I heard an analogy recently that I loved. It is about bugs on a windshield. Basically the gist of it was that if you have a windshield that is full dirt, grime, and dead bugs, and one more bug hits your windshield, you won't notice it. On the other hand, if your windshield is crystal clear, one new bug stands out.
How does this relate to your health?
As you know, I am all about eating REAL FOOD. If a person eats the Standard American Diet (SAD) full of pizza, cheeseburgers, fries and soda, it is like the dirty windshield. Making one more poor food choice doesn't change the way that you feel.
As I convince patients to shift the way they eat to a real food diet full of a variety of fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, and good quality meats, they are slowly cleaning their windshield. They often notice that suddenly, eating a candy bar or a few slices of pizza has a much greater impact on them than it used to. This is the windshield effect at work!
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Recently, I have had several questions from patients and people in my nutrition bootcamp program about GMOs.
What is a GMO?
GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism. This is an increasingly popular topic in the news. There is controversy over labeling of genetically modified products.
Many people believe that GMOs are the simple cross breeding of plant species that farmers have been doing for years. This is NOT the case. Current procedures for making genetic modifications are high tech and sophisticated techniques like gene-splicing, rather than the natural, low-tech methods of cross pollination.
Are GMOs safe for human consumption?
One of my main concerns with GMO foods is that there are few studies (especially anything long term) on how they impact humans. My philosophy is to keep our food simple, go back to the basics, and eat foods more like our great grandparents ate, rather than processed food invented within the last 75 years. Clearly genetically changing the makeup of vegetables (and in the pipeline they are working on creating GMO animals as well) does not fit in with this philosophy of back to the basics old and simple foods.
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Gluten is a protein that is found in wheat, rye, and barley. It helps to create the elasticity in dough. Because of this feature, it is added to many processed foods, including soups, candy, sauces, and even lunch meats.
Why Avoid Gluten?
There are two conditions in which people don't handle gluten well.
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If you are like me, you learned that the secret to losing weight was to burn more calories than you eat each day. It makes perfect sense on the surface, right? Dig deeper, and you will find out that there is much more to the story than burning more calories than you consume.
Why weight loss isn’t as easy as balancing calories in and out.
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I was talking to a patient this week, and we were on the topic of breakfast. Here’s how the conversation went...
Me:"I had a healthy breakfast this morning."
Patient: "What, like yogurt?"
Me: "No, actually I had bacon, eggs, and a lot of veggies."
Patient:"Oh bacon and eggs, real healthy (insert eye roll) … I wish I could get away with that."
So many people are so afraid of fat and cholesterol that it makes me sad! I’m trying to educate people one at a time, but maybe writing this blog will help to do it faster.
Bacon and eggs have gotten a bad reputation over the years. Ever since this picture appeared on the cover of Time Magazine on March 24, 1984, almost everyone in our country has been afraid of fat and cholesterol.
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I used to be a calorie counter. I figured if I ate less calories than I burned, I’d lose weight! When it didn’t work, I was confused.
Many seminars later, I now understand that our food is MUCH more than just a source of calories! Our bodies are not simple scales, balancing calories in and calories out. Rather, the body has many complex chemical systems that break down the food we eat and process each ingredient in a different way!
I took a walk down memory lane at the grocery store yesterday, taking photos of foods I used to buy because I thought they were healthy. Keep reading to see these photos, along with the reasons that I no longer buy them. Note that my concern is with the entire categories or types of food, and I am not trying to single out the particular brand pictured.
Food Marketing Is Tricky
An important point to keep in mind is that food marketers can be really tricky. The food marketers do a fantastic job of making foods look and sound healthy to the consumer. They throw in buzz words like “gluten free”, “low fat”, “heart healthy”, “all natural”, etc. to make us believe the foods are good for us. What do these words really mean? I’ll point out examples as I go!
Also realize that their bottom line is the main concern of companies that make these products. What helps their bottom line?
- Making the food as cheaply as possible.
- Making the food's shelf life as long as possible.
- Making the food addictive so we want to keep eating it and buying it. They test combinations of sugar, salt, fat, and chemicals that taste good, AND keep up coming back for more.
These corporate motivations are NOT in our best interest! I don’t want the cheapest ingredients in my body. I want my food to go bad! This sounds weird, but if it will last on a shelf forever without bacteria consuming it, it must be full of chemicals to keep the bacteria away. Why should I eat it? Finally, I don’t want to be addicted to my food. Everyone knows that it’s hard to eat just one chip or cookie, but you don’t notice the same addictive behavior when it comes to broccoli or an apple!
Let's get started with the foods. They are in no particular order. It's hard to read the labels. To see them better, click on the picture, and a bigger image will pop up in a new window on your computer.
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