What if I told you that by eliminating 5 foods you would: - Reduce inflammation - Improve gut health - Improve insulin sensitivity - Help your body shed fat - Improve cognitive performance and emotional well being - and Optimize your overall health! Now, I don't know about you but that enough reason to eliminate these "foods" forever! Before we jump into it, we want everyone to know that a complete elimination of these foods may be possible and optimal for some, but for most it will be nearly impossible to do forever. But even with a reduction of these foods, you'll still reap many benefits! Remember, the best nutrition plan is the one that you can adhere to! Focus on sustainability and consistency when it comes to the small changes you make to your diet. For our top 5 foods to eliminate, coming in at #1 is... 1) Seed Oils or "Vegetable Oils" Vegetable oils are loaded with omega-6 fatty acids which are toxic in high doses. The omega-6 content of soybean oil is 55%, corn oil 54%, safflower oil 75% and canola oil 18%. Vegetable oils, especially grain & legume oils such as soybean oil, peanut oil, corn oil and wheat germ oil, also contain plant toxins. 4% of calories as omega-6 fats is the threshold of health impairment. Americans currently obtain 9% of calories as omega-6 fats. The problem with polyunsaturated fats is that all these double bonds make them susceptible to oxidation. The fatty acids react with oxygen in the atmosphere and start deteriorating. The fat you eat isn’t only stored as fat tissue or burned for energy — it’s also incorporated into cell membranes. If you have a lot of polyunsaturated fatty acids in your body, your cell membranes are more sensitive to oxidation. In short, you have a very high level of fragile fatty acids that can easily be degraded to form harmful compounds Omega 6 fats not only fuel your body’s inflammatory pathways, but also reduce availability of anti-inflammatory omega 3 fats in your tissues, resulting in more inflammation.
In other words, omega 6 fats undo any benefit eating omega 3s would normally provide. They also reduce conversion of plant-based omega 3 fats (aka alpha-linolenic acid or ALA) into the active forms of omega 3s called EPA and DHA by about 40 percent.
Consuming too many omega 6 fats also increases the likelihood of inflammatory diseases and links to mental illness, suicide and homicide. In fact, studies have shown a connection of mental health with inflammation in the brain.
Dr. Joseph Hibbeln from the National Institutes of Health has researched the impact of omega 6 and omega 3 fats on our health. He explains that over-consuming omega 6 fats and under-consuming omega 3 fats significantly increases:
Heart disease
Type 2 Diabetes
Obesity
Metabolic syndrome or pre-diabetes
Irritable bowel syndrome
Inflammatory Bowel syndrome
Macular degeneration (eye damage and blindness)
Rheumatoid arthritis
Asthma
Cancer
Psychiatric disorders
Autoimmune disease
As you can see, a diet high in omega 6 fats is not ideal for optimal health. We can’t blame ourselves for this catastrophe. Most of us were taught to use these refined oils at a young age. Unfortunately, this has resulted in the worst epidemic of chronic disease in history, with global explosions of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity (or what I call diabesity) and cancer.
Bottom line: We’ve got to move away from these inflammatory fats.
Replace seed oils with Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Grass Fed Butter, etc. We want to have a 1:1 ratio of omega 3 to 6.
Reducing inflammation is one of the best ways to optimize your health!
2) GLUTEN & GRAINS
When it comes to nutrition we sometimes forget that it's not about how much we eat, it is about how much we can digest. Cereal grain-- the seeds of grasses--are rich in toxins that poison humans. Cereal grains are wheat, corn, rice, barley, sorghum, oats, rye and millet, these 8 cereal grains provide 56% of the food calories & 50% of the protein consumed by humanity.
Grains suppress digestion-- The ability of grains to sabotage digestion is well illustrated by this fact: For every gram of wheat bran you eat, fecal weight increases by 5.7 grams! Eating wheat causes large amounts of food to be excreted instead of digested.
Gluten is toxic to human cells-- Gluten is directly toxic to intestinal cells: it inhibits cell proliferation, increases cellular oxidation products, and changes membrane structure. In the body, gluten changes the structure of the intestine, it reduces the height of the villi, decreases the depth of crypts and decreases the enterocyte surface.
Cereal grains damage the intestine and impair digestion. They impair immune defenses and make people vulnerable to chronic infections. They trigger autoimmune disease. They promote cancer growth. They reduce IQ and brain volume. They promote obesity. They are the food most strongly associated with mortality in the China Study
3) LEGUMES
Beans and peanuts, the high calorie seeds of legumes are just as dangerous as grains when eaten raw and still risky after cooking.
Peanut and soybean allergies are among the most common allergies. Any condition in which the gut is damaged, such as celiac disease, often leads to these allergies with serious consequences.
Legumes are rich in toxins, and their dangers are not yet fully understood. Traditional cuisines that make heavy use of legumes, such as Indian cuisine, used very long cooking times as well as lengthy detoxification methods, overnight soaking, sprouting and fermentation. Even with such methods not all toxins are removed. But at the hasty pace of modern lives, few people soak their beans overnight or cook them for hours. It may be no coincidence that with Indias' modernization, its rates of diabetes and obesity have soared. The country's traditional foods may be unsafe when hurriedly prepared.
Since human carbohydrates needs can easily be met with safer and more nutritious foods, we believe there is little reward and much risk to eating toxin-rich legumes such as beans and peanuts. The only legumes we eat are peas and green beans.
4.) FRUCTOSE
High-fructose corn syrup is manufactured from corn, the world's 2nd largest crop with 21.6% of agricultural production. Table sugar is obtained from the cane sugar plant, the worlds' 6th largest crop with 3.3% of agricultural production, and from beets, the 12th largest crop.
In rodents, high fructose consumption leads to insulin resistance, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure. In humans, similar syndromes develop, but less consistently than in rodents. Fructose appears most problematic when study subjects are obest, and overweight and when they are eating diets high in polyunsaturated diets (Seed OILS!!!)
The digestive tract shunts fructose to the liver via the portal vein and, at the level of fructose contained in natural foods, virtually 100% is absorbed on that first pass through the liver, essentially no fructose reaches the general circulation.
Fructose consumption is associated with obesity. Each additional daily fructose-sweetened soft drink increases the rate of obesity by 60%!! A possible mechanism was discovered when it was shown that eating fructose causes leptin resistance. Leptin is a hormone that normally causes fat reduction, quickens metabolism, and weight loss. Leptin resistant poeple tend to become obese.
Try to limit fructose to 25grams per day and stick to whole fruits for your sources. Higher doses of fructose can be dangerous, the large quantities of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup that most Americans consume are probably quite dangerous, especially in combination with omega-6 vegetable oils. Fructose induced liver damage and endotoxemia, aggravated by excess omega-6 vegetable oils, may be at the root of the current epidemic of metabolic syndrome, obesity and diabetes
5. PROCESSED MEATS
An epidemiological study reports that although beef, pork, and lamb do not increase disease rates, the consumption of a daily hot dog or equivalent weight of processed deli meats raises the risk of heart disease by 42% and of diabetes by 19%. Processed meats contain on average 4x more sodium and 50% more nitrate preservatives. Toxic advanced-glycation end products are abundant in sugar-cured processed meats. Fresh meats are preferable to processed meats, eat uncured bacon and smoked salmon and steer clear of meats cured with sugar. -------- I know, I know - this is A LOT of information and science. We don't expect you to understand them all right away. Once again, our goal with this information is to guide you into the right direction with your health and body.
Our goal at Functional LIfestyles is to optimize health first which naturally results in looking and feeling great! Too many of us are addressing symptoms of our health and not addressing the problems at the foundation.
If you are feeling lost with your nutrition and/or your body, let us help you by guiding you in the right direction with tactics backed by science and most importantly a coach that is here to provide you the structure and accountability you need.
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