False health info to avoid, part I....

Today's Post:  Friday, 8-14-2015

There are quite a number of things that were once thought to be true that would be better or at least OK to use to protect your health.

So many of these turned out to be totally false or only true under certain conditions that it can help you stay healthy to know what now looks to be the correct information.

1.  We now know that for most people too much real sugar is bad for you. 

True.  Most people today are mostly sedentary and will be much healthier if they limit their calories from sugar to two % or less of total calories.  People who take supplements for health that also help to process sugar such as cinnamon and alpha lipoic acid and people who are quite active or do vigorous exercise every day may be OK with up to 5% of calories as sugar.

Because the average American takes in far more than that, just eating less sugar is very important.

But sugar tastes good; so many things have been thought to be OK to use as substitutes and still eat instead of eating less sugar.

Unfortunately many people still believe in one or more of those things and eat them instead of just eating way less real sugar.

Here’s a list of them.  The very bad news is that they are all WORSE for your health than the sugar they replace NOT better.

a)  Agave nectar.  Despite having a promisingly low glycemic index, agave nectar is a slightly harsh tasting form of free fructose.  And, free fructose turns out to be MORE harmful than sugar and more fattening too!

 If you want to avoid type 2 diabetes and heart disease try hard to avoid ALL forms of  free fructose from high fructose corn syrup to agave nectar.

Warning, many products in health food stores, even those with other ingredients that are much more carefully selected for being health OK use agave as a sweetener.  In fact, I found recently even their employees don’t know agave is more harmful than sugar!

b)  A very similar sweetener also still in products in health food stores, even those with other ingredients that are much more carefully selected for being health OK use concentrated fruit juice.  This sounds OK because the fructose in real whole fruit is safe to eat. 

What this misses is that without the fiber and other nutrients in whole fruit, the fructose in fruit stops being safe to eat without those parts of the fruit.

Because of this even organic fruit juice of high nutrition fruits are harmful enough to limit as much or more than real sugar.

What about fruit juice concentrate as a sweetener?  BAD news:  It tastes a bit better than agave but is also free fructose; and you are far better off healthwise if you never eat any!

c) Artificial sweeteners.  Sugar has calories and too much of it slams up your blood sugar causing all kinds of health problems.

What if you found chemicals that tasted sweet or sweeter even than sugar that had no calories?

Wouldn’t that allow you to eat things taste as sweet as sugar added ones without the fattening effect and without the health harm?

OUCH!  It’s complicated exactly why and how this happens but foods sweetened with artificial sweeteners are MORE effective as fatteners and produce even more diabetes and heart disease than the sugar they replace.  Part of it is basic biology in mammals.  The effect even happens in rats!  In people it’s even worse since people who use artificial sweeteners often eat other harmful and fattening foods too AND eat more of them believing they are protected by the sugar that they didn’t eat.

On top of that, the Center for Science in the Public Interest lists all the most used artificial sweeteners as mildly carcinogenic.

But if you drink five diet soft drinks a day for 15 years, the huge multiplier factor times something mildly carcinogenic once or twice a year becomes something that looks for more likely to be a significant risk factor for cancer.

Conclusion:  So, eat real whole fresh fruit, small amounts of real sugar on occasion, and eliminate all these other sweeteners if you want to keep good health. 

Many people still think they are safe and effective health aids.  That’s NOT true!

2.  Whole wheat.  

This one is slightly more complicated and is even more harmful due to how many people used to believe it and because some health professionals who by now should know better still believe it.

Real whole wheat does have more B complex vitamins than white, refined grain wheat.  And, it does have more fiber.

And, it’s quite true that fiber and B complex vitamins in your food are good for you.

So intuitively it looks like whole wheat should be good for you.

B complex vitamins from supplements or from egg yolks or liver from animals fed only their natural foods from unpolluted sources are not just good for you, they are vital to good health.

And, enough fiber helps you feel full and helps you digest your food and eliminate the rest with no extra problems.

That means that if whole wheat is bad for you – and it’s extremely harmful – something else must be going on.

There most certainly is!  Here’s the long list!

a)  Most foods labeled as whole wheat aren’t.  They contain a bit of it to avoid being totally false labeled; but most of the flour is brown color added refined grain white flour which does NOT have the extra fiber and B complex vitamins.

b) Slamming your blood sugar too high when you eat a food is both fattening and tends to cause type 2 diabetes and heart disease.  That’s why limiting even real sugar so strongly is so important to staying lean and in good health.

Even real whole wheat, just like refined grain wheat, does this fifty percent MORE than sugar!

How often is safe to eat that kind of food?  If you eat the 2 to 5 % of your calories as sugar already, the right answer is never or once or twice a year at best.

c)  But the wheat and whole wheat in stores isn’t the same wheat people ate in biblical times.

So eating it today is even more harmful still!

Hybrid wheat was developed many years ago.  The idea was that wheat was then thought to be a safe, staple food to eat; but people were going hungry because there wasn’t enough food.  So the hybrid wheat they developed would grow remarkably more wheat per acre.  And that did allow enough wheat to be grown to feed more people less expensively.

Did they think to monitor the hybrid wheat for harmful health effects at that time?  Nope.

The problem today is that all this wheat people think is safe to eat is hybrid wheat today. AND, hybrid wheat has a new component that causes allergies to wheat in some people and worse, severe allergic reactions to gluten in some people.

Gluten allergies produce all kinds of nasty but hard to diagnose symptoms if you don’t know where they are coming from.  And, as a result, thousands of people feel like hell and don’t know why because they have been eating hybrid wheat in large amounts.

If you know that, it’s easy to avoid the problem, stop considering ANY food that contains wheat a food.  At best, it’s a semifood that is only safe to eat a few times a year at most.

d)  Over 90 % of the wheat in stores today was grown using GMO seeds.  You’ve almost certainly eaten some and are reading this, so GMO wheat is clearly not as toxic as cyanide. 

Is GMO food of any kind safe to eat longer than 6 months in terms of its long term effect on your health?  If you have or plan to have children and grandchildren and descendants beyond that, will they be able to have kids and if so, will they be healthy?

The studies done on this that I’ve seen reports on say no it isn’t safe in both of these two ways.

In the rest of the world GMO foods are banned or at least it’s mandatory to label them.

In the United States, the people who make money by using or making the chemicals for GMO foods are working very hard and spending some of that money on lobbying in an effort to keep you from knowing if anything you eat has GMO ingredients.

My hope is that their DARK act will be killed in the US Senate and that effort will fail.

But whether or not the DARK act passes, there is a SURE way to avoid GMO wheat, as harmful a food as wheat is, you can do that by no longer eating ANY wheat.  And regardless of GMO issues your health will be better because you did so.

e)  With that lead up, can you imagine there is yet another reason to never eat wheat or eat it very rarely because of its negative health effects?

Unfortunately there is! 

And, it’s an important reason because the effects include helping to cause heart disease, most cancers, and likely Alzheimer’s disease and autoimmune diseases too.

I’m out of time today.  But we will last that one and other health myths best to not believe in Part II of this post.