.

These foods either fatten you directly or add calories from foods you don’t need and the make you sick from things like heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

A.  Case in point is soft drinks. 

The average person in the United States who drinks soft drinks gets 10% of their calories from them.  Every bit of those 10% unneeded calories eventually adds to their fat. 

That means that if they switch to water, tea, green tea, or coffee instead over time they will lose all that fat.  Since regular soft drinks add calories without registering any less hunger AND add rebound hunger later, doing this makes people LESS hungry!

Plus that 10% weight loss all as fat, produces astoundingly positive changes in their blood markers of health and heart health!

Similarly, people who drink diet soft drinks reliably test as fatter and have more type 2 diabetes than people who drink regular soft drinks!  One reason is they drink more of them than people who drink regular soft drinks.

What’s really interesting is that ice water, tea, green tea, and coffee (if you don’t add tons of a fat and sugar too it) all have health BENEFITS on top of being dramatically less fattening than soft drinks.

1.  Drinking lots of plain ice water directly helps fat loss and helps fat loss indirectly too!

Drinking ice water chills your body a bit and to warm up that bit causes your body to use some extra calories.  And, if you drink ice water relatively often each day, some evidence suggests it increases your brown fat which burns far more calories than regular fat.

2.  A recent study reported in Medical News today found that people who drink more coffee &/or green tea less are less likely to have strokes  This is thought to be because coffee contains chlorogenic acid &  green tea contains catechins which produce this effect.  2 or more cups of coffee a day or 5 or more cups of green tea a day tested to do this the best.

(Note that for those who cannot or prefer not to drink coffee, green coffee bean extract has chlorogenic acid.  And, for those who don't like green tea, green tea extract contains catechins.)

But if you like coffee or like green tea, you can wake up without the caffeine in colas, get less fat and increase your stroke protection at the same time!

But there’s more!  High consumption of green tea tends to block the formation of beta amyloid plaques that are a possible cause of Alzheimer’s disease while high consumption of coffee is directly linked to a lower chance of getting Alzheimer’s disease even more than green tea.

And, still there’s more.  The chlorogenic acid from drinking 2 or more cups of coffee a day helps prevent insulin resistance and is proven to reduce the chance of getting type 2 diabetes very likely because of this.  This may also partly be why 2 or more cups of coffee a day tends to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. 

(Note that for those who cannot or prefer not to drink coffee, green coffee bean extract has chlorogenic acid.  And, to the extent taking green coffee bean extract helps with fat loss, besides the caffeine, the reduction of insulin resistance and high blood sugar may be a reason.)

ECGC and other phytonutrients in green tea and green tea extract also show as likely cancer preventers too!

So between iced water, green tea, and coffee, people who drink those instead of soft drinks or diet soft drinks, are not only dramatically less fat, they are WAY healthier and for far longer than people soft drinks or diet soft drinks.

B. Oils too high in omega 6 such as corn, soy, and canola – again mostly from GMO corn, soy, and rapeseed produce excess chronic inflammation if you eat them at all often to help cause heart disease and even some cancers.  They also tend to have bioconcentrated herbicides and pesticide from having those sprayed on the corn, soy, and rapeseed crops.

We’ve long known that extra virgin olive oil, an omega 9 oil, does NOT have this pro-inflammatory effect. 

And we’ve long known that people who use almost only olive oil as part of a Mediterranean diet are healthier and get less heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease than people who eat junk food and these oils high in omega 6.

A recent study found that -- even in people with existing heart disease or very high risk factors for it -- that having them use olive oil only and for those not allergic also eating walnuts noticeably reduced their risk of heart attack, stroke, and death.

They added olive oil or walnuts to the food of thousands of people many of whom had not been using olive oil and got those results!

That means that it’s not too late for most people to protect their health by switching to olive oil!

And, using only olive oil for years is even more protective.

But, again, there is an even bigger benefit to using olive oil -- and even better extra virgin olive oil!

Very recently reported research in Medical News Today reported a study that people who used and ate olive oil had significantly reduced hunger! 

This was more true by far for olive oil. 

And it was more true if extra virgin olive oil was used. 

Best was an aromatic extra virgin olive oil from Italy – though I suspect extra virgin olive oils from California using the same or very similar olives would also work.

The research found this seemed to be because eating extra virgin olive oil caused extra serotonin release.

That makes having extra virgin olive oil as a part of your dinner is a great way to wind down in the evening.

But it also means that eating extra virgin olive oil has mild anti-depressant effects too!

C.  People who eat most packaged dinners, almost all packaged snacks, and almost all packaged desserts and most commercial baked goods wind up eating mostly foods made out of refined grains – mostly GMO wheat – with ingredients such as hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, excessive real sugar, excessive salt, and oils too high in omega 6 such as corn, soy, and canola – again mostly from GMO corn, soy, and rapeseed.

Not only do they harm your health, they reliably fatten you too!

So between deleting the calories from things that are just really bad for you and the fattening components from these foods completely from what you eat, you can be far healthier for longer and find permanent fat loss doable and not too hard to do.

But what to eat instead?

Besides health OK proteins such as wild caught fish, beans and lentils, and eggs from pasture fed hens, two of the best things to eat instead are nonstarchy vegetables and low glycemic fruits that are very high in protective nutrients.

1.  For fat loss, eating lots of every kind of nonstarchy vegetables is a superb solution.  They have high fiber and are low enough in calories that you can eat enough to be quite filling and leave you far less hungry for more food.  Weight Watchers even lists them as having zero points almost as if they have no calories at all.

But these vegetables have incredible health benefits from making you look healthier and be healthier overall to preventing cancers and metastatic cancers two ways!

More recent good news about green and cruciferous vegetables was in a study reported in  the Medical News Today earlier this month.

The Importance Of Eating Your Greens

http://mnt.to/a/4c7j

Eating your greens may be even more important that previously thought, with the discovery that an immune cell population essential for intestinal health could be controlled by leafy greens in your diet.

This is very important news!

Many bacteria that grow in your gut if you have too little probiotic or beneficial bacteria there are harmful or very harmful and some no longer respond to antibiotics!

Having enough h. pylori to cause ulcers, becoming seriously ill from bad e coli diseases which have caused fatal kidney damage, or contracting c diff which has caused horrible and unstoppable diarrhea and even killed people  may be prevented or made far less likely by eating these vegetables!

Raw broccoli florets may work and iceberg lettuce may work.  But it sounds like the ideal is to have salads once or twice a week with kale and watercress.  And adding some diced raw broccoli florets likely would help.

Of course, also eating yogurt with probiotics and taking probiotic supplements may well increase this effect.

BUT, due to the other health benefits of these vegetables such as significant anti-cancer effects AND making fat loss easier, this is HUGE GOOD news!

What about artificial sweeteners?  One to be sure to avoid is Splenda aka sucralose.  Recent research found ingesting it tended to kill most of the probiotic bacteria in your gut!

To put it mildly, people who eat and drink the right things are not only WAY less fat than people who drink soft drinks and eat these harmful foods, they are dramatically healthier too!