The 3 Foods You Should Never Eat
“Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” – Michael Pollan
One of the most common questions I am asked as a Holistic Nutrition Coach is, “If there are three foods I should avoid, what would those be?” And I get it. Many of us (myself included) are barely keeping our heads above the daily currents of our careers, relationships, and family responsibilities to worry about the latest story trending: “Why Your Hummus is Trying to Kill You”.
It doesn’t help that each new study published seems to contradict the one before it (I could get into the dynamics between peer-reviewed and industry-funded studies and the profitability of doubt, but that’s a subject for another blog). With so much confusing and conflicting information out there, it’s easy to just throw up our hands and say, “You never know what’s healthy anymore, so you might as well eat whatever you want!”
But let me ask you this: If $10 mysteriously disappeared from your wallet, would you just shrug, say, “You never know where your money is going anymore”, and empty your entire bank account?
We may not have all the answers, but we can do our best. And if our best is just choosing three things to not put into our bodies – three things we are certain will impair our ability to thrive – that’s three tools with which we are arming ourselves to better manage the stresses of day-to-day life.
These three foods may vary depending on your individual goals, but for the purposes of overall health, vitality and longevity, here is my no-fly list:
1) Processed Meat
The link between processed meat consumption and cancer is no longer debatable. In a 2007 report by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, processed meat was stated as a convincing cause of cancers of the colon and rectum, and possible esophagus and lung. This causal link has been shown and replicated in peer-reviewed study after peer-reviewed study.
The World Health Organization has listed processed meat as Group 1 carcinogenic to humans, the same category as tobacco cigarettes and asbestos. According to the most recent estimates by the Global Burden of Disease Project, about 34,000 cancer deaths per year worldwide are attributed to diets high in processed meat.
If you’re wondering whether a certain meat is “processed”, a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself whether this particular food is recognizable as coming from an animal. If not, chances are it’s been processed. Processed meat refers to any animal product that has been salted, cured, fermented, smoked, or altered in any way for the purpose of enhancing flavour or preservation. Examples include hot dogs, deli/lunch meats, sausages, corned beef, jerky, canned meat, and yes, sadly…bacon.
2) Hydrogenated Oil / Trans Fats
When it comes to the world’s leading cause of death, heart disease, you’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger contributor than hydrogenated oils. More a man-made chemical than a food, these artificial trans fats are formed when food manufacturers add hydrogen to liquid oil, making it solid at room temperature and thus extending its shelf-life. During the hydrogenation process, oil is heated to 500-1000 degrees Celsius, destroying all of its healthy, natural enzymes and leaving nothing of nutritive value.
While there are many benefits to including healthy fats in your diet, industrial trans fats are the bottom of the barrel when it comes to dietary fat. Not only do they lower HDL (good cholesterol) and raise LDL (bad cholesterol), they increase the risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes and many other chronic, degenerative conditions. Research has shown that trans fats can be harmful even in very small amounts: for every 2% of calories from trans fats consumed daily, the risk of heart disease increases by 23%. In 2013, the FDA dropped trans fats from its Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS) list.
Primarily found in processed foods like chips, crackers, shortening, margarine, and microwave popcorn, trans fats are accountable for up to 50,000 premature deaths from heart attack each year. If you see terms like “hydrogenated oil”, “partially hydrogenated oil”, or “fractionated oil” on a food label, it’s best to avoid these products.
3) Artificial Food Additives
It would seem like common sense that we should avoid ingesting non-food substances. And yet, it is the unfortunate state of the world we live in, with its hyper-industrialized food manufacturing (not to mention Tide-pod fetishes), that we need to be reminded of the difference between edible food and chemicals. Food additives, such as preservatives, dyes and colourings, emulsifiers, stabilizers, flavour enhancers, and countless other synthetic agents are generally added to foods in very small amounts, but none-the-less have been implicated in a variety of adverse reactions.
MSG (Monosodium Glutamate), a flavour enhancer found in an overwhelming number of processed foods, is known to cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, back and neck pain, numbness, and heart palpitations. MSG is an excitotoxin, which means it overexcites cells in the body to a damaging extent, causing many of them to die. With prolonged exposure, this can lead to a range of neurological diseases. When reading food labels, beware of terms like “glutamic acid”, “yeast extract”, anything “hydrolyzed”, “hydrolyzed protein”, “calcium caseinate”, “sodium caseinate”, “yeast food”, “yeast nutrient”, “autolyzed yeast”, “textured protein”, “soy protein”, “soy protein concentrate” or “soy protein isolate”, as all of these are pseudonyms for MSG.
Artificial sweeteners may seem like a smart choice for calorie-counters, but research has shown that it’s actually one of the worst culprits when it comes to metabolic imbalances. Aspartame, saccharin and sucralose are all widely-used artificial sweeteners that can exert a bigger load on your metabolic system than table sugar. Many artificial sweeteners have been known to cause mood swings, joint and muscle aches, migraines, ADHD, and cardiac palpitations. They also cause hormonal disturbances which prompt many people to eat more and gain weight.
Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) are affectionately referred to as “The 3-Letter Cancer Causers”. These preservatives have been found to have carcinogenic properties by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. BHA has been termed “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and yet the FDA still permits its use in many processed foods, most commonly cereals, potato chips, chewing gum, and snack mixes. Other studies have linked it to liver and kidney damage, birth defects, and behavioral issues. It’s also been shown to act as a potent endocrine disruptor, interfering with healthy hormone production.
I don’t mean to overwhelm you with this information, or to contribute to the rampant fear-mongering that undeniably takes place in the health and fitness industry. But we would do well to remember that most of the chemical and synthetic substances that we consume on a daily basis were not around prior to the second half of the twentieth century. As such, we have no way of knowing the long-term health implications of ingesting these non-foods, and we have ample evidence to believe they do more harm than good. The reality is that the majority of these substances are introduced into the food supply without adequate safety testing, and are only banned once conclusive evidence has deemed them unsafe. This innocent-until-proven-guilty approach is simply unacceptable when it comes to public health.
Knowing what to eat does not have to be complicated or time-consuming. Personally, I subscribe to the Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) school of eating: if you’re great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize it as food, don’t eat it. When reading food labels, avoid products with ingredient lists that are long and/or unpronounceable. Even better, avoid products with any ingredient list at all!
Remember, real foods have only one ingredient. As Michael Pollan would say, eat real food. Not too much. Mostly plants. And you’ll be just fine.