Why to choose natural sweeteners....

Today's post: Monday, 10-13-2008

Fruit is the best kind of sweetener to use if you eat whole fruit instead of juice.

Real juice with no extra sweeteners added has many of the benefits of whole fruit.

Occasional real sugar can be OK if you keep it occasional and get enough regular exercise and take the supplements alpha lipoic acid and chromium polynicotinate and possibly use the spice cinnamon with the sugar you eat. The exercise, the supplements, and cinnamon all help your body use the sugar without causing problems. And, by eating sugar just a few times a week or a month instead of several times a day you allow your body to recover before the next time you eat it. It also helps to eat some and not a huge amount each time you eat it.

Whole fruit has fiber which slows your processing of the fructose in it which enables your body to process it normally unless you are diabetic or nearly so.

And, both fruit and real fruit juice have vitamin C and other vitamins and micronutrients that protect your health and also seem to prevent the kind of blood sugar spikes that sugar by itself will cause.

If you are trying to control blood sugar that is too high or lose fat, you may be better off only eating whole fruit only because of the positive effect of the added fiber in it. At least keep fruit juice and real sugar to low and infrequent use, such as a few times a month or less.

Since the evidence is that sweeteners with no calories, possibly even natural ones, tend to cause your body to crave real sugar enough to cause you to gain fat, it seems to me to make more sense to eat real sugar if you want something sweet but to just eat it sparingly.

And, if you can override those cravings and insist on more frequent sweeteners, you are far better off if you use natural ones. You can also use half as much sugar and replace the other half with natural sweeteners with no calories that are natural. This cuts your sugar intake in half and may avoid the cravings sweeteners with no calories by themselves can cause.

Stevia, erythritol, and xylitol all work and are sweeteners with no calories that are natural. Some people like the added taste of Stevia. I’m NOT one of them. Erythritol & xylitol have no added taste. But large amounts of xylitol can cause gas.

Why, besides the tendency to crave and eat real sugar they cause, should you avoid sweeteners with no calories that are not natural?

They all tend to produce the same fat gain and health problems that over-eating real sugar does for starters. Researchers had hoped to confirm the popular belief that they did less harm than equal amounts of sugar. The found that artificial sweeteners with no calories were as bad or worse than excessive consumption of real sugar or of high fructose corn syrup.

But two of the most commonly used artificial sweeteners with no calories seem to cause more health problems than most artificial sweeteners with no calories.

HSI sends out one of the health emails I get. In today’s email, they listed several kinds of bad news for sucralose or Splenda. It tastes like sugar and is a sweetener with no calories. And, since it is made from sugar molecules it seems to substitute well for sugar.

For me, the only thing I needed to know is that it is made from adding chlorine to the sugar molecule. Chlorinated hydrocarbons tend to be long lasting. And, they tend to be poisons. Other chlorinated hydrocarbons are used for insecticides for example.

My guess was that if there were known health problems from sucralose, it was because it had been insufficiently studied yet.

The HSI email lists some reported problems with sucralose that are not yet well known.

It sometimes produces stomach or gas pains.

Between 13 and over 40 % of the people who eat it absorb some of the chlorine in it.

Eating it tends to make you gain extra pounds of fat, just like eating that much sugar would do. (Some studies even suggest it may be even more effective than sugar in doing this.) This defeats the main purpose of using it.

But there are more serious problems reported by HSI. Sucralose also reduces beneficial or probiotic bacteria in the intestines of people who eat it by as much as half. Since those bacteria support good health and help you digest your food, that’s more problematic than it may sound.

In fact, sucralose also has been found to significantly reduce the absorption of prescription drugs according to this article.

Dr Al Sears who also sends out health information email, sent an email today titled, “Ignore this Sweet Deception…”

This email lists several reasons why HFCS, high fructose corn syrup is harmful to your health.

He then explains that despite being made from corn, which IS natural, high fructose corn syrup is made using enzymes that are genetically modified. So the high fructose corn syrup in foods and drinks is NOT natural.

He then quotes a study finding that ingesting HFCS raises triglycerides and the bad kind of LDL cholesterol that causes heart attacks. (We reported that in a previous post.) He also quotes a study showing liver damage similar to that found in severely alcoholic people caused by ingesting high fructose corn syrup.

And, last but far from least, he notes that the large surge in blood sugar you get if you eat or drink things with high fructose corn syrup in them is bad for you in other ways.

Other artificial sweeteners have similar track records of health problems too.

So, this is one area where the only safe way to go is 100 % natural.

And high fructose corn syrup and sucralose are definitely on the do not consume list if you want to stay slim and healthy.

Even more bad news about diet soft drinks....

Today's post: Thursday, 4-10-2008

I’ve posted before that there is evidence that diet soft drinks are actually no better & may be even worse for you than drinking regular soft drinks. (And, regular soft drinks in any regular consumption are proven to make you fat and sick.)

Recently I got two emails in my inbox from my health sources that help make it extremely clear that this IS so & help explain why it happens.

The first is from Dr Mark Harmon. He also said he posted it on his blog so I’ve listed the URL for that. I’ve edited it a bit to make it shorter & easier to find the key points.

Do artificial sweeteners make you fat? Date: 4/3/2008

From: drhyman@ultrawellness.com & http://www.ultrawellness.com/blog

“There's no doubt about it. Artificial sweeteners cause obesity.

I always thought it was funny to see a very large person order a Big Mac, large fries -- and top it off with a Diet Coke. I also found it peculiar that I rarely saw thin people drinking diet sodas.

So I began to wonder if there could be a link between diet beverages or artificial sweeteners and obesity.

…. I discovered a number of different research findings that pointed to this very phenomenon.

Any sweet taste will signal your body that calories are on the way and trigger a whole set of hormonal and metabolic responses to get ready for those calories.

When you trick your body and feed it non-nutritive or non-caloric sweeteners, like
aspartame, acesulfame, saccharin, sucralose, or even natural sweeteners like stevia, it gets confused. And research supports this.

An exciting new study in the Journal of Behavioral Neuroscience has shown conclusively that using artificial sweeteners not only does not prevent weight gain, but induces a whole set of physiologic and hormonal responses that actually make you gain weight.

The researchers proved this by giving two different groups of rats some yogurt. One batch of yogurt was sweetened with sugar. The other was sweetened with saccharin.

They found that three major things happened over very short period of time in the rats that were fed artificially sweetened yogurt.

First, the researchers found that the total food eaten over 14 days dramatically increased in the artificial sweetener group -- meaning that the artificial sweetener stimulated their appetite and made them eat more.

Second, these rats gained a lot more weight and their body fat increased significantly.

And third (and this is very concerning) was the change in core body temperature of the rats fed the artificial sweeteners. Their core body temperature decreased, meaning their metabolism slowed down.

So not only did the rats eat more, gain more weight, and have more body fat, but they
actually lowered their core body temperature and slowed their metabolism.”

X*X*X*X*

Notice the double leverage they found in this study. The rats fed the artificial sweetener ate more AND had their metabolism slow down.

That means even people who manage to override their body’s desire to eat more when they drink diet soft drinks-- OR eat so called “light” food & drink products that are sweetened with artificial sweeteners, they are likely to get fatter or lose less fat than they had hoped because their metabolism slows down.

In case you missed my point, I’ll make it really clear. If you don’t want to be fat & heavy, do NOT drink diet soft drinks or eat or drink any “Light” food products made with artificial sweeteners. They will sabotage you & help you to stay fat instead.

(Drinking no sodas at all & doing progressive strength training at least two nonconsecutive days a week has the opposite effect from drinking diet soft drinks. You reliably take in less calories than before if you have been drinking regular soft drinks. And, your metabolism speeds up both for several hours after you exercise and from the lean muscle mass you gain gradually from the exercise.)

Then, on 4-8-2008, I got this email from Dr Al Sears see: www.alsearsmd.com

“Avoid sodas…even if they are diet.

Sodas will make you fat. And they lead to other health problems. That “innocent” low-cal diet soda is really danger in a can.

A new study published in Circulation tracked the diets of men and women for nine years. Those who drank just one can of diet soda a day increased their risk of metabolic syndrome by 34%.

….Regular soda isn’t any better. Another study found that regular soda consumption is also associated with the metabolic syndrome.

Why should this alarm you? Metabolic syndrome is a collection of symptoms that lead to diabetes, heart disease and other chronic diseases like cancer.

If you’re like the average American you drink an estimated 56 gallons of soft drinks each year.

You may have metabolic syndrome and not even know it. In fact, the American Heart Association estimates that over 50 million Americans have metabolic syndrome.

Do you have any of these symptoms?

• Excessive fat tissue in and around the abdomen

• High levels of bad LDL cholesterol, low levels of good HDL cholesterol, and high triglycerides.

• High blood pressure

• Insulin resistance or glucose intolerance (the body can’t properly use insulin or blood sugar)

Each one of these symptoms can cause a whole host of health problems on its own….”

X*X*X*X*

Dr Sears is putting it gently. EVERY SINGLE ONE of those effects is causative or predictive of heart attack, stroke, & all other cardiovascular diseases.

And, you sharply increase your risk of these by drinking EVEN ONE diet soft drink a day.

Ouch !!

Are you at a loss as to what to drink if you don’t drink soft drinks?

Water does work to quench your thirst & is usually available even at fast food places.

A few glasses of fruit juice a week has been found to help prevent Alzheimers. And, there are many flavors of real fruit juice many of which have extra health benefits: orange, cherry, grape, blueberry, etc. They all have some vitamin C. And, you can add chilled club soda to chilled fruit juice if you like the carbonation in soft drinks.

If you want a caffeine boost, try coffee. Or, if you also want a treat & love chocolate, drinking extra strong unsweetened cocoa as a hot chocolate drink works & has incredible health benefits if you add no milk. And, if you want less of a caffeine rush but need a bit of a lift, tea & green tea work -- & have super health benefits if you add no milk to them.

Lastly, if you sometimes add some real sugar to your hot chocolate or coffee or tea -- but not every time, they are still massively better for your health than soft drinks.

To lose fat, upgrade your lifestyle....

Today's post: Monday, 2-25-2008

Most people in the United States are too fat.

(I do enough things in this post better than many people that I’m as much as 50 or 60 pounds lighter than I easily could be. But that includes me still. My weight is close to what it should be. But I still eat a bit too many grains; & get too little strength training and total exercise.)

And, as the sedentary lifestyle & United States style eating become more common, this is increasingly true of people in other countries as well. And, there are statistics now to prove it.

But, except for doing sedentary work, you can upgrade your lifestyle in ways that allow you to escape from this problem.

Here are five upgrades that will help most people lose a lot of fat.

None of them are actually too hard to do as none of them force you to go hungry AT ALL. And, if you need to do all five and make the upgrades, you’ll lose fat like it is being peeled off.

1. Soft drinks. The data is in. Drinking soft drinks makes you fat. Drinking diet soft drinks makes you fatter because it apparently acts as an appetite increaser.

So, if you drink soft drinks at all now, if you upgrade your life and stop doing it, you may well lose more than 10 % of your current body weight without any further effort. And, you will NOT feel hungrier than you do now. In fact, the evidence is you may feel LESS hunger given that you keep the other foods you eat about the same. Not bad !!

The upgrade is to switch to water, tea, green tea, or coffee if you drink it without added sugar & either black or with just a bit of milk or lowfat milk. Also, if you keep the total consumption down, wine, beer, & real fruit juice also work. (PS: If coffee is too strong and you dislike black tea, Earl Grey tea is different enough, you might like it better.)

2. Watching TV. The data is in, the more you watch, the fatter you are. You burn less calories watching TV than you do sleeping! And, many people eat the fattening snack foods or respond to ads for them that appear on TV.

So, be more selective & watch less TV but more focused on what you like best. Skip watching TV some nights or week-ends and go to the gym instead. Or, get an aerobic or cardio exerciser at home & watch while you exercise. If you have them, turn off TV some nights and spend time with your kids. (You can record any must see TV broadcast then to watch later.)

3. Eat no fast food or only eat the health OK stuff when it’s available. The data is in. The more often adults or kids eat at fast food places as most of them still are, the fatter they are.

The food fast food places have served has been very high in sugar, transfats, refined carbohydrates, & with little real food. They tend to serve grain fed meat & poultry. Even worse, they specialize in serving soft drinks.

The upgrade is to substitute food from home; eat in a more upscale restaurants, or only eat the health OK things or almost health OK things when you go into a fast food restaurant.

To be fair, MacDonald’s is beginning to make an effort to provide some health OK alternatives. I’ve found that the easiest ones to eat in a health OK way at are Subway Sandwiches & the Mexican chain, Uno Mas.

But it’s not easy if you still like the regular fare. You need to eat the sandwiches Atkins style with no bread -- only. Eat no French Fries or chips. Eat no desserts. And, substitute water, tea, coffee, or orange juice for soft drinks. It also helps to add extra onions & other veggies to the protein part of the sandwiches. If you can do that, you can still eat at fast food places. If not, you are best served by never, ever going into one.

4. Snacks at home.

If you eat commercial baked goods such as cookies, donuts, bagels, cakes; packaged crackers, chips, & other similar snacks several times a week or, worse, a day, the data is in. You will be fat.

One cure is to eat four meals a day always including breakfast, so you never have to go more than 4 hours without real food.

Another, is to realize that you get virtually no nutrition from such snacks; they are much more expensive per month than most people realize; & they tend to be made with refined grains, sugar, salt, trans fats, & very little else.

The upgrade if you need or want snacks is to eat real food that tastes good enough you actually like it & manage your meals enough you need fewer snacks.

Cherries & kiwifruit & strawberries are just three really good tasting superfoods you can snack on. Monosaturated fat-based snacks that actually work well in moderation are guacamole, avocado slices, stuffed olives, & nuts. Raw broccoli florets, cauliflower, carrot sticks, & celery with a tasty extra virgin olive oil based dip also work. Deviled eggs also work in moderation.

These foods provide fiber & real nutrition so they don’t tend to produce type II diabetes. And, they tend to make you less hungry unlike the bad snacks that surge your blood sugar & then produce rebound hunger.

So, you’ll be a LOT healthier & be less fat if you make these upgrades; & lose the junk food snacks entirely.

5. The other thing you can do is to add regular strength training and other exercise into your life each week.

If you make this upgrade, you get fabulous health benefits. Even better, even while you are still fat, you will be healthier than skinny people who don’t exercise.

You’ll gain muscle & lose fat even if the scales don’t show it at first. And, you’ll tend to keep off any fat you lose as long as you keep up your regular exercises.

Bad health habits cause avoidable diseases & HUGE health care costs….

Today's post: Thursday, 8-30-2007

“How we set up to pay for our ballooning health care & medical costs is both irrelevant & insoluble if five to ten times more people are getting sick than should be doing so. And, this is now the case.”

Virtually no sane & unstressed people volunteer to die early.

And, if you were to ask for people who are interested in taking a lethal dose of rat poison or who are at all interested in getting an obnoxious, disabling, or fatal disease, you would find no takers.

Incredibly, by the way they eat; don’t exercise; & fail to manage their health risks, most Americans today are doing just exactly those things.

It was recently announced that the percent of Americans who are really fat is continuing to go up.

Depending on the state, between 17.6 % in Colorado, the median of about 24.4 %, & 30.6 % in Mississippi – or an average of roughly one out of four Americans is now really fat.

(Obese is the medical term for people with a BMI of 30.0 or higher. Very few people (who are very heavily muscled) are not really fat at that level. And, many people who don’t exercise are really fat at a lower number. But it’s a pretty accurate gauge for most people.)

The effects of being that fat -- and the bad health practices that cause it -- also produce or help cause diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems, other cardiovascular problems, many cancers, & early mental decline.

So, our health care costs are going through the roof already. And, the productivity of our workforce is less than it easily could be, so there’s less income to pay for the added & unnecessary health care costs.

Worse, in the near term, the baby boomers are about to began entering their 60’s in huge numbers. And, even in people who follow good health practices, these disease become much more likely after age 60. In people who don’t follow good health practices, almost everyone begins to get these diseases.

The day the obesity statistics were announced in the San Jose Mercury News (& across the country) they quoted Jeffrey Levi, the executive director of the Trust for America’s Health as saying this:

“…every candidate for president talks about health care reform and controlling health care costs, if we don’t home in on this issue, none of their proposals are going to be affordable.”

I totally agree with him & wrote almost the same comment several days before I read his comment. I wrote:

“How we set up to pay for our ballooning health care & medical costs is both irrelevant & insoluble if five to ten times more people are getting sick than should be doing so. And, this is now the case.”

How can this be fixed?

1. Virtually all soft drinks & foods made with refined grains; foods made with any high fructose corn syrup; those made with ANY hydrogenated vegetable oils, whether partially hydrogenated or fully hydrogenated; many of the foods made with added sugar; & beef and poultry or farmed fish that has been mostly or totally grain fed tend to make people fat and sick.

Many of the Americans who are the fat people in this study eat very little else. Ouch !!

These foods are not as painful or fast as rat poison; but they kill you and make you sick about as well if you ingest them long enough.

And, much of this kind of food & drink is cheap today. So poor people & young people in their formative years tend to eat it.

Half of all food today is eaten away from home. Most fast food & a good bit of restaurant food is this kind of health harming food. And, employers today tend to have vending machines that make this kind of food available and serve these kinds of foods at company functions.

Why not make it a serious federal crime to put any hydrogenated vegetable oil or high fructose corn syrup in any foods or drinks anywhere in this country?

Why not tax all foods made with sugar or refined grains by having fifty percent of their purchase price fund government health care & disease prevention programs?

Why not tax all soft drinks by having 80 percent of their purchase price fund government health care & disease prevention programs? (Diet soft drinks harm health as much as regular soft drinks according to recent research.)

2. If people really knew how much exercise did FOR them and how much NOT exercising did to them, almost everyone who isn’t quite sick or disabled would do regular exercise.

About a quarter of all Americans get NO exercise at all. And another quarter gets too little to support good health and avoiding obesity.

Why not make it a requirement that to receive any federal funds or state funds from any state all K through 12 schools and all organizations that accredit K through 12 schools must have all of their able bodied students in some kind of exercise program?

(These programs can be individualized & managed by computer over the web. They don’t all have to be in group PE classes. This has already been done successfully in Minnesota.)

Why not have a federal tax on any company that doesn’t have a program to encourage its employees to exercise & to make it easier for their employees to do?

(People who get enough regular exercise either avoid getting fat or stop being fat or stay healthy even if they are still somewhat fat. And, they get far fewer of these avoidable diseases—including cancer--according to research I’ve seen reported.)

3. Despite having only about 20 percent of Americans who smoke or a bit more, if no one smoked, about half the cardiovascular diseases of all kinds & about half of the cancers would no longer happen.

(And, that doesn’t even count the deaths, burn injuries, property damage, & avoidable health care costs caused by fires that wouldn’t have happened it the people who caused them didn’t smoke.)

Why not make it a federal law that any kind of company from a corner gas station or convenience store to a cigarette company that sells cigarettes or other tobacco products in this country at all has to pay an extra ten percent penalty on top of its existing federal income tax bill?

What can you do as an individual?

A. You can ask any presidential candidate you can reach:

Do they support disease prevention efforts like these?

Do they know such efforts could cut the number of people getting these avoidable diseases by at least 80 percent?

What else will they do as president to make this reduction happen?

B. You can follow good health practices yourself.

1. You can stop ingesting the foods listed above as disease causing & eat the foods we listed in our last blog on Tuesday, 8-28-2007 as being low in glycemic load instead.

2. You can do regular exercise every week on at least three to five days including two sessions of strength training.

&

3. You can not smoke yourself & avoid second hand smoke.

C. You can teach your own children to follow good health practices.

David Ludwig has a superb book called, Ending the Food Fight, that can be very helpful for parents of kids who are old enough to make their own decisions but who are following bad health practices now.

D. Lastly, since most employers want to cut health care costs, if your company does things that sabotage good health practices, consider letting your employer know it would save them money to do things differently.

You may not be in a position to or work in a company where you can access your CEO or work in one that has a Wellness Director.

But, if you can, it’s well worth doing.

If you can’t, wish me luck in my efforts to do it for you.

One of my personal goals is to have nearly every company in the United States to promote good health practices and to stop helping to support harmful ones.

Some reasons why people get & stay fat….

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

Focus on Your Health:

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective. We do posts on staying healthy; preventing disease; aging more slowly; weight loss; exercise; nutrition; & news in medicine.

Today's post: Monday, 7-2-2007

Some reasons why people get & stay fat….

This is from Dr Singh Khalsa’s TheHealingMinute@DrDharma.com eHealth email newsetter from last Thursday, 6-28-2007.:

"How To Drop 7 Pounds Fast

Dear Friend:

Did you know that when you lose weight your brain works better?

Well, it stands to reason. When you trim down everything works
better. And I do mean everything.

Here's an interesting little story.

A few days ago, I was watching that funny commercial on TV where the
fat guy from the Austin Powers movie tells mini-me to:

"Jump in my belly."
Coincidentally, for a few weeks now I've been thinking about trying
to help you drop 5 to 7 pounds fast.

One big way is to start by reducing the portion size of your meals.

Here's a little history:

Big meal portions are something that started some 15 to 20 years ago.

Do you remember that it was back then when many people asked for a
"doggie bag" to take the left over food home from a restaurant?

That's when "oversized" portions started to be placed in front of us.

Today, like the fat guy, that "doggie bag" is put in our bellies.

We have been "trained" to eat more.

More than what we actually really need to eat!

And many people do it everywhere: at a friend's, at restaurants, at
home.

Everywhere!

In America, food companies produce more than 5,000 calories of food
per person a day.

That's a lot of calories.

More than twice of what we really need, and unfortunately we're
eating them!

These same companies spend approximately $36 billion per year in food
marketing.

Of these, $10 billion alone are directed towards children.

That's a sad fact but apparently it works.

Obesity is the greatest anti-anti-aging factor today.

It's killing us by causing heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's,
arthritis and so on.

Another sickening fact is that Americans are addicted to cheap food.

In fact, we spend only a little more than 9% of our income on food, a
smaller share than any other nation.

No wonder we spend a larger share in health care...an incredible 16%.

All these "cheap unhealthy foods" such as soda, candy, and other
forms of processed foods are making us fat and sick!”

David Ludwig, MD, PhD, author of the book, “The Food Fight,” who researched obesity & who uses his findings in helping parents help their fat kids lose fat & get their lives back, found that eating these "cheap unhealthy foods" tends to trigger eating much larger portions of everything else of those foods that are eaten later that day.

Apparently, at some deep level your body notes that it is still missing the fiber & real nutrients it needs that these foods contain very little of & causes you to eat more to try to live on what you are taking in.

Even worse, the kids he treats have been watching many hours of TV each week. This keeps them fat three ways.

1. TV ads for these "cheap unhealthy foods" appear regularly, particularly for programs kids are most likely to watch.

2. TV time replaces the time kids would be socializing or playing with other kids or exercising with hours of time with only marginally more calories burned than are consumed than the kids would burn if they were sound asleep.

3. When these kids watch TV, they tend to eat huge quantities of these "cheap unhealthy foods" as snacks almost robotically as they watch.

These things sharply increases the calories they take in; & TV watching then prevents them from exercising -- even moderately while playing & in other activities.

Dr Ludwig has found that when the kids he works with replace these junk foods with real & nutritious foods & learn to simply stop eating "cheap unhealthy foods"; watch
TV less & more selectively; & exercise more, they promptly lose fat. As they lose fat, their self-image improves & they feel better. And, once that process goes far enough, the kids tend to take ownership of the process & continue it voluntarily.

The other thing he has these kids do that adults can emulate to some degree, is that he focuses entirely on 3 things. Stop ingesting "cheap unhealthy foods" totally. Eat whole, low glycemic load foods like health OK protein foods, health OK fats, & vegetables & some fruit. Get regular exercise almost every day.

And, don’t try to eat less than they are hungry for.

The kids in his program lose fat anyway; because they do eat less by following the three things to do. And, they are still growing.

As adults, particularly if we are under stress, we need to be careful to not overdo how much we eat & how much alcohol we drink to lose fat that well.

But his methods make that doable without being hungry for most people.

And, that makes losing fat & keeping it off possible, realistic, & doable.

READ labels at the grocery store--save your health

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

Focus on Your Health:

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective. We do posts on staying healthy; preventing disease; aging more slowly; weight loss; exercise; nutrition; & news in medicine.

Today's post: Monday, 6-18-2007


READ labels at the grocery store to save your health ….

Here are two examples. And, the second example includes some new ways to watch for one of the most health damaging ingredients & why to do so.

1. I was at my Dad’s house for Father’s Day yesterday. My mom had bought some liquid chocolate fudge topping made by a major food company.

But she cannot see well. I like chocolate & fudge. And, it was a special occasion. So, I read the label in hopes that the worst ingredient it had was sugar or butterfat or both.

OUCH !! No such luck.

I will NOT voluntarily eat anything with high fructose corn syrup. And this topping had that instead of sugar.

But, there was a MUCH worse ingredient in it. Instead of butter, it had FULLY hydrogenated vegetable oil. (This made it possible for the company to claim no transfats & claim saturated fat content instead.)

Unfortunately, as we covered in an earlier post, fully or totally or 100 percent hydrogenated vegetable oil is like transfats on steroids. It’s as bad or worse for building up plaque in your blood vessels as the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils & their transfats; but it’s also been found to cause the insulin resistance that leads to type II diabetes.

Using 100 percent hydrogenated vegetable oil as an ingredient instead of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is like trading out rat poison for cyanide.

Neither ingredient belong in food you sell the public. But this new ingredient, 100 percent hydrogenated vegetable oil, is much worse.

So, if the transfat reading on a food is other than zero, don’t buy it or eat it. And, no matter what kind of hydrogenated vegetable oil it lists as an ingredient, if you find that term in the list of ingredients, don’t buy it or eat it. And, that’s still true even if the transfats listed are zero—as it was in this case.

2. Day before yesterday I bought a kind of curry spice at the store that has a taste I’ve liked. And, I DID check out the label.

However, today in my Early to Rise email in its health article, I found that the ingredient listed I was unfamiliar with but didn’t know to be bad & so gave it the benefit of the doubt was really MSG. It seems that ingredient term, autolyzed yeast, was a much less known way of stating that it contained MSG. I already try to avoid buying any food with MSG.

But the article goes much farther & lists several more reasons to avoid MSG than I knew before.

So, this spice I had planned to use several times a week on my dinner will go back to the store for a refund.

The article below was from the Saturday, 6-16-2007 Early to Rise email.:

Exposing (and Evading) Grocery Store Fat Traps

By Shane Ellison, M.Sc.

My wife recently pigged out on beef jerky. What was supposed to be light, healthy snacking turned into an all-out eating binge. Her ravenous consumption of the stuff made me think it must be an especially good brand. I was in a hurry when I bought it at my local health food store - and that's where I messed up big time. Ignoring the label, I was caught by the number one grocery store fat trap - which was the cause of my wife's abnormal appetite.

A grocery store fat trap is nothing more than a scheme designed by food manufacturers to make you eat more of something that you think is healthy. These foods and food additives are fat fertilizer. They are great for a company's bottom line, but really bad for your "bottom."

Right before she threw her head back to dump the last crumbs of the beef jerky into her mouth, my wife turned the bag over to read the fine-print ingredients. She gasped, "Why the hell did you buy this! It's loaded with high-fructose corn syrup!"

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is fat fertilizer on steroids. And she knows it. A very fit mom, she keeps her lean and muscular build by avoiding grocery store fat traps.

HFCS transforms people into eating machines. Once consumed, it sets into motion a chemical cascade that begins with spiked insulin and ends with feel-good molecules known as "endorphins." Intoxicated by artificial feel-good, the brain is unable to sense overeating and demands more, more, more - and the excess calories get stored in your body.

I've even heard of kids accidentally taking bites out of their fingers when under the influence of HFCS. Worse yet, many children who overindulge in Frankenfoods that contain HFCS and other sugars eventually become diabetic.

From beef jerky to bread and even spaghetti sauce, HFCS has infiltrated most processed foods and turned them into fat traps. Avoid this ingredient at all cost!

But that's not the only trap lurking in grocery stores.

"Fat-free" labels

These hoodwink millions of unsuspecting victims, and have been a goldmine for the food industry since 1993. The obese seek out this label in hopes of waking up skinny. It never happens - but that doesn't stop them from getting ensnared over and over again. I can hear the rationale: "It just seems so plausible. I'm fat, so I should eat fat-free foods." Wrong.

After the fat is removed, sugar is added. Sugar is great if you're at a birthday party, but that's it.

Like HFCS, it is nothing more than fat fertilizer and a heart attack waiting to happen. Look for it listed as sucrose, dextrose, or cane sugar on the labels of your favorite foods. Then buy something else - like an all-natural food high in healthy fat.

Healthy fat - which you can find in grass-fed beef, seeds, nuts, avocados, and eggs - is essential for proper growth, development, and the maintenance of good health. It provides your body with vital energy, without causing you to gain weight. In sharp contrast to carbohydrates, sugar, and trans-fats, healthy fats tell your body to burn fat and make you feel fuller quicker. Add them to your grocery list.

Artificial sweeteners

This trap gets most weekend warriors. "Energy" bars, protein powders, and sugar-free goodies - each and every one of them is loaded with drugs disguised as sweeteners. The widespread belief that these nicely packaged foods and drinks are good for you is a perfect example of how marketing strategies supersede medical science and common sense.

Artificial sweeteners make your body lose its natural ability to count calories. If athletes cannot distinguish between proper eating and overeating caused by artificial flavors, they will never reach their fat-loss or muscle-building goals, period. Exercise becomes a waste of time.

Artificial flavors include sucralose (Splenda), aspartame, acesulfame K, saccharin, and neotame.
MSG

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) has several aliases you should be on the lookout for, including hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed protein, hydrolyzed plant protein, plant protein extract, sodium caseinate, calcium caseinate, yeast extract, textured protein, autolyzed yeast, and hydrolyzed oat flour.

This white, crystalline amino acid is made in a lab and then added to meat products and most canned or packaged foods to "enhance flavor." One small problem: It doesn't have any flavor. It just enhances overeating - and the food manufacturer's bottom line.

Once consumed, this fat fertilizer not only spikes insulin, it also lowers the hormones that ward off obesity, premature aging, and diabetes: IGF-1 and human growth hormone. And if that's not enough to scare you off, it can be damaging to brain cells too.

Consider the shocking findings by German scientists who recently warned that their country should abandon the use of MSG at once. Why? They found that pregnant mothers consuming this fat trap were giving birth to children who were insulin-resistant.

Apparently, fetuses can be doomed to overeating for life, thanks to neuronal damage caused by Mom's MSG-eating habit. The damage was most prevalent in a specialized group of nerve cells in the medulla oblongata, thalamus, or hypothalamus - the areas of the brain that control proper eating and metabolism. This might be one explanation for the drastic increases in childhood obesity worldwide.

Some things are worth dying for. Fat traps are not. If you want to live thin and slim, be alert to these common grocery store fat traps. You might have to dedicate some extra time to carefully reading food labels... but you'll never fall victim to them again.

[Ed. Note: Shane "The People's Chemist" Ellison has an MS in organic chemistry and firsthand experience in drug design and synthesis. He is an internationally recognized authority on therapeutic nutrition. His AM-PM Fat Loss Discovery e-book shows how he personally beat obesity and insulin resistance in 90 days. To pick up your copy, click here.]

>>> This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.

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