Here in the age of technology and information, we have more knowledge and advancements than ever before in history. Sixty years ago, who would have thought that you could send an instant message over a phone, let alone take a picture with it? Sixty years ago, who would have thought that we would be able to send a man to the moon, but fail in the war against obesity and cancer?
Isn’t it strangely shocking that the United States is so advanced in everything except health and fitness? While the fitness industry tells us we count calories and exercise to lose fat, we are getting fatter as a nation.
Parallel to the fitness industry are the fast food chains, which are doing their best to stay on top of the “healthy eating” trend. It appears that the fast food industry can accommodate anyone’s dietary needs with “fat-free,” “low-calorie,” and “low-carb” menu items.
Today, fast food is considered a normal gastronomic activity among the average person. People no longer just go out to eat on special occasions or weekends; they are eating out all the time. But is it the calories in fast food that are so destructive to the body and waistline, or is the problem deeper?
Fast food and obesity
Fast food is simply tasty food, prepared and packaged to go. Fast food has been around since the early 1900s, but its popularity soared and grew in the 1940s with the birth of good Mickey D’s; fast food at an economical price. Within a few years, similar fast food operations appeared everywhere in the blink of an eye.
With the compelling rise of fast food restaurants since the 1940s, also, interestingly, the rise in obesity and cancer began during that same time period. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math and link fast food to obesity and the cancer crisis.
Fast food and its nutritional value
To say that fast food has “nutritional value” is an oxymoron. There is absolutely nothing nutritional in fast food. Fast food simply feeds your hunger and / or your immediate craving. Fast food does not fuel your body in the form of durable usable energy or building materials, the essence on which your body thrives for life.
Fast food is highly processed with a wide range of additives. The concept of fast food is obviously ready-to-eat and quickly served food. To ensure the low cost of fast food for the consumer, fast food products are made with highly processed ingredients to give shelf life, maintain consistency, and enhance flavor. Fast food is altered from its original healthy form that was intended to nourish the body, to a denatured form that lacks any nutritional value.
According to Diana Schwarzbein, MD, “The FDA Total Diet Study found that fast food hamburgers, overall, contained 113 different pesticide residues.” So my question is why does the FDA want to regulate the sale of vitamins, minerals and herbs that are really beneficial to the body when there is a crisis that links fast food, cancer and obesity on our hands?
Why fast food is fattening and dangerous
Wake up people. It’s not the calories in fast food that harm your health and your waistline, it’s the chemical additives like aspartame and MSG (monosodium glutamate). These chemical additives are FDA approved and studies show that they cause weight problems and illness.
Synthetic chemicals added to processed foods, including fast food, damage cells in the body. Your body is made up of nutrients that are found in the plants and animals that you eat. Artificial foods laden with pesticides, as well as aspartame, margarine, and other artificial chemicals do not nourish your body. If your body cannot use what you put on it, it will increase fat and decrease health.
Since we can’t visually see what’s really going on at the molecular level when we eat processed foods, we discard them and trust the FDA to think for us. After all, if the FDA approves it, it MUST be okay to eat, right? Not at all.
The nutrients in the food we eat allow us to burn fat and be healthy. Your body cannot process synthetic chemicals. If a food cannot be processed, it will end up lodged in areas of your body, mainly fatty areas and tissues, creating an acidic pH.
A simple fast food chicken breast can contain everything from modified cornstarch to hydrolyzed corn gluten. Hello there? Chicken composed of corn? A fast food chicken nugget contains almost 60% corn, and corn is what farmers use to fatten cattle.
Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma puts it perfectly: “How do we get to a point where we need an investigative journalist to tell us where our food comes from?”
A good picture that Dr. Mark A. Gustafson found is that it takes fifty-one days to digest fast food chicken nuggets or French fries. FIFTY ONE DAYS! Sound healthy? I could care less about the calorie, fat or carbohydrate content. That’s not the problem, people. The problem with fast food is that it lacks nutrients and is loaded with chemicals not recognized by the body.
What is even more devastating is the book The Fast Food Diet written by Stephan Sinatra, MD. This is a sad state when a doctor promotes the consumption of chemically altered foods with addictive chemicals and damaged fats that scar the walls of the arteries and contribute to total metabolic damage.
Eat right and avoid hidden dangers
Of course, calories count up to a point, but what counts the most is the quality of the calorie. If you want to lose fat, you must change your eating habits. This does not mean opting for Healthy Choice® and Smart One’s® frozen meals because they appear to be healthy. Food manufacturers use deceptive marking tactics to create the illusion of getting people to buy their product.
To lose fat and keep it off, you should choose foods in their natural state, such as fresh organic cuts of meat, fresh organic fruits and vegetables, essential fats, and plenty of filtered water. It is vital that you go back to basics.
Make fresh and organic food options the bulk of your diet. If you do, you will never have to count calories again. The quality of the food always outweighs the quantity.
References: Schwarbein, Diana MD The Schwarzbein principle. 1999. 287 Pollan, Michael. The omnivore’s dilemma. 2006. 1
