junk food

American Diabetes Association trying to normalize fatness with new recommendation that obese diabetics eat more PROCESSED SUGAR

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One of the latest pieces of bizarre “fat acceptance” propaganda to come from the establishment is a “sweet and sour cucumbers” recipe from the American Diabetes Association (ADA) that encourages diabetics to add a whopping 60 grams of processed sugar to their pre-fermented cukes.

Calling those who run the ADA “sadistic biomedical profiteers,” Armageddon Prose‘s Ben Bartee says the recipe is “damn near criminal” in that it advises diabetics to consume the opposite of what they should be eating for their condition.

“Diabetics should all, without exception, in perpetuity until their metabolic dysfunction is resolved and insulin sensitivity restored, be on either ketogenic or extremely low-carb diets,” Bartee writes.

“To the metabolically compromised, sugar is poison, and all the more so when it’s processed and unfiltered through fiber.”

If the ADA were in the business of actually curing diabetes, it would provide helpful information about how to reverse it through diet and self-discipline. Instead, the organization is pushing sugar on diabetics, which is a death sentence.

“But then, if diabetics suddenly discovered their own power to heal themselves, the executives over at the ADA who make a killing off of the proliferation of disease might be forced to do an honest day’s work,” Bartee says. “And that they would never abide.”

(Related: Did you know that optimizing vitamin D levels can reduce the risk of diabetes by 43 percent?)

“Fat acceptance” driving pro-sugar insanity at ADA

To advise against sugar intake on the basis of the metabolic damage it causes, as well as weight gain, would be “fatphobic,” which is probably why the ADA is pushing loads of sugar on diabetics.

Consider a recent “FatCon” event where large people gathered to emotionally support one another in some kind of quest for self-acceptance. The types of people who attend FatCon want to be told that being fat is beautiful and normal, and that their bodies are still healthy.

The ADA seems to have embraced that same sentiment, or at least the organization does not believe that diabetics need to change their diet in any way to see their disease subside.

Another thing to consider is the fact that the new ADA recommendation that diabetics consume more sugar was paid for by a company that profits from treating kidney patients at its vast network of kidney centers.

“This dubious recommendation for diabetics to eat sugar was paid for by DaVita Corp which runs kidney centers,” tweeted Dr. Robert Lufkin, M.D. “The leading cause of renal failure is … diabetes.”

In the comments, someone wrote that he stopped eating processed sugar years ago, and has not consumed even a speck of fast food since 1994.

“Nothing from a ‘factory’ based box or bag,” this person added. “No weight or health problems at all.”

Another wrote that the ADA’s sweet-and-sour cucumbers recipe is no surprise because the Alzheimer’s Association does the very same type of thing by recommending that dementia patients consume seeds oils, which are highly inflammatory and toxic by nature.

“It’s not about health and never has been,” this person added. “It’s about keeping folks on the Big Pharma and Big Medicine train until the state gets its windfall from burial and estate taxes. We are but commodities to our government overlords.”

Someone else stressed that a big part of the globalist agenda right now is to divide everyone up into little “special communities” with the hope that doing this will herd everyone into supporting one of the two main political parties, which are technically a uni-party in disguise.

Here’s How the U.S. Government Subsidizes Your Junk Food Habit

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As an American growing up in the 1970s, I fondly remember my guilt-free days of childhood enjoying Twinkie’s, Coca Puffs, donuts and other tasty (but health-destroying) junk food. All in all, we didn’t eat an enormous amount of it, but still much more than my daughter will ever consume (as in zero).

Today, it seems we know better than to indulge in these fake edibles, laden with artificial and cancer causing ingredients that are nutritionally void. Or do we?

heres-how-the-u-s-government-subsidizes-your-junk-food-habit-5

Obesity is on the rise, so are chronic and deadly health problems like diabetes, heart disease and cancer — and each one is closely linked with the rise in processed food consumption. Poverty plays a large role in the foods available to eat as well; there’re entire inner city neighborhoods where you can’t find fresh produce to save your life. To make matters worse, junk food is state subsidized — heavily — making it cheaper for manufacturers and more readily available to consumers. So while the U.S. nation is in a health crisis, the federal government is not combating the problem but rather fueling it with our tax dollars, perpetuating a vicious cycle of sickness which leads to reliance on a broken medical system and a multibillion dollar pharmaceutical industry. Where does it end?

Start Them Young

From television advertisements to the school lunch program, children are taught to love their subpar, artificial fare from a very early age. However, there’s been a bit of an uproar of late as Americans have realized school lunch programs in other countries put ours to shame. Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Where to Invade Next? painfully drives the point home when he visits a number of schools throughout Europe, where the meals are beautiful, healthy, delicious, and, most of all, civilized. Photographs circulating on social media also highlight the sad state of our school lunch program, which many feel resembles prison food.

Here’s the kicker: our nutritionally anemic midday meal in U.S. schools cost only slightly less than a gorgeous, nutritious multi-course school lunch in France. By comparison, it has been shown that kids in the U.S. who eat school lunches have more weight issues whereas France has the lowest rate of childhood obesity in the industrialized world.

Unfortunately, state-funded American school lunch programs aren’t the only realm where the government pushes junk food over natural, healthy foods — everyday groceries are fair game too.

Your Tax Dollars at Work, Destroying the Health of Americans

Bread, sugary drinks, pizza, pasta dishes and dairy desserts are the top 10 sources of calories for Americans. All are primarily produced from specific crops and farm foods — corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, milk and meat — which are excessively subsidized by the federal government. This renders junk food inexpensive, and abundant.

The U.S. government spent $170 billion between 1995 and 2010 to help with the growing and production of these foods. At face value, they aren’t necessarily unhealthy, but in reality, only a very small percentage of these crops are eaten in their unprocessed form. The rest are made into cheap products such as high fructose corn syrup, processed meats and a range of refined carbohydrates. Subsidies that support the production of fresh fruits and vegetables are just a small fraction of the budget — the lion share goes towards crops and farm products that eventually end up as junk food.

“The subsidies damage our country’s health and increase the medical costs that will ultimately need to be paid to treat the effects of the obesity epidemic,” a 2012 report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, concluded. “Taxpayers are paying for the privilege of making our country sick.” [source]

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A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, headed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looked at the association between metabolic diseases and the consumption of federally subsidized food. The team documented over 10,000 adults and the food they reported eating on a typical day. Next, the researchers divided the subjects into specific groups, based on the proportion of foods they consumed that were from the seven major subsidized commodities. Age, sex, socioeconomic factors and other variables were adjusted. It was found that those with the highest consumption of subsidized food had a 37 percent higher risk of obesity — and were more likely to have belly fat, abnormal cholesterol, high blood sugar levels and inflammation, which can further result in excessive free-radical activity and tissue damage.

“This tells us that the factors that influence the prices of our foods are an additional factor,” said Ed Gregg, chief of the epidemiology and statistics branch in the C.D.C.’s Division of Diabetes Translation. “We’re hoping that this information reaches policy makers and the people who influence how subsidies work.” [source]

Critics of the current subsidy program say it doesn’t serve it’s original purpose: to support small farmers who grow fruits, nuts and vegetables, which the government classifies as “specialty crops.” Instead, it now mainly subsidizes goliath producers that crank out “commodity” crops like grains, corn, sorghum and oilseeds.

“Specialty” farms account for three-quarters of U.S. cropland, and yet only receive 14 percent of government subsidies. Massive agribusinesses that focus on commodity crops use 7 percent of cropland, but are paid approximately half of all subsidies.

Raj Patel, a research professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, feels the funding for fruits and vegetable with the latest farm bill was a “crumb” in light of the billions granted for commodity crops. He said we need to adopt a “national food policy” that would support fair wages for farm workers, accessibility to healthy food for all Americans, and align federal nutritional recommendations with agricultural policies.

“It would transition us away from the unhealthy consequences of the current industrial food policy,” he told the New York Times. “I think there’s something very broken about the subsidy system.”

 

Junk Food and Junk Science

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The junk food industry has a number of tricks up its sleeve to paint their disease-causing products in a better light. When your profits depend on people buying soda, candy, potato chips and other unhealthy snacks, good taste only goes so far.

Junk Food Industry

Story at-a-glance

  • An industry-funded study found children who ate candy were 22 percent less likely to be overweight or obese than children who did not
  • The findings were heavily publicized even though one of the paper’s authors called it “thin and clearly padded”
  • Funding scientific research gives the junk food industry a certain level of control over the results
  • It’s well-known that industry-funded research almost always favors industry

Eventually, people begin to wonder just how bad these foods are for their bodies, especially in light of general trends toward healthier eating.

Such foods are carefully laboratory created to get you hooked, and once your cravings kick in for these extraordinarily addictive foods, the industry gives you reason to justify the indulgence via scientific research — research that the industry itself, of course, funded.

Funding scientific research gives the industry a certain level of control over the results. Although most researchers and sponsoring companies will insist the research is sound and unbiased, it’s well-known that industry-funded research almost always favors industry.

So when a study came out touting the surprising claim that children who eat candy tend to weigh less than those who don’t, it was not a surprise that the study was funded by a candy trade association representing some of the top U.S. candy makers.

Candy Industry Manipulates Science to Sell More Junk Food

“The only thing that moves sales,” Marion Nestle, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition at New York University (NYU), told the Associated Press, “is health claims.”1 And if you can’t make health claims based on a product’s own merits, why not fund a study to drum some up?

The study in question was published in 2011 in Food & Nutrition Research. It followed 11,000 children and found those who ate candy were 22 percent less likely to be overweight or obese than children who did not.2

Further, the candy eaters even had lower levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation and a risk factor for heart disease. The findings were heavily publicized even though the paper’s authors even questioned its validity.

As reported by the Associated Press, which conducted an investigation into how food companies influence people’s thoughts about healthy eating, Carol O’Neil, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition at Louisiana State University (LSU), wrote to her co-author about the study, “We’re hoping they can do something with it — it’s thin and clearly padded.”3 The Associated Press continued:4

“Since 2009, the authors of the candy paper have written more than two dozen papers funded by parties including Kellogg and industry groups for beef, milk and fruit juice.

Two are professors: O’Neil of LSU and Theresa Nicklas, Ph.D., at the Baylor College of Medicine. The third is Victor Fulgoni III, Ph.D., a former Kellogg executive and consultant whose website says he helps companies develop ‘aggressive, science-based claims about their products.’

Their studies regularly delivered favorable conclusions for funders — or as they call them, ‘clients.’”

Industry Uses Science to Publicize the Results They Want

Sound scientific research should publish all the results from any given study, not only those that paint industry in a favorable light. But it’s common practice for negative or neutral study results to be left unpublished while favorable results get published.

The Associated Press used the example of a study funded by PepsiCo, which owns Quaker oatmeal. The study looked into whether consuming Quaker oatmeal or a Quaker Oats cereal (Quaker Oatmeal Squares) would be more filling than rival General Mills Honey Nut Cheerios.

While the oatmeal proved to be more filling, the oats cereal did not, so PepsiCo only published the favorable oatmeal results.5 Publication bias — the practice of selectively publishing trial results that serve an agenda — is common practice not only in the food industry but also in pharmaceutical research.

Meanwhile, it’s common practice for researchers to run their manuscripts by their industry funders prior to publication, and even carefully time the release of results to their advantage. In regard to the study that found candy-eating kids weigh less, the Associated Press noted:6

“The trumpeting of their research was also carefully timed. In June 2011, a candy association representative emailed O’Neil a critical article about a professor with industry ties.

‘I’d like to monitor the fallout from this story, and give a little bit of distance to our research piece. I do not want to put you in the crossfire of a media on a rampage,’ wrote Laura Muma of FoodMinds, an agency that represented the candy association.”

Even Seemingly Reputable Nutrition Journals May Have Cozy Ties With Junk Food Makers

Download Interview Transcript

In 2013, I interviewed Michele Simon, who has practiced public health law for nearly 20 years, fighting corporate tactics that deceive and manipulate you about health.

Last year, she released a report that revealed the disturbing ties between the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) — considered a premier source of nutritional science — and the primary purveyors of obesity and chronic ill health.

ASN is sponsored by 30 different companies, including Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Monsanto, and the Sugar Association, just to mention a few, each of which pays $10,000 a year in return for “print and online exposure, annual meeting benefits, and first choice to sponsor educational sessions, grants, awards, and other opportunities as they arise.” As noted by Simon:

“In other words, food, beverage, supplement, biotech, and pharmaceutical industry leaders are able to purchase cozy relationships with the nation’s top nutrition researchers.”

Junk food purveyors gain even more influence by sponsoring educational sessions at various conferences and annual meetings, and featuring speakers that represent the industry.

ASN’s ties are particularly problematic since they also publish three academic journals, including the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN).

These ties can “taint scientific objectivity, negatively impact the organization’s policy recommendations, and result in industry-friendly research and messaging that is shared with nutrition professionals and the general public alike,” according to Simon. She added:

“Obesity researcher David Allison, Ph.D. wins the prize for the most conflicts: PepsiCo, the Sugar Association, World Sugar Research Organization (WSRO), Red Bull, Kellogg, Mars, Campbell Soup, and Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (DPS).

Perhaps most troubling, Allison serves on the editorial board of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, ASN’s flagship publication. While his conflicts are disclosed, having Allison in such a critical gatekeeper role demonstrates how industry can potentially influence even the science that gets published.”

Even Nutrition Professionals Are ‘Counseled’ by Industry

In the realm of commercial profits, nothing is sacred, not even the reputation of the U.S. trade organization for food and nutrition professionals, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly known as the American Dietetic Association).

Food companies like Coca-Cola, General Mills, Nestlé, Kraft, and all of the major junk food purveyors buy sponsorships to be at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ annual trade organization meetings. They typically end up having the largest booths on the expo floor.

Besides showcasing their food products, they’re also allowed to sponsor or hold educational sessions at the meeting, including sessions for registered dietitians (RDs) to receive continuing education credits. Even fast food companies like McDonald’s are represented at the annual meetings. According to Simon:

“They want to make sure that they’re being viewed as a good-for-you fast food company. So, at their booth, they would be sampling salads, smoothies, and oatmeal … [Food companies] are basically trying to use these [nutrition] professionals to carry their message to their clients.

That’s the name of the game here: to make sure the next time an RD talks to a client, they’ll say, ‘Gee, you should really try this better-for-you, Baked Lays potato chips, because it has a few less grams of salt or fat.’ It’s to make sure that RDs are recommending these still highly processed, nutrient-deficient junk foods to their clients … There are many RDs, in fact, that have rejected membership in the academy, mostly because of these relationships …

The problem really lies with the leadership of this organization and the fact that they’re putting their stamp of approval on these types of webinars and companies that obviously are contributing to the very problem that the profession is trying to address.”

Coca-Cola Front Group Shut Down After Bad Press

Coca-Cola Company funded the Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN), a front group aimed at confusing you about soda science and diverting attention away from evidence showing soda is a major contributor to obesity and diabetes. One of the group’s primary messages was to tout exercise as the science-backed solution to obesity — while downplaying the importance of dietary issues, like soda consumption.

Coca-Cola did not come right out and disclose that they were behind the supposedly scientific front group — they were outed by The New York Times, which reported in August 2015:7

“The beverage giant has teamed up with influential scientists who are advancing this message in medical journals, at conferences and through social media …

‘Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, ‘Oh they’re eating too much, eating too much, eating too much’ — blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks, and so on,’ the group’s vice president, Steven N. Blair, an exercise scientist, says in a recent video announcing the new organization.’ And there’s really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause.'”

After The New York Times report, the front group received so much bad press and criticism that the University of Colorado School of Medicine said it would return the $1 million grant Coca-Cola had given them to help start the group. Public health authorities accused the group of using tobacco industry tactics to raise doubts about the health hazards of soda, and a letter signed by more than three dozen scientists said the group was spreading “scientific nonsense.”8

By December 2015, the GEBN announced it would be shutting down, with Coca-Cola claiming it was working on increased transparency.9

No Matter What the Spin, Junk Food Is Bad for Your Health

The food industry can use all the manipulative tactics in the world to create misleading data and other propaganda, but none of it will change the fact that junk food is bad for you. People who ate a diet focused on macaroni and cheese, processed lunchmeat, sausage biscuits, mayonnaise and microwavable meals with unhealthy fats, for example, showed serious negative changes to their metabolism after just five days.

After eating the junk food diet, the study participants’ (12 healthy college-aged men) muscles lost the ability to oxidize glucose after a meal, which could lead to insulin resistance, which is the primary underlying factor of nearly every chronic disease and condition known to man, including weight gain.10 Stunted academic performance and depression have also been linked to junk food diets. Further, it only takes one junk food binge to influence your health for worse.11

When you eat junk food high in unhealthy fats and sugar, the sugar causes a large spike in your blood-sugar levels called “postprandial hyperglycemia.” In the long term, this can lead to an increased risk of heart attack, but there are short-term effects as well, such as:

  • Your tissue becomes inflamed (as occurs when it is infected)
  • Your blood vessels constrict
  • Damaging free radicals are generated
  • Your blood pressure may rise higher than normal
  • A surge and drop in insulin may leave you feeling hungry

Show the Junk Food Makers Who’s Boss: You!

It’s easy to fall victim to the junk food industry’s marketing webs and even easier to become biologically hooked on their high-sugar foods. However, breaking free from the trap and focusing your diet on real food instead is one of the best health moves you can make. How can you do it?

Ditching processed foods requires that you plan your meals in advance, and if you take it step-by-step as described in my nutrition plan, it’s quite possible, and manageable, to painlessly remove processed foods from your diet. You can try scouting out your local farmer’s markets for in-season produce that is priced to sell, and planning your meals accordingly, but you can also use this same premise with supermarket sales.

You can generally plan a week of meals at a time, making sure you have all ingredients necessary on hand, and then do any prep work you can ahead of time so that dinner is easy to prepare if you’re short on time (and you can use leftovers for lunches the next day). Simply don’t bring junk foods into your home. That way there’s no temptation to eat them. And the more you nourish your body with real food, the less you’ll feel tempted by these fake foods anyway.

Finally, if food cravings sideline you, I highly recommend using the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). EFT is simple and effective, and can rapidly help you eliminate your food cravings naturally. Ultimately, your taste buds will come to realize that many “health” foods taste better than their science-lab counterparts any day.

Conventional ‘yogurt’ is junk food disguised as health food

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Thanks to greater awareness surrounding the dangers of food that’s processed and doused with pesticides, consumer attitudes have blossomed from an interest to a demand when it comes to knowing what’s in our food and understanding what’s healthy.

However, consumers aren’t the only ones who’ve changed their attitude toward “conventional” food. Large food manufacturers have also transformed their tactics in regard to producing and labeling food products (mostly labeling), but instead theirs is driven by money rather than concern for consumer health.

While many have become diligent at reading labels and checking ingredients, there are some foods out there that are cleverly marketed as “healthy” but are anything but. Sometimes these products need to be examined more closely for harmful ingredients.

One product to watch out for is yogurt.

When it comes to being portrayed as healthy, yogurt is kind of like beef jerky. Many think beef jerky is super-low in calories, and a great source of protein; however, in reality it’s filled with massive amounts of sodium and MSG, making it very unhealthy.

Advertisers market yogurt as a quick, low-calorie, healthy snack, even labeling it with a seal that reads “Live and Active Cultures.” This is meant to fool customers into believing that it provides a high level of healthy microorganisms, or probiotics.

The “Live and Active Cultures” seal is used only on products made by popular brands like General Mills or Groupe Danone. Interestingly, organic companies don’t use this seal at all.

Tests done by the Cornucopia Institute, an organic watchdog group that promotes family-scale farming, showed that many farmstead organic yogurt products without the “Live and Active Culture” seal actually contain higher amounts of probiotics than conventional yogurt.

When you study the ingredients in “conventional” yogurt, you’ll find that it’s made from milk produced by a cow that’s been confined to one space its whole life, pumped with antibiotics and hormones, and fed GMO grain. Ingredients can also include artificial sweeteners, chemical defoamers, processed sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, synthetic preservatives and the controversial thickener carrageenan.

Numerous health problems have been associated with aspartame, including migraines, blurred vision, depression, gastrointestinal complications and many others. Carrageenan, or seaweed extract, is a preservative used to maintain the thick, milky texture of yogurt and to keep contents from separating. It’s been linked to inflammation, ulcerations and even bleeding. It’s also received FDA approval to be used in USDA Certified Organic food.

These ingredients make for anything but a “healthy” product. In fact, if you eat them regularly, you could be doing more harm than good.

When you’re buying yogurt, look for products that have the USDA Certified Organic label. This is regulated by the USDA’s National Organic Program and must meet strict requirements.

Try to avoid buying products just because they say “all-natural.” This sounds really good but doesn’t mean anything because it’s completely unregulated.

Any business can use this label for advertising without changing any of their ingredients. It’s basically a loophole for companies trying to be part of the healthy, non-GMO food revolution without actually being healthy or non-GMO.

Look for yogurt brands that say “grass-fed, no added hormones” or, even better, “gluten-free.” Stonyfield Organic Greek yogurt uses NO toxic pesticides, artificial hormones or antibiotics. It’s also non-GMO and USDA Organic.

Popularity surrounding organic, non-GMO food has reached an all-time high but has also sparked the attention of food manufactures, and not always in a good way. Be skeptical when you see companies labeling their products as “all-natural,” especially major name brands like General Mills, Kraft Foods and PepsiCo. If possible, try to stick to items made by smaller companies interested in providing a healthy product through practices that often give back to the environment, rather than buying food filled with chemicals and packaged with lies.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/044989_conventional_yogurt_junk_food_chemical_ingredients.html#ixzz42CIWTkRX

What Happens to Your Body when You Eat Junk Food?

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Eating Junk Food

Story at-a-glance

  • When men ate a junk-food diet, their muscles’ ability to oxidize glucose was disrupted in just five days’ time
  • If you lose this key player in glucose metabolism it could pave the way for insulin resistance, diabetes, and other health problems

If you overdo it on pizza, macaroni and cheese, chips, and ice cream, you might worry about what it’s going to do to your thighs or mid-section. But binging on junk food isn’t only a matter of weight gain. It might have far more serious repercussions than that.

People who ate a diet focused on macaroni and cheese, processed lunchmeat, sausage biscuits, mayonnaise, and microwavable meals with unhealthy fats, for example, showed serious negative changes to their metabolism after just five days.

After eating the junk-food diet, the study participants (12 healthy college-aged men) muscles’ lost the ability to oxidize glucose after a meal, which could lead to insulin resistance down the road.1

What Happens to Your Metabolism After Five Days of Junk Food

Even though their caloric intake remained unchanged, when men ate a junk-food diet their muscles’ ability to oxidize glucose was disrupted in just five days’ time. This is a significant change, because muscle plays an important role in clearing glucose from your body after a meal.

Under normal circumstances, your muscles will either break down the glucose or store it for later use. Your muscles make up about 30 percent of your body weight, so if you lose this key player in glucose metabolism it could pave the way for diabetes and other health problems.2 As reported by TIME:3

“‘The normal response to a meal was essentially either blunted or just not there after five days of high-fat feeding,’ [Matthew] Hulver, [PhD, department head of Human Nutrition, Food, and Exercise at Virginia Tech Hulver] says.

Before going on a work-week’s worth of a fatty diet, when the men ate a normal meal they saw big increases in oxidative targets four hours after eating.

That response was obliterated after the five-day fat infusion. And under normal eating conditions, the biopsied muscle used glucose as an energy source by oxidizing glucose. ‘That was essentially wiped out after,’ he says. ‘We were surprised how robust the effects were just with five days.'”

Just One Bad Meal Can Mess with Your Health

Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Super Size Me was one of the first to vividly demonstrate the consequences of trying to sustain yourself on a diet of fast food. After just four weeks, Spurlock’s health had deteriorated to the point that his physician warned him he was putting his life in serious jeopardy if he continued the experiment.

But as the featured study showed, it doesn’t take a virtual month to experience the health effects of a poor diet. In fact, the changes happen after just one meal, according to research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.4

When you eat a meal high in unhealthy fats and sugar, the sugar causes a large spike in your blood-sugar levels called “post-prandial hyperglycemia.” In the long term this can lead to an increased risk of heart attack, but there are short-term effects as well, such as:

  • Your tissue becomes inflamed (as occurs when it is infected)
  • Your blood vessels constrict
  • Damaging free radicals are generated
  • Your blood pressure may rise higher than normal
  • A surge and drop in insulin may leave you feeling hungry soon after your meal

The good news is that eating a healthy meal helps your body return to its normal, optimal state, even after just one. Study author James O’Keefe of the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri told TIME:5

“Your health and vigor, at a very basic level, are as good as your last meal.”

Dr. Braden Kuo of Massachusetts General Hospital used a pill-sized camera to see what happens inside your stomach and digestive tract after you eat ramen noodles, one common type of instant noodles. The results were astonishing…

In the video above, you can see ramen noodles inside a stomach. Even after two hours, they are remarkably intact, much more so than the homemade ramen noodles, which were used as a comparison. This is concerning for a number of reasons.

For starters, it could be putting a strain on your digestive system, which is forced to work for hours to break down this highly processed food (ironically, most processed food is so devoid of fiber that it gets broken down very quickly, interfering with your blood sugar levels and insulin release).

When food remains in your digestive tract for such a long time, it will also impact nutrient absorption, but, in the case of processed ramen noodles, there isn’t much nutrition to be had. Instead, there is a long list of additives, including the toxic preservative tertiary-butyl hydroquinone (TBHQ).

This additive will likely remain in your stomach along with the seemingly invincible noodles, and no one knows what this extended exposure time may do to your health. Common sense suggests it’s not going to be good…

Eating Processed Foods Linked to Chronic Disease

Research published in the Journal of Nutrition found that women who consumed more instant noodles had a significantly greater risk of metabolic syndrome than those who ate less, regardless of their overall diet or exercise habits.6

Past research also analyzed overall nutrient intake between instant-noodle consumers and non-consumers, and found, as you might suspect, that eating instant noodles contributes little value to a healthy diet.

The instant-noodle consumers had a significantly lower intake of important nutrients like protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, potassium, vitamin A, niacin, and vitamin C compared with non-consumers.7 Those who ate instant noodles also had an excessive intake of energy, unhealthy fats, and sodium (just one package may contain 2,700 milligrams of sodium).8

Not to mention, refined carbohydrates like breakfast cereals, bagels, waffles, pretzels, and most other processed foods quickly break down to sugar in your body. This increases your insulin and leptin levels, and contributes to insulin resistance, which is the primary underlying factor of nearly every chronic disease and condition known to man, including weight gain.

Not only that, but remember… when you eat junk food you are not just feeding yourself… you’re feeding your microbiome, too, and in so doing altering its construction for better or worse. Your body’s diverse army of microbes is responsible for many crucial biological processes, from immunity to memory to mental health, so feeding it wisely, with fresh unprocessed and naturally fermented foods, is crucial to your overall health and well-being.

Is Junk Food as Dangerous as Cigarettes?

In the US, about one-quarter to one-third of adults fall into the obese category. A staggering two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and poor diet is in large part to blame. Last year, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, said that “obesity is a bigger global health threat than tobacco use,” and that this fact isn’t taken as seriously as it should be. His statements were delivered at the opening of the 2014 World Health Organization’s annual summit. De Schutter ultimately wants nations to join forces to place stricter regulations on unhealthy foods:9

“Just as the world came together to regulate the risks of tobacco, a bold framework convention on adequate diets must now be agreed,” he said. ‘The Special Rapporteur has previously agitated for greater governmental action on junk foods, including taxing unhealthy products, regulating fats and sugars, cracking down on advertising for junk food, and rethinking agricultural subsidies that make unhealthy food cheaper,’ Time Magazine noted. ‘Governments have been focusing on increasing calorie availability,’ he said, ‘but they have often been indifferent to what kind of calories are offered, at what price, to whom they are made available, and how they are marketed.'”

The idea that being overweight can be more harmful than smoking is likely to make many balk, considering how “normal” it has become to carry around extra pounds, but in terms of overall health effects and subsequent health care costs, it’s likely true. For example, data collected from over 60,000 Canadians show that obesity leads to more doctor visits than smoking.10

Further, according to a report by The McKinsey Global Institute, the global cost of obesity is now $2 trillion annually, which is nearly as much as the global cost of smoking ($2.1 trillion) and armed violence (including war and terrorism, which also has a global cost of $2.1 trillion).11 For comparison, alcoholism costs are $1.4 trillion annually, road accidents cost $700 billion, and unsafe sex costs $300 billion. What’s more, if current trends continue, the McKinsey report estimates that nearly half of the world’s adult population will be overweight or obese by 2030.

Junk Food Is Incredibly Addictive

Your body is designed to naturally regulate how much you eat and the energy you burn. But food manufacturers have figured out how to over-ride these intrinsic regulators, designing processed foods that are engineered to be “hyper-rewarding.” According to the “food reward hypothesis of obesity,” processed foods stimulate such a strong reward response in our brains that it becomes very easy to overeat. One of the guiding principles for the processed food industry is known as “sensory-specific satiety.”

Investigative reporter Michael Moss describes this as “the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm your brain.”12 The greatest successes, whether beverages or foods, owe their “craveability” to complex formulas that pique your taste buds just enough, without overwhelming them, thereby overriding your brain’s inclination to say “enough.” In all, potato chips are among the most addictive junk foods on the market, containing all three “bliss-inducing” ingredients: sugar (from the potato), salt, and fat. Further, as reported by TIME:13

“Studies suggest that fatty, sugary foods promote excretion of the stress hormone cortisol, which seems to further stimulate appetite for calorie-dense foods. And the big post-meal spikes in blood sugar are more likely in people who don’t exercise or those who carry weight around their abdomen. All of it makes it tough for people to stop eating junk food once they’re in the habit. ‘The more you eat it the more you crave it. It becomes a vicious cycle,’ says O’Keefe.”

And while food companies abhor the word “addiction” in reference to their products, scientists have discovered that sugar, in particular, is just that. In fact, sugar is more addictive than cocaine. Research published in 2007 showed that 94 percent of rats that were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between sugar water and cocaine, majority chose sugar.14 Even rats that were addicted to cocaine quickly switched their preference to sugar, once it was offered as a choice. The rats were also more willing to work for sugar than for cocaine.

The researchers speculate that the sweet receptors (two protein receptors located on the tongue), which evolved in ancestral times when the diet was very low in sugar, have not adapted to modern times’ high-sugar consumption. Therefore, the abnormally high stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets generates excessive reward signals in your brain, which have the potential to override normal self-control mechanisms and thus lead to addiction.

Does Junk Food Have a Hold on You? How to Break Free

Replacing processed foods with homemade meals made from scratch using whole ingredients is an ideal and important way to ensure optimal nutrition. This will automatically cut out the vast majority of refined sugars, processed fructose, preservatives, dyes, other nasty chemicals, and many addictive ingredients from your diet. This will allow your body to depend less on sugar and more on fat as its primary fuel—provided you eat enough healthy fat, that is.

As a result, you will no longer crave sugar to keep you going. The key elements for a healthy diet that can help kick your junk food cravings to the curb are the following. For a comprehensive guide, please see my free optimized nutrition plan:

    • Avoiding refined sugar, processed fructose, grains, and processed foods
    • Eating a healthy diet of whole foods, ideally organic, and replacing the carbs you eliminate with:
      • As much high-quality healthy fat as you want (saturated and monounsaturated). Many would benefit from getting as much as 50-85 percent of their daily calories from healthy fats. While this may sound like a lot, consider that, in terms of volume, the largest portion of your plate would be vegetables, since they contain so few calories.

Fat, on the other hand, tends to be very high in calories. For example, just one tablespoon of coconut oil is about 130 calories—all of it from healthy fat. Good sources include:

Olives and olive oil Coconuts and coconut oil Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk
Organic raw nuts, especially macadamia nuts, which are low in protein and omega-6 fat Organic pastured egg yolks and pastured meats Avocados
    • Large amounts of high-quality organic, locally grown vegetables, fermented vegetables, and ideally sprouts grown at your home
    • Low-to-moderate amount of high-quality protein (think organically raised, pastured animals, or eggs)

Planning Your Meals Is Key

Ditching processed foods requires that you plan your meals in advance, but if you take it step-by-step as described in mynutrition plan, it’s quite possible, and manageable, to painlessly remove processed foods from your diet. You can try scouting out your local farmer’s markets for in-season produce that is priced to sell, and planning your meals accordingly, but you can also use this same premise with supermarket sales. You can generally plan a week of meals at a time, making sure you have all ingredients necessary on hand, and then do any prep work you can ahead of time so that dinner is easy to prepare if you’re short on time (and you can use leftovers for lunches the next day).

Finally, if you’re an emotional eater, I highly recommend using the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT is simple and effective, and can rapidly help you eliminate your food cravings naturally.

Curb Junk Food Cravings: Researchers Find Windows Of Development That Cause Us To Want Unhealthy Food

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Shake Shack

Researchers at the University of Adelaide, expanding upon previous work, have found that there are two critical time periods in a person’s life where exposure to junk food creates the disposition to overeat foods high in fat and sugar. These most harmful periods occur during the later stages of pregnancy, as well as adolescence, and have particularly damaging repercussions for females.

In April of 2013, researchers conducted their first tests of how a junk food diet affects children still in the womb under Dr. Bev Muhlhausler, senior research fellow in the University’s FOODplus Research Centre. Published in FASEB Journal, the study concluded that junk food consumed by the mother during pregnancy and lactation desensitized offspring to the normal reward system resulting from these types of foods.

Typically, the body produces opioids, a chemical that triggers a reward response, when we consume fat and sugar. These opioids initiate the production of dopamine, the “feel good” hormone that results in the often euphoric enjoyment we derive from these types of foods. However, with increased exposure to sugar and fat, the body needs a higher intake of unhealthy foods in order to produce the same good feeling.

“We found that the opioid signaling pathway (the reward pathway) in these offspring was less sensitive than those whose mothers were eating a standard diet,” Muhlhausler said. As a result, children of mothers who have consumed a high-fat, high-sugar diet while pregnant crave more sugar and fat than those who chose healthier options, predisposing them to overeating.

Muhlhausler equates this response to a type of addiction. “In the same way that someone addicted to opioid drugs has to consume more of the drug over time to achieve the same ‘high,’ continually producing excess opioids by eating too much junk food results in the need to consume more foods full of fat and sugar to get the same pleasurable sensation,” she said.

Now, researchers have discovered that particular times within pregnancy, as well as early stages of adult development have more of an effect on this desensitization. “Our research suggests that too much junk food consumed late in pregnancy for humans has the potential to be more harmful to the child than excess junk food early in the pregnancy,” said Dr. Jessica Gugusheff, post-doctoral researcher in the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine. Similarly, Gugusheff also found that if a mother consumes large amounts of junk food during early stages of pregnancy, there is potential to reduce negative effects if a healthier diet is adopted later on during pregnancy.

“The second critical window is in adolescence and we’ve found differences between males and females,” Gugusheff said. “Our experiments showed that eating a healthy diet during adolescence could reverse the junk-food preferences in males, but not females.” Males have more of a chance to combat cravings created within the womb, while females do not have as great of a chance if their mother had a sweet tooth while pregnant.

“The brain area grows at its fastest during these critical windows and is therefore most susceptible to alteration at these times,” Muhlhausler said. She and her team hope that their research will allow pregnant women to make more informed decisions about their diets, knowing the effects it will produce on their children later on in life. Muhlhausler also concluded, “It will also enable us to target dietary interventions to times in development when they will be most beneficial.”

Sources: Gugusheff R, Ong Z, Muhlhausler B, et al. A Maternal “junk-food” Diet Reduces Sensitivity to the Opioid Antagonist Naloxone in Offspring Postweaning. FASEB Journal. 2013.

Gugusheff R, Ong Z, Muhlhausler B, et al. The Early Origins of Food Preferences: Targeting the Critical Windows of Development. FASEB Journal. 2015.

How Bad Is Junk Food For Your DNA?

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If we all dropped dead after eating junk food, the message would have been loud and clear: DO NOT INGEST! But this is one of the things we probably have to learn the hard way. Many people these days struggle through a  long time of  sickness, being plagued with low immunity, high toxicity, and a wide range of metabolic imbalances. Most likely they will have to leave this world in a hospital, after a long addiction to medical drugs and doctors.

In the Aboriginal tribes on the other hand, the elderly leave their community and go alone to die in the wilderness when they “feel” it’s time to go. Just like that, on their own feet. Decent. Proud. Simple. Peaceful. In perfect harmony with Nature.

Most modern, “civilized” people refuse to make and acknowledge any connection between the food they ingest, their lifestyle and their health. And they can do that because the effects are both cumulative and most of the times delayed.

When you store enough toxins to build up cancer in your body, the first thought that comes to mind is  ”I have to kill it“, NOT  ”The food I ate and the lifestyle I had were bad, I have to start all new and heal my body and mind“. As you see, the focus is mainly to “kill” something external, a disease that fell on our heads with no reason, out of nowhere (like conventional medicine likes us to believe) and NOT internal, based on our own actions and choices.

This mentality allows it to easily find excuses that validate our eating behavior, with no regard to the massive negative effect the junk food industry has on the human race. And processed, toxic food can come in many forms and sizes: from packaged dinners, “cardboard” cereal boxes, factory raised meat, pasteurized conventional dairy, GMO foods, to candy and even eating un-sprouted, un-soaked, and un-fermented grains, legumes and nuts.

Some of us have awaken and now see the connection. They see and understand that you ARE what you eat…

But have you ever wondered…”How bad is it, really, to eat junk food?”

To put it simple, it goes down to your DNA. Here are the scientific facts:

1. The connection between FOOD and ALTERED GENES in humans

What we eat and what we are exposed to in our environment directly affects our DNA and its expression. Epigenetic factors (“beyond the control of the gene”) are directly and indirectly influenced by the presence or absence of key nutrients in the diet, as well as exposures to toxins, chemicals, pathogens and other environmental factors.

The “genetic material” a mother transmits to her baby is made up of very complex factors, but they all come down to the answers to these simple questions: What did the mom eat? What was her lifestyle? What were her health problems?

In her book “Deep Nutrition“, Catherine Shanahan, MD talks about how genes are affected by the foods we eat:

“Epigenetic researchers study how our genes react to our behavior, and they’ve found that just about everything we eat, think, breathe, or do can, directly or indirectly, trickle down to touch the gene and affect its performance in some way. (…) Not only does what we eat affect us down to the level of our genes, our physiques have been sculpted, in part, by the foods our parents and grandparents ate (or didn’t eat) generations ago. (…) (1)

In 2005 scientists from Spain that study epigenetics showed why twins with identical DNA might develop completely different medical problems. And this is very important because conventional medicine wants us to believe that many diseases are out of our own control, that beautiful and healthy people are just a matter of luck and genetic chance.

The study showed that “if one twin smokes, drinks and eats nothing but junk food while the other takes care of her body, the two sets of DNA are getting entirely different chemical “lessons” – one is getting a balanced education when the other is getting schooled in the dirty streets of chemical chaos. ” (1)

So genes actually make very intelligent decisions guided in part by the chemical information in the food we eat. Food is the primary way we interact with our environment and it CAN alter genetic information in the space of a single generation. Researchers have become to understand that DNA has been programmed at some point in the past by epigenetic markers that can turn certain DNA portions on or off in response to certain nutrients.  If, for example there is no enough calcium and vitamin D in the body, the genes remain “dormant” (turned off) and less bone is built in the body, until the specific nutrients are again available. A “forgetful”, “dormant”, “turned off” gene can be “retrained” to function normally under the right environment.

The anthropologic literature is full of evidence and discoveries that link skeletal modification over time to dietary changes. Narrow face, small jaw, crooked teeth, thinned lips, thin bones, flattened features can be all observed in modern generations. And disproportionality disables the body’s ability to function properly.

2. Gene mutation and Methylation

It is estimated that 49% of the general population has an under methylation gene defect. They cannot detoxify well. “More than any other molecule, methyl groups are involved in the healthy function of the body’s life processes, and more than any other molecule, the lack of methyl groups for methylation is involved in chronic, degenerative diseases, autoimmune concerns, hormonal processes and neurotransmitter balances.(…)

The onslaught of cellular damage has only increased in the past ten years. The toxic environment damages cellular function deep within the cell’s epigenetics. Ionizing (x-rays, mammograms) and non-ionizing (cell phones, airport scanners) radiation damage DNA. Genetically modified food damage DNA more and more every day as Round Up Ready genetically modified (GMO) toxins are being incorporated into infants DNA around the world.” (2)

How do methyl groups get damaged?

Poor nutrition along with stress, free radical damage, lack of vitamin B 12 and folic acid and exposure to environmental toxins all damage methyl groups. Methyl groups also decline with the aging processes.

Why are methyl donors so important?

Our bodies conduct a billion methylation processes every moment of our lives! Methyl groups keep every cell doing its correct job for the good of the whole according to the body’s innate intelligence. (2)

They unlock the resistance to healing by supporting the cells with nutrition required for them to heal themselves. All genuine healing is within the cell.

The body uses millions of methyl groups to turn on the stress response according to the laws of Nature. But if a person does not have sufficient methyl donors, that person won’t be able to turn off the stress process anymore.

In a cellular methylation process called DMA Methylation, methyl groups attach to cromosomes and deactivate certain gene sequences so we don’t express them. This includes deactivating disease processes, viral genes and other deleterious elements that may be introduced to a person’s genetics. (2)

Methylation helps convert dangerous molecules to ones that the liver, gall bladder, and kidneys can eliminate.

Excessive weight gain and the inability to lose weight is a cellular issue – one involving inflammation, the cell membrane, anti-oxidants and… methylation!

These are just a few of the very important and numerous roles methylation is conducting. To find more information about this extremely complex process you could check out these websites:

http://mthfr.net

http://drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/CFS_-_The_Methylation_Cycle

http://latitudes.org

3. The connection between FOOD and ALTERED GENES in animals

Our ancestors chose their food in terms of : good soil, healthy animal, freshly picked. It was not the cheapest, the fastest or the most convenient. And this was the reason they kept themselves healthy and thriving, staying connected to their land.

Not the case these days anymore. A surprising conclusion was drawn in a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition regarding conventional fed chickens versus organically fed chickens. It seems that organically fed chickens develop a different process of gene expression in their small intestines than that of chickens which get conventional feed.

“The result is that the genes responsible for creating cholesterol have a higher expression in organically fed chickens, yet these birds do not have elevated blood cholesterol levels. Researchers were surprised to discover that simple differences in cultivation methods can have such a drastic outcome in how chickens process their food and express it in their genes. Dr. Astrid de Greeff from Livestock Research and her colleagues came to find that 49 genes ended up regulating differently in the organic group.” (3)

As you see, you might not feel the negative effects of junk food today or tomorrow. You might even be one of the lucky ones that have stronger, healthier genes and feel relatively ok until later in life. But in the end, that doesn’t mean you and your future generations will be immune to the explosion of Franken-foods that flooded the world and are ingested every day. The old excuse “my grandma lived to be 90 and smoked and drank her whole life, I can do the same” doesn’t apply anymore, and now you know why. Because she already passed down poor genetic material determined by her lifestyle. It can’t get better from there.

Article References

1. Shanahan, Catherine. Deep Nutrition

2. Tips, Jack. Methylation: The Molecule That Unlocks The Body’s Healing Response

3. Huff, Ethan. Organic Chickens are Genetically Different

4. Sikkema, Albert. Organic feed influences gene expression in chickens

5. Choi, Sang-Woon and Friso, Simonetta. Epigenetics: A New Bridge between Nutrition and Health

How Bad Is Junk Food For Your DNA?

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If we all dropped dead after eating junk food, the message would have been loud and clear: DO NOT INGEST! But this is one of the things we probably have to learn the hard way. Many people these days struggle through a  long time of  sickness, being plagued with low immunity, high toxicity, and a wide range of metabolic imbalances. Most likely they will have to leave this world in a hospital, after a long addiction to medical drugs and doctors.

dna-292x300

In the Aboriginal tribes on the other hand, the elderly leave their community and go alone to die in the wilderness when they “feel” it’s time to go. Just like that, on their own feet. Decent. Proud. Simple. Peaceful. In perfect harmony with Nature.

Most modern, “civilized” people refuse to make and acknowledge any connection between the food they ingest, their lifestyle and their health. And they can do that because the effects are both cumulative and most of the times delayed.

When you store enough toxins to build up cancer in your body, the first thought that comes to mind is  ”I have to kill it“, NOT  ”The food I ate and the lifestyle I had were bad, I have to start all new and heal my body and mind“. As you see, the focus is mainly to “kill” something external, a disease that fell on our heads with no reason, out of nowhere (like conventional medicine likes us to believe) and NOT internal, based on our own actions and choices.

This mentality allows it to easily find excuses that validate our eating behavior, with no regard to the massive negative effect the junk food industry has on the human race. And processed, toxic food can come in many forms and sizes: from packaged dinners, “cardboard” cereal boxes, factory raised meat, pasteurized conventional dairy, GMO foods, to candy and even eating un-sprouted, un-soaked, and un-fermented grains, legumes and nuts.

Some of us have awaken and now see the connection. They see and understand that you ARE what you eat…

But have you ever wondered…”How bad is it, really, to eat junk food?”

To put it simple, it goes down to your DNA. Here are the scientific facts:

1. The connection between FOOD and ALTERED GENES in humans

What we eat and what we are exposed to in our environment directly affects our DNA and its expression. Epigenetic factors (“beyond the control of the gene”) are directly and indirectly influenced by the presence or absence of key nutrients in the diet, as well as exposures to toxins, chemicals, pathogens and other environmental factors.

The “genetic material” a mother transmits to her baby is made up of very complex factors, but they all come down to the answers to these simple questions: What did the mom eat? What was her lifestyle? What were her health problems?

In her book “Deep Nutrition“, Catherine Shanahan, MD talks about how genes are affected by the foods we eat:

“Epigenetic researchers study how our genes react to our behavior, and they’ve found that just about everything we eat, think, breathe, or do can, directly or indirectly, trickle down to touch the gene and affect its performance in some way. (…) Not only does what we eat affect us down to the level of our genes, our physiques have been sculpted, in part, by the foods our parents and grandparents ate (or didn’t eat) generations ago. (…) (1)

In 2005 scientists from Spain that study epigenetics showed why twins with identical DNA might develop completely different medical problems. And this is very important because conventional medicine wants us to believe that many diseases are out of our own control, that beautiful and healthy people are just a matter of luck and genetic chance.

The study showed that “if one twin smokes, drinks and eats nothing but junk food while the other takes care of her body, the two sets of DNA are getting entirely different chemical “lessons” – one is getting a balanced education when the other is getting schooled in the dirty streets of chemical chaos. ” (1)

So genes actually make very intelligent decisions guided in part by the chemical information in the food we eat. Food is the primary way we interact with our environment and it CAN alter genetic information in the space of a single generation. Researchers have become to understand that DNA has been programmed at some point in the past by epigenetic markers that can turn certain DNA portions on or off in response to certain nutrients.  If, for example there is no enough calcium and vitamin D in the body, the genes remain “dormant” (turned off) and less bone is built in the body, until the specific nutrients are again available. A “forgetful”, “dormant”, “turned off” gene can be “retrained” to function normally under the right environment.

The anthropologic literature is full of evidence and discoveries that link skeletal modification over time to dietary changes. Narrow face, small jaw, crooked teeth, thinned lips, thin bones, flattened features can be all observed in modern generations. And disproportionality disables the body’s ability to function properly.

2. Gene mutation and Methylation

It is estimated that 49% of the general population has an under methylation gene defect. They cannot detoxify well. “More than any other molecule, methyl groups are involved in the healthy function of the body’s life processes, and more than any other molecule, the lack of methyl groups for methylation is involved in chronic, degenerative diseases, autoimmune concerns, hormonal processes and neurotransmitter balances.(…)

The onslaught of cellular damage has only increased in the past ten years. The toxic environment damages cellular function deep within the cell’s epigenetics. Ionizing (x-rays, mammograms) and non-ionizing (cell phones, airport scanners) radiation damage DNA. Genetically modified food damage DNA more and more every day as Round Up Ready genetically modified (GMO) toxins are being incorporated into infants DNA around the world.” (2)

How do methyl groups get damaged?

Poor nutrition along with stress, free radical damage, lack of vitamin B 12 and folic acid and exposure to environmental toxins all damage methyl groups. Methyl groups also decline with the aging processes.

Why are methyl donors so important?

Our bodies conduct a billion methylation processes every moment of our lives! Methyl groups keep every cell doing its correct job for the good of the whole according to the body’s innate intelligence. (2)

They unlock the resistance to healing by supporting the cells with nutrition required for them to heal themselves. All genuine healing is within the cell.

The body uses millions of methyl groups to turn on the stress response according to the laws of Nature. But if a person does not have sufficient methyl donors, that person won’t be able to turn off the stress process anymore.

In a cellular methylation process called DMA Methylation, methyl groups attach to cromosomes and deactivate certain gene sequences so we don’t express them. This includes deactivating disease processes, viral genes and other deleterious elements that may be introduced to a person’s genetics. (2)

Methylation helps convert dangerous molecules to ones that the liver, gall bladder, and kidneys can eliminate.

Excessive weight gain and the inability to lose weight is a cellular issue – one involving inflammation, the cell membrane, anti-oxidants and… methylation!

These are just a few of the very important and numerous roles methylation is conducting. To find more information about this extremely complex process you could check out these websites:

http://mthfr.net

http://drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/CFS_-_The_Methylation_Cycle

http://latitudes.org

3. The connection between FOOD and ALTERED GENES in animals

Our ancestors chose their food in terms of : good soil, healthy animal, freshly picked. It was not the cheapest, the fastest or the most convenient. And this was the reason they kept themselves healthy and thriving, staying connected to their land.

Not the case these days anymore. A surprising conclusion was drawn in a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition regarding conventional fed chickens versus organically fed chickens. It seems that organically fed chickens develop a different process of gene expression in their small intestines than that of chickens which get conventional feed.

“The result is that the genes responsible for creating cholesterol have a higher expression in organically fed chickens, yet these birds do not have elevated blood cholesterol levels. Researchers were surprised to discover that simple differences in cultivation methods can have such a drastic outcome in how chickens process their food and express it in their genes. Dr. Astrid de Greeff from Livestock Research and her colleagues came to find that 49 genes ended up regulating differently in the organic group.” (3)

As you see, you might not feel the negative effects of junk food today or tomorrow. You might even be one of the lucky ones that have stronger, healthier genes and feel relatively ok until later in life. But in the end, that doesn’t mean you and your future generations will be immune to the explosion of Franken-foods that flooded the world and are ingested every day. The old excuse “my grandma lived to be 90 and smoked and drank her whole life, I can do the same” doesn’t apply anymore, and now you know why. Because she already passed down poor genetic material determined by her lifestyle. It can’t get better from there.

Article References

1. Shanahan, Catherine. Deep Nutrition

2. Tips, Jack. Methylation: The Molecule That Unlocks The Body’s Healing Response

3. Huff, Ethan. Organic Chickens are Genetically Different

4. Sikkema, Albert. Organic feed influences gene expression in chickens

5. Choi, Sang-Woon and Friso, Simonetta. Epigenetics: A New Bridge between Nutrition and Health

 

 

Children who eat junk food three times a week have more severe asthma and eczema.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2262174/Children-eat-junk-food-times-week-severe-asthma-eczema.html?ito=feeds-newsxml