Right now the variety of food we have available to us is greater than ever before – at least in the 1st world. While we can choose and control what meals to have and what to snack on, we have absolutely no control over what goes into our food. Or on our food.
With many of the foods we eat now made in factories, and so much seemingly conflicting advice about what we should be eating, it’s no wonder many people are confused. The food industry often conceals the unhealthy products in its processed foods – even manipulating science to fool consumers.
Almost all processed food relies on high sugar, salt and saturated fat, processed with chemicals, to make it palatable and long-lasting. These are precisely the ingredients that are driving obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, strokes and cancer. Sugary drinks – even fruit juices, which contain as much sugar as sodas – have no nutritional value, are toxic to the body. Our sugar intake is out of control, it’s even pumped artifically into our vegetables and food labels can be very misleading.
Processed meats such as ham, salami or bacon will almost always have salt added (as a preservative as well as for flavour). Preservatives in foods can have an effect on your health. Preservatives used in processed meat (such as potassium nitrate) are the biggest area of concern, as they’re linked to an increased risk of bowel cancer. Sulphites and benzoates are also widely used preservatives, which can sometimes affect people who have asthma or eczema.
Did you know it’s been proven multiple times that long-tern stress our cattle goes through before it’s slaughtered for food affects us as well? All that adrenaline and stress the animals feel before they’re killed stays in the meat which we then consume and it has detrimental effects on our health. Think about how antibiotics that the animals are forced to eat affect us as well.
Tere are more than 3,000 food additives approved by the FDA, and all of them have been proven safe for human consumption.
No, wait that’s not true. The FDA doesn’t even assess food additives. Manufacturers themselves decide — with absolutely no government or independent oversight — that additives and preservatives meet a standard known as “generally recognized as safe,” also known by the acronym GRAS. So if the manufacturer says there’s no definitive proof that what they’re adding to our food causes issues like, say, weight gain or diabetes or asthma, then they can do what they like.
Food dyes are also proven to affect us, especially our children. Food dyes in candy, for example, makes children more agressive, hyperactive, confused and even worsens their mental and cognitive abilities!
The problem isn’t just what’s in our food but what’s on our food as well. Pesticides. They stay on our food even after washing, stay in our body for years, and travels many miles on wind, water and dust.
Pesticides are at fault for:
○ widespread central nervous system damage such as intellectual disability, persistent memory impairments, epilepsy, and dementia,
○ paralysis or weakness in the limbs,
○ altered sensation, tingling and numbness in the limbs,
○ headaches,
○ vision loss,
○ loss of memory and cognitive function,
○ uncontrollable obsessive and/or compulsive behavior,
○ behavioral problems,
○ sexual dysfunction.
Think about it. Your brain is always “on.” It takes care of your thoughts and movements, your breathing and heartbeat, your senses — it works hard 24/7,
even while you’re asleep. This means your brain requires a constant supply of fuel. That “fuel” comes from the foods you eat — and what’s in that fuel
makes all the difference. Put simply, what you eat directly affects the structure and function of your brain and, ultimately, your mood.
How about our drinking water? That’s safe, right? Unfortunately that’s not always the case. Human beings are made from about 75% water and our
brains are made out of 90% water. There’s no question why water is so extremely important to us. 80 percent of the world’s wastewater is dumped
— largely untreated — back into the environment, polluting rivers, lakes, and oceans.
This widespread problem of water pollution is jeopardizing our health. Unsafe water kills more people each year than war and all other forms of violence combined. Meanwhile, our drinkable water sources are finite: Less than 1 percent of the earth’s freshwater is actually accessible to us. Without action, the challenges will only increase by 2050, when global demand for freshwater is expected to be one-third greater than it is now.
While most Americans have access to safe drinking water, harmful contaminants—from arsenic to copper to lead
—have been found in the tap water of every single state in the nation.
While we’re talking about what exactly we put in our body, let’s touch on something we consume in large doeses: medicine and supplements.
In a poll conducted by the Campaign for Effective Patient Care, a nonprofit advocacy group based in California, 65 percent of the 800 California voters surveyed said they thought that most or nearly all of the health care they receive is based on scientific evidence. The reality would probably shock them.
Less than half the surgeries, drugs, and tests that doctors recommend have been proved effective. Less than half.
A surprising number of treatments are later found to be useless or harmful when they are finally put to the test. Many widely adopted surgeries, devices, tests, and drugs also rest on surprisingly thin data. For instance, many doctors routinely prescribe a powerful blood thinner called warfarin to prevent a pulmonary embolism, a potentially deadly blood clot that blocks an artery in the lungs. Warfarin has been in use for decades. Yet when the Cochrane Collaboration, a highly regarded international consortium of medical experts, examined the evidence, they could find only two small studies supporting the use of warfarin for patients at risk of developing clots. Neither study proved that the risky blood thinner was superior to simply giving the patient ibuprofen.
The holes in medical knowledge can have life-threatening implications, according to an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality report published in 2001: more than 770,000 Americans are injured or die each year from drug complications, including unexpected side effects, some of which might have been avoided if somebody had conducted the proper research.
Complicating matters, many clinical guidelines are written by physicians and members of professional societies who have financial conflicts of interest with drug, device, or test kit companies.
Non-prescription medicine is also often abused as some of it is addictive (like cough syrup) or even useless, working as a placebo effect. French Institut National de la Consommation proved that most non-prescription cough medicine is useless, some even harmful. They also stated patients and users should look out for certain substances often used in cough medicines that many people are allergic to, such as propylparaben, alcohol and certain colourings.
However we have to look on other side too – some medicines work too strongly, leaving patients and users with terrible long-lasting side effects such as nausea, rashes, intense headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, stomach irritation, allergies and more. Some elederly people are prescribed too much medicine which affect them terribly. Such is the case of an elderly lady from Slovenia, who was prescribed heart medicine along with other 6 pills to take daily. After more than 5 years she switched her doctor. The new young doctor expressed her surprise at the heart medicine, asking her why was she taking them if there was nothing wrong with her heart. A month after she stopped taking them, her chest felt lighter and her general well-being improved.
What about dietary supplements? People love them and they promise us better skin, vision, anti-aging effects, lower risk of heart diseases and more. Multivitamins are the most commonly used supplements in the world. All dietary specialists, doctors and nutritionists agree supplements do not compensate for poor eating habits. Most widely used supplements are multivitamins which claim to contain a rich variety of vitmains and minerals.
They come in the form of tablets, capsules, powders, liquids and chewable gummies. The global dietary supplements industry is worth an estimated $133 billion. With so many people taking vitamins, you figure those little capsules are doing something good for you, right?
Multiple studies and medical experts say… no, they really don’t.
If you’re already eating a well-balanced diet, vitamins, nutritional supplements and minerals don’t provide you much – if any – additional health benefits. If you’re not eating a well-balanced diet, adjusting what you eat should be the first course of action rather than taking a multivitamin. Vitamins themselves are essential to our bodies and contribute to growth, digestion, nerve function and a whole host of other things. The important distinction is how you’re getting those vitamins. Our diet should be what’s supplying all of the nutrients that our body needs and we need to be eating a variety of foods because there is no one major miracle food that supplies absolutely everything.
Some supplements might say they provide 400 percent of your daily vitamin C, leading you to think you’re getting four times the nutritional boost each day. But that’s not true. Your body hits tissue saturation at some point.
Supplement companies often market their vitamins as being nutritionally complete, but if you really take a look at the labels, many times they’re not even close. And, no, the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t review dietary supplements for their safety or effectiveness, nor does it approve claims about these supplements’ purported health benefits.
Let’s take a look at horrific case of John Coolidge, aged 55, from Tennessee. He started taking a supplement called Total Body Formula with hopes of improving his overall health. After some time he was suddenly hit with one symptom after another: joint pain, diarrhea, hair loss, lung problems and toenails and fingernails simply falling off. Hundrets of people reported similar reactions to the supplement and finally FDA looked into it.
They inspected the manufacturer’s facilities and tested the contents of the supplement. Shockingly, most of the samples contained more than 200 times the labeled amount of selenium and up to 17 times the recommended intake of chromium! The nails and hair of unfortunate Mr. Coolidge have grown back but he still suffers from serious breathing problems.
That doesn’t mean all supplements are bad and detrimental but it does show it’s hard to trust institutions like FDA, who should have tested the product before approving it fort he market. They eventually did that but the damage to the consumers was already done.