3 so-called healthy foods you should STOP eating (if you want a leaner, more healthy body)

I am paraphrasing an article by Mike Geary, Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Specialist and Author of the best-seller: The Truth About Six Pack Abs

Currently, the average adult eating a typical modern western diet in countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, etc consumes approximately 67% of their total caloric intake from only 3 foods — CORN, SOY, AND WHEAT (and their derivatives). What would be considered a reasonably healthy amount of corn, soy, and wheat in the human diet?  Based on thousands of years of human history, and what the natural diet of our ancestors consisted of (indicating what our digestive systems are still programmed to process today), this would probably be in the range of about 1% to 5% MAX of our total calories from corn, soy, and wheat.

So, you can see why we have massive problems in our health, and our weight! It’s not a surprise that we have much intolerance and so many allergies–specifically to soy and wheat (gluten intolerance). The human digestive system was simply never meant to consume these substances in such MASSIVE quantities.

Keep in mind that these ridiculously high levels of corn, soy, and wheat in our modern human diet is a relatively new phenomenon that originated from the economics of the multi-billion dollar corn, soy, and wheat industries. It really has been all about the money… NOT about our health!

Derivatives of corn, soy, and wheat refer to food additives such as:

• high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
• corn oil
• soybean oil (hydrogenated or plain refined)
• soy protein
• refined wheat flour
• hundreds of other food additives such as maltodextrin, corn or wheat starch, soy lecithin, mono and diglycerides, etc.

It gets even worse!
Because of the economics involved (specifically with cheap corn and soy) we are also feeding most of our farm animals corn and soy now too…again amplifying the amount of corn and soy that passes through the food chain and (from a biochemical standpoint) ends up in our bodies. Probably the two worst examples of this blatant mismanagement of our food supply is how our factory farmed chickens and cows are fed. Cows’ digestive systems are only meant to eat grass and other forage, so corn and soy makes the cows sick (yikes: E-coli), alters the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of the fats to unhealthy levels, and also diminishes the healthy CLA fats that would occur naturally in grass-fed beef.  All of these problems go away if our cows are fed grass!

Our chickens are also fed a diet of mostly corn and soy and crowded in tight pens in horrendous conditions… when the fact is that a chicken was meant to roam around the outdoors eating a mixture of greens, insects, worms, seeds, etc.  When chickens are kept inside in tight quarters and fed only grains, it leads to an unhealthy meat for you to eat, and less healthy eggs compared to free-roaming chickens allowed to eat an outdoors diet.

So how do you avoid all of this and take control of your weight and your health?
1. Don’t purchase processed foods! Instead, use 1-ingredient foods such as fruits, veggies, beans, nuts, seeds, and meats from grass-fed or free roaming animals that are raised correctly. (There are many recipe books to help you prepare meals this way. One such book is Living SuperFood Recipes.) 

2. Get most of your carbs from fruits and veggies instead of grains.

3.  Avoid store bought salad dressings as they almost always contain soybean oil and HFCS.

4. Make sure that your tomato sauces don’t have HFCS and soybean oils… look for sauces made with olive oil instead. 

5. Eat snacks like veggies sticks with guacamole and hummus.