Some health foods are killing us.
Most people are familiar with macro nutrients; these are the broad groups called protein, fats and carbohydrates. None of these groups are bad. You need all of them to live.
I read a study the other day that said much of people’s knowledge on fitness topics comes from media and advertising. Things like infomercials are guiding our decisions on eating and exercise! We are consuming more ‘low fat’ products than ever. So why are we still getting fatter? Low cholesterol is another line, some people now think this is a deadly poison. Cholesterol is essential in our bodies and helps repair our cells.
Just think for a minute; you have a business trying to sell a new food in a supermarket. The shelves are bulging with them already so how do you get anybody to look at your product? One angle is make it sound healthier than the competition.
It’s almost funny to see the ads for a processed, sugar filled, nutrient devoid bar saying they’re so much healthier than that other processed, sugar filled bar because it has ‘real strawberry’ powdered concentrate.
Much better to consume healthy, proper, unprocessed food. This will get you the macro nutrients and just as importantly, the micro nutrients. These are all the vitamins and minerals that actually provide nutrition to your body. Without them the millions of processes your body constantly needs to perform can’t happen.
Imagine planting two similar trees; one in a pot full of sand that gets a drip of water now and then. It’s alive but only just. The other is planted in dark, composted, nutrient-rich, well drained soil and given fresh water every day. How do you think they would compare in a year’s time? Which one do you feel more like most often?
And just taking a vitamin tablet isn’t enough. Take an apple, it has thousands of compounds, from quercetin, a powerful antioxidant that reduces cardiovascular risk, to flavonoids and phytochemicals that fight cancer. We’re not even sure what half these things do yet.
But our body has evolved eating them for thousands of years and it knows what to do with each.
