What do YOU eat?....

Thursday, 9-25-2014

Earlier this month the Sunday Parade Magazine had a cover story with a survey about what Americans are now eating. 

They included both good for you foods and bad for you foods.  And, they checked on some numbers for people who were trying to eat better.

1.  For example, despite what I find rather persuasive reasons to always eat breakfast,

11 % of people just leave the house in the morning without even having a cup of coffee!

(Considering most of us are trying to lose fat or not gain extra, people who always eat breakfast eat more total calories and get more nutrition but are LESS fat and weigh less than people who don’t. 

Also your body burns carbs best first thing in the morning.  So you can get away with fruit and even a whole grain cereal like rolled oats style oatmeal or even an occasional treat – at breakfast but NOT later in the day.

Lastly, you can control what you eat at home when you eat breakfast there even if it’s a very small, fast one.

At fast food places and the vending machines or treat trays in some places of work, people who have eaten well at breakfast can avoid these fattening foods more easily.  People who are very, very hungry by 10 am often cannot.

So, given all this, it’s small wonder people in the registry of those who have lost over 30 pounds and kept it off, the vast majority of them always eat breakfast!)

Fortunately, 77% of us do eat breakfast at home.

What do you do?

2.  71% take at least some supplements. 

(There are enough truly valuable supplements to create or protect good health now available at this writing I hope for all people they take several of them each day even if not as many as I do.)

What do you do?

Do you take a good quality multivitamin supplement?

And extra 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 or a bit more?

Do you take omega 3 oil or the omega 3 oil, DHA -- or both daily?

Do you take at least an extra 500 mg a day of vitamin C?

There are several supplements that do things like reduce inflammation, protect your heart, and help prevent all kinds of mental decline, and those that help prevent cancer.  We post on those periodically – including resveratrol earlier this week.

Do you take any of those?

3.  Most people do very poorly with their health choices at lunch now.

66% have sandwiches.  And, so far, the vast majority of those sandwiches are made with the refined grain wheat that causes blood sugar surges, obesity, and other diseases.

What do you do? 

Do you eat a lunch you enjoy without any grain foods or bread at all?

Do you eat the Food for Life breads from Whole Foods, that despite having whole grains, raise your blood sugar MUCH less than refined grain wheat?

(www.foodforlife.com/ Food For Life Baking Co., Inc. High Fiber Baked Goods such as Organic Sprouted Whole Grain Breads….)

Do you use Paleo Bread that uses no grains but almond and coconut flours plus egg?

33% have salty snacks like chips.  10% have snack bars.  12% have cookies.

Virtually all these foods have refined grain wheat or cornmeal that are extremely high glycemic.  Many of them have hydrogenated oils high in omega 6 which are heart attack starters.  Many of the snack bars have the kind of soy protein that we just posted is harmful to eat.  Some of the cookies and snack bars have high fructose corn syrup which is fattening and very high glycemic.

What do you do?

Do you eat fresh or dried organic fruit or raw and unsalted, un-oiled nuts instead?

9% have vegetables in some form for lunch. 

We now know that eating 6 servings a day of vegetables or more is dramatically health protective.  So that 9% is way low and predicts health problems people could have avoided.

What do you do?

Do you eat raw or cooked vegetables or salads as part of your lunch?

Things people are beginning to work to cut back on or avoid:

67% are for sugar;

57% are for all high glycemic carbs;

61% are for trans fats (hydrogenated oils);

And 30% are for gluten.

So far, the average person gets way over the safe 3% of calories as sugar and eats foods containing high fructose corn syrup.  So most do need to cut WAY back including to zero for high fructose corn syrup..

We spoke about avoiding refined grain carbs above.

And, hydrogenated oils that contain trans fats are such effective heart attack starters and so slow to be processed out of your body that the only safe intake of them is ZERO.  Cutting back on them only makes it take a few days longer to build up to a harmful level and is NOT safe.  If a label lists ANY trans fats or has ANY hydrogenated oils as ingredients do NOT buy or eat it!

Most gluten is in refined grain wheat foods that are best avoided totally. The rest is in other grains which are at best eaten sparingly if at all.

What do you do?  Have you cut back or eliminated any of these harmful foods?

The number of people who always read labels has dropped from 65% to 47%.

Since you can only avoid some of these dangerous and fattening ingredients including MSG that they didn’t list by ALWAYS reading labels and NOT buying the foods that contain those ingredients, this is most unfortunate! 

Hopefully you read labels 100% of the time.

What do you do?

Your choices will make an enormous good or bad difference in how many healthy and enjoyable years you will live.

So, the posts here will have what looks to be protective and what looks to be harmful.

But YOU choose what you eat after that.

I hope you find foods that give you good health and a long and healthy life -- and that you also enjoy eating -- and you work hard to only eat those!

No one can avoid all the bad ingredients; and some treats on some occasions everyone eats and likes even with some bad ingredients.

But if you choose well over 98% of the time, you’ll be glad you did!