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what you eat is important to your health
Food is important stuff. Most cultures build their lives around it. Recent research in genetics indicates that cultures live and die based on what they eat, both in times of abundance and in times of scarcity. Most Americans have adopted a diet of suicide coupled with a fast lifestyle that reinforces a continual neglect over the years. Each person, with their own hands can prepare either health or sickness for themselves and for their families.
Refined and processed foods should be avoided. Why? Simply put, you did not prepare them. These foods are assembled with fillers and chemicals, with most ingredients sold out to the lowest bidder and with profit strictly in mind. Restaurants often have the same mindset.
For generations, Americans have been told about recommended dietary intake or foods that they "should eat." More often, recommended dietary intake has been influenced by politics and food lobbyists. After forty years of these recommendations, the United States has reaped a harvest of obesity and disease. Instead of seeking intelligent health resources, the American people have been trained to listen to doctors and government authorities steeped in their own internal politics and influences that aren't centered on the well being of the population. Instead, your dietary recommendations are based on money, protective practices and food subsidies. This is not a legacy to be proud of.
Government paid nutrition consultants have placed baked goods made with white flour: those nice tasting crackers, sweets and other low-nutrient foods that are laden with sugars, fats and processed chemicals along with grains at the bottom of the pyramid to be eaten in abundance. (look at your food pyramid) Guidelines have been neutralized by lobbyists and their fellows. Food authorities have given wink to the creativity of the processed-food industry, which has invaded virtually the entire scope of American life.
The huge amount of grain and other sugar-converting processed foods consumed in America have continued to add to the obesity epidemic. What is worse, epigenetics plays a role from generation to generation in amplifying obesity. Reversing the effect from generation to generation is going to take a very aggressive effort, but not using the same approach most of science and food engineers are using today.
The typical processed diet in America and other modern cultures is compounded by the corporate cubicle lifestyle. Because of all the inactivity and sitting around, the modern world faces a leptin crisis-fat storage issue rather than a blood sugar epidemic. Recommendations to eat more fructose simply add fuel to the fire. Fructose raises insulin, triglycerides and fails to stimulate a rise in leptin, so your satiety signals are suppressed. That means you eat more and gain more weight, which feeds the problem.
Ultimately, the politics of the food industry has come to dictate the government’s food advice. This has shaped the nutritional education of kids and much of the public, even though little real advice is given. Education has become a marketing campaign to fuel growth in the consumption of certain foods or food commodities. It's a lesson in false economy that promotes spending on certain foods over real health and nutrition.
There are few recommendations about transfats, chemicals like xenoestrogens or advice about the wisdom of continually adding sugar and sugar by-products to everything in the American diet. Instead, your diet is quietly filled with these toxins, by hook or by crook. Much of the cooking oil in the last three decades has been toxic, as America's dietary mania consumed more fried food than ever before. The food industry has enjoyed the benefits of fast food, fast living and blind ignorance. The food industry has reacted to consumer demands for better foods by fortifying processed food, which has resulted in potentially hazardous blending by ignorant or deceived consumers.
A majority of Americans have poor-quality diets based on backwards recommendations that benefit industry. Simply eating more hasn't been the answer for better health. The volume of diet-related chronic diseases, ranging from cancer, diabetes and heart disease to digestive diseases and arthritis, have ballooned as politicians and consumers alike complain about rising health costs. The latest research indicates that commercial food ingredients, imbalanced diets, excessive calories and too few fresh and nutritious fruit, vegetables, raw nuts and seeds are largely responsible for the health crisis in America. The nation cooks everything to death except for meat (just watch the chefs on TV) and wonders why they are sick and diseased. You can't eat your way to health with jelly donuts, sweet cakes and fast food.
