Here in the age of technology and information, we have more knowledge and advancements than ever before in history. Sixty years ago, who would have ever thought you could send an instant message through a phone, let alone take a picture with it? Sixty years ago, who would have thought that we would be able to send a man to the moon, but fail in the war against obesity and cancer?
Isn’t it strangely shocking that America is so far along in everything but health and fitness? While the fitness industry tells us to count calories and exercise to lose fat, we are growing fatter and fatter as a nation.
Running parallel to the fitness industry are fast food chains, doing their best to stay on top of the “healthy eating” trend. It appears that the fast food industry can accommodate anyone’s dietary needs with “fat free,” “low calorie,” and “low carb” menu items.
Today, fast food is considered a normal eating adventure among the average person. People no longer go out to eat only on special occasions or on weekends; They are eating out all the time. But is it the calories from fast food that are so destructive to your body and waistline, or is the problem deeper?
fast food and obesity
Fast food is simply tasty, ready-made meals packed to go. Fast food has been around since the early 1900s, but its popularity surged and grew in the 1940s with the birth of good ole’ Mickey D’s; Fast food at a cheap price. Within a few years, similar fast-food operations popped up everywhere in the blink of an eye.
With the compelling rise of fast food restaurants since the 1940s, interestingly enough, the rise of obesity and cancer also began during that same period. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math and link fast food to the obesity and cancer crisis.
Fast food and its nutritional value
To say that fast food has “nutritional value” is an oxymoron. There is absolutely nothing nutritional in fast food. Fast food simply feeds the immediate hunger and/or craving. Fast food doesn’t fuel your body in the form of lasting usable energy or building materials, the very essence from which your body thrives for life itself.
Fast food is highly processed with a wide range of additives. The concept of fast food is obviously food that is ready to eat and served quickly. To ensure the low cost of fast food to the consumer, fast food products are made with highly processed ingredients to give them shelf life, maintain consistency, and enhance flavor. Fast food is altered from its original healthy form that was intended to nourish the body, to a denatured form that lacks any nutritional value.
According to Diana Schwarzbein, MD, “The FDA Total Diet Study found that fast food hamburgers, across the board, contained 113 different pesticide residues.” So my question is why does the FDA want to regulate the sale of vitamins, minerals and herbs that are actually beneficial to the body when there is a link between fast food, cancer and obesity on our hands?
Why fast food is fattening and dangerous
Wake up people. It’s not the calories in fast food that damage your health and waistline, it’s the chemical additives like aspartame and MSG (monosodium glutamate). These chemical additives are approved by the FDA and studies show that they lead to weight problems and disease.
Synthetic chemicals added to processed foods, including fast food, damage cells in your body. Your body is made up of nutrients found in the plants and animals you eat. Man-made foods laden with pesticides, as well as aspartame, margarine, and other man-made chemicals do not nourish your body. If your body can’t use what you put into it, it will gain fat and decrease your health.
Since we can’t visually see what’s really going on at the molecular level when we eat processed foods, we write them off and trust the FDA to do our thinking for us. After all, if it’s FDA-approved, it MUST be okay to eat, right? No problem.
The nutrients in the food we eat allow us to burn fat and stay healthy. Your body cannot process synthetic chemicals. If a food cannot be processed, it will end up lodged in areas of your body, primarily fatty areas and tissues, creating an acidic pH.
A simple fast food chicken breast can contain everything from modified cornstarch to hydrolyzed corn gluten. Hello? Corn included chicken? A fast food chicken nugget is almost 60% corn, and corn is what farmers use to fatten cattle.
Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma says it perfectly: “How do we get to a point where we need an investigative journalist to tell us where our food comes from?”
A good picture that Dr. Mark A. Gustafson came up with is that it takes fifty-one days to digest fast-food chicken nuggets or French fries. FIFTY-ONE DAYS! Sound healthy? I could care less about the calorie, fat, or carb content. That’s not the problem, people. The problem with fast food is that it lacks nutrients and is loaded with chemicals that the body doesn’t recognize.
What is even more devastating is the book The Fast Food Diet written by Stephan Sinatra, MD This is a sad state of affairs when a doctor promotes the consumption of chemically altered foods with addictive chemicals and damaged fats that scar the walls of the arteries and contribute to total metabolic damage.
Eat well and avoid hidden dangers
Of course, calories count up to a certain point, but what counts more is the quality of the calorie. If you want to lose fat, then you have to change your eating habits. This doesn’t mean opting for Healthy Choice® and Smart One’s® frozen dinners because they look healthy. Food manufacturers use deceptive branding tactics to create an illusion that makes people buy their product.
To lose fat and keep it off, you need to choose foods in their natural state, like fresh organic cuts of meat, fresh organic fruits and vegetables, essential fats, and plenty of filtered water. It is vital that you go back to basics.
Make eating fresh, organic foods a major part of your diet. If you do that, you’ll never have to count calories again. The quality of the food exceeds the quantity every time.
References: Schwarbein, Diana MD The Schwarzbein Principle. 1999. 287 Pollan, Michael. The omnivore’s dilemma. 2006. 1