Now, everyone knows that foods high in sugar and simple carbohydrates make you fat. It's not rocket science to look at a bag of skittles and understand that they won't help get you lean. There is, however, a lot of bad information floating around about foods that are supposedly healthy for you and that support fat loss and muscle building, most either the result of the moron "brotritionist" at your local, commercial gym or the deep advertising pockets of the food industry.

This being said, here are some of my least favorite foods and why they suck.

The first, and likely most familiar problem with soy are its estrogenic properties. Soy has been linked sexual development problems, some types of cancers, hormonal disruption because of it's tendency to mimic the female hormone, estrogen, as well as negative effects on the thyroid, digestive system, sex drive, and even fertility.

See, the soy plant contains natural phytoestrogens (naturally occurring in the soy plant) and toxic xenoestrogens (the result of processing). While reseach is still unclear on the degree to which phytoestrogens mimic estrogen, the xenoestrogens found in processed soy have been shown to contribute to many of the negative effects found above.

Now, some have made the argument that soy has been around for hundreds of years and has been a main staple in Eastern diets.  This is true. In fact, the Japanese have typically consumed 30 times more soy than Western culture and have a lower incidence of cancer and heart disease than we do! This seems to contradict all of the research claiming soy to be the antichrist. This is because not all soy is created equal.

While we, here in the US are sucking down genetically modified and processed soy in the form of vegetable oils, soy lecithin (the waste product of leftover processed soy), soy flour, soy protein isolate (originally used in cardboard), supplements and vitamins, chocolate, pet food, hot dogs, aspartame, soap, and shampoo, the Japanese are eating organically-grown, non-GMO, fermented soy, which does not contain these harmful xenoestrogens because of the enzymes created during fermentation. While the verdict is still out about the phytoestrogens, at least avoiding all processed forms of soy puts you miles ahead of the average American.

The second reason you should avoid soy is because it contains chemicals that inhibit the function of the essential enzyme, trypsin. Trypsin is found in the gut and is responsible for breaking down complete proteins and allowing them to pass dietary proteins through the walls of the digestive tract to be used for rebuilding muscle, connective tissue, and organs rather than coming out the other end.

The chemicals in soy keep this process from happening, rendering even the most perfect meal useless. The trypsin inhibitors in soy are so powerful, in fact, that they can reduce the biological value of beef (90) to 26, just by being added to the meal. It is this anti-nutritive (nutrient-killing) characteristic that makes soy one of the most detrimental things an athlete can have in their diet.

 

You probably recognize these sugar-free sweeteners  in raw form: Splenda (sucralose), Sweet & Low (saccharine), and Equal (aspartame, also found in most diet sodas). They are often touted as a viable and healthy alternative to sugar or as a good way to kick a soda drinking habit since the lid has been blown on high fructose corn sugar (HFCS).

Unfortunately, all of these "healthy" alternatives are anything but.

Saccharine, found in Sweet & Low, has been around for over 100 years. It was actually banned in 1911, but WWII-inspired sugar rationing caused the ban to be lifted. Saccharine was later found to be direct cause of certain types of bladder cancer, but commercial interests seem to overrule the cancer risk, as the ban has yet to be reinstated.

Aspartame, found in Equal as well as most diet sodas, has been shown to cause birth defects and disrupt neurological development and functioning. Perhaps the most dangerous characteristic of aspartame is that the methanol (wood alcohol) it contains, metabolizes as formaldehyde in the body and binds to proteins and DNA. The methanol of just one soda (about 50mg), is over 4 times the EPA's daily recommended limit of 7.8mg per day.

Sucralose (Splenda) was originally discovered while trying to develop a new insecticide. "According to the book Sweet Deception, sucralose is made when sugar is treated with trityl chloride, acetic anhydride, hydrogen chlorine, thionyl chloride, and methanol in the presence of dimethylformamide, 4-methylmorpholine, toluene, methyl isobutyl ketone, acetic acid, benzyltriethlyammonium chloride, and sodium methoxide (medicinenet.com)." Don't worry, I can't pronounce half of that either, but trust me, that all means that it is nothing like sugar, despite what marketing may say.

"The alleged symptoms associated with sucralose are gastrointestinal problems (bloating, gas, diarrhea, nausea), skin irritations (rash, hives, redness, itching, swelling), wheezing, cough, runny nose, chest pains, palpitations, anxiety, anger, moods swings, depression, and itchy eyes (medicinenet.com)."

If each of these issues weren't bad enough, the unifying problem with artificial sweeteners is the effect they have on your insulin levels. See, while they are marketed as a sugar and carbohydrate-free alternative, the chemical response they have in the body is both similar and worse than simply eating sugar. This is because each of these sweeteners causes a spike in insulin that is much greater than that of sugar.

Insulin is secreted when sugars are present in the bloodstream. It's job is to delegate these sugars to the tissues that need them the most, thus causing blood glucose levels to drop back down to normal. This is why some kinds of diabetics must take synthetic insulin to control blood sugar levels.

Artificial sweeteners, however, are different. While they cause a higher insulin spike, they are not sugars and cannot be utilized and shuttled by insulin like real sugars can. This means that the massive insulin spike they cause cannot do anything productive, and blood glucose levels are forced into sub-normal levels. So, you are left with high insulin and low blood sugar, a potentially lethal combination. Over time, this can also cause insulin resistance, in which your body is no longer able to effectively shuttle nutrients, leaving them significantly more prone to being stored as fat.

 

Have you ever heard the saying "no one wants to get a dance from the corn-fed stripper?" Well, it's a thing. I promise. And if it isn't, then start saying it so that it becomes a thing and remember that you heard me say it first.

Anyways, the argument about whether or not to include corn products in your diet is much more complex than simply saying "Corn is a starchy vegetable (although, it's actually a grain). Too many starches in your diet make you fatter." While this is true, don't get me wrong, we need to expand our thinking just a little further to fully understand corn as both a food and an industry.

Corn and soy are the top two cash crops in the United States. They mean big money for our commercial food system. This means that, in order to maximize profits, we need to grow a lot of it, grow it cheaply, and find as many ways to sell it as possible. Let's examine this profit model…

Corn was one of the first crops to be genetically modified. Thanks to companies like Monsanto, we now have strains of corn that are resistant to bugs, that can grow in all kinds of climates, that are resistant to the pesticides that Monsanto also produces and sells (think about this), that doesn't produce seeds (so the farmer can't re-use seed and must buy more from Monsanto every year) and that can make the corn juicier, sweeter, better for popping, or meant to feed livestock. Corn has been cut, split, cut, chopped, and re-engineered more than Michael Jackson's face, and all of this genetic modification is far from healthy. In fact, studies have found that a diet of GMO foods has killed off an entire population after only a few generations. I could go more in-depth and explain exactly how crops are modified (inject a toxin that kills the cell wall's ability to prevent penetration and insert modified genes), but I think you get the point.

What's worse is that our government subsidizes the production of corn by paying farmers to grow it. This has ultimately depleted our soil (because farmer's can't afford to rotate crops without government corn subsidies) and slowly made us dependent on importing other crops because we no longer take advantage of the different climates and crops that naturally grow in different parts of the country; everyone's growing corn and soy.

If you think that avoiding corn altogether is a simple fix, you're in for a much larger battle than you may think. Corn is in everything.

Corn has replaced sugar in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup. It is cheaper to produce and significantly sweeter than sugar, so you can use less of it. You can find it in:

• Soft drinks
• Fruit juices
• Baked goods
• Canned fruits
• Dairy products
• Cookies
• Gum
• Jams and jellies

HFCS is one of the main reasons our country is suffering an obesity and diabetes epidemic. This is because, unlike glucose, the body cannot utilize fructose. It does not stimulate insulin (remember, insulin tell nutrients where to go and what to be used for), which means that is just sits there as a readily-available sources of energy for the liver to convert to fat and cholesterol. It also has no enzymes, vitamins, or minerals.

If you are not eating non organic, grass-fed, or free-range meats, than you are also ingesting second-hand corn from animals that were fed an unnatural diet. So, in addition to living in their own shit, they life off of foods their digestive system isn't able to process. So you end up eating sick, weak animals who were fed low-grade, GMO trash.

There. Consider corn officially "served."

 

Just so we're on the same page, I'm defining "conventional dairy" as dairy products (milk, yogurt, etc) as those derived from pastuerized, homogenized milk from non-organic, commercial dairy cows.

Now that we've drawn a distinction, let's take a look at the processes that are involved in creating conventional milk.

First, pastuerization. Pastuerization has two main goals: "Destruction of certain disease-carrying germs and the prevention of souring milk. These results are obtained by keeping the milk at a temperature of 145 degrees to 150 degrees F. for half an hour, at least, and then reducing the temperature to not more than 55 degrees F" (realmilk.com).

"Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer. Calves fed pasteurized milk do poorly and many die before maturity" (realmilk.com).

Homogenization is the process that breaks up the fat particles in the milk so they don't rise to the top when milk settles. It has been linked to heart disease.

Conventional milk has also been know to be treated with antibiotics and even household bleach in order to pass purity tests before being sold in stores.

It is because of these processes that milk is often touted as an inflammatory food, resulting in allergies and lactose intolerance. If you kill off the natural enzymes that allow something to be digested and assimilated, you create an unnatural food that the body doesn't know what to do with and you run into complications down the line. This is also why milk products have such a high propensity to be stored as fat.

While not necessarily the best addition to a fat-loss nutrition plan for everyone, whole, raw, unpasteurized milk seems to be everything that conventional milk is not. It is rich in vitamins E, D, C, K, CLA, leucine, and calcium. It has been shown to improve bone health, allergies and asthma in young children, and boost overall immune system functioning. There's not much money in these things though, which is why raw milk is still illegal in many states…

 

This brings us to good old whole grains. Quite possibly the best way to justify eating shit.

Whole grain bread, cookies, cereal, crackers, bagels, and the list goes on. If it's grain, it's healthy.

Wrong.

Current dietary guidelines recommend that consumers eat 6 to 11 servings of grain products daily, including at least three whole-grain foods yet, for some reason, deaths from heart disease and diabetes are at an all-time high. Curious, isn't it?

So What's The Problem With Cereal Grains?

"All grains have nutritional deficiencies. Moreover, as we eat more and more grain products we tend to eliminate other nutritional meats, fruits, and vegetables. In half the world, bread provides more than 50 percent of the total caloric intake, and in a few countries of Southern Asia, Central America and the Far East and Africa cereal products comprise up to 80 percent or more of the total caloric intake… Moreover, cereal grains may actually inhibit the metabolism of these nutrients and cause autoimmune reactions"(Mercola.com).

Many of these autoimmune reactions can be traced back to the nearly ubiquitous presence of gluten in grain-based foods.

Gluten is often referred to as an "anti-nutrient." This is because of gluten affects the body. First, gluten attaches your small intestines, creating small holes which allow food particles to leak into your bloodstream. As an emergency reaction, your body attacks these invading particles, ultimately keeping it from absorbing important nutritients. This is known as leaky gut syndrome.

Because your body is basically trained to attack itself, a number of inflammatory symptoms can arise:

• leaky gut, celiac disease
• skin problems (chronic rashes, itching, sores, inflammation)
• allergic reactions of many sorts
• bowel problems, including cramping
• bloating
• mouth sores (mouth ulcers)
• eczema
• low immunity to disease
• neurological dysfunction
• headaches

 

I hope this helps to shed some light on a few common dietary misconceptions and the reasons that I always recommend against including these foods for my clients. I will be expanding on a few of these in the future, so keep your eyes out!

~Jeron

Related Articles:

1. pH imbalance: The misunderstood, silent cause of disease.
2. Before you buy your protein bars.
3. Organic & inexpensive? How can that be?
4. Tilapia Is Unhealthy: Worse Than Bacon?