Posts for 'Processed food ' Category

At Last! The Truth About Processed Foods: Eat a good, balanced diet. This is vital to good health. Our food does not just provide the energy we need for daily living, it also provides the raw materials for healthy cell turnover and fuels our natural repair system.

Fruit and vegetables are nature's anti-aging remedy, protecting us from many of the diseases we associate with later life. I cannot stress how vital this is; being overweight will seriously reduce the chances of a healthy older age as there is a greater risk of heart disease, stroke, arthritis and diabetes.

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Ever wonder what’s really in that hamburger or what makes those Oreos so scrumptious? Chances are that there is a long list of processed ingredients that you can’t even pronounce. Everywhere in the world, processed foods are being sold and consumed by almost everyone. Little do they know about their hidden dangers. Recent studies suggest that processed foods may be more harmful than anyone ever expected. As these studies show, processed foods are linked to many common diseases as well as health issues. We need to change our eating habits and get the processed food industry to improve its standards.

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Studies have found that if you think your meal isn't filling, it won't be. Combined with the effects of Supersized restaurant portions, this can leave people disappointed when they try to limit themselves to healthy portion sizes.

But with a little creativity in presentation, a healthy portion can look and feel like a satisfying feast. One easy trick is to avoid serving small amounts of food on large plates. Instead, serve meals on smaller plates that make healthy portions appear larger.

Another way to trick your brain is to heap healthy whole grains and vegetables on the plate before adding any of the protein or main course. This gives the feeling of an oversized serving without all the fat and calories. You also can borrow a trick from restaurants. Stack and arrange foods in a way that gives them height and suggests greater volume.

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Everywhere you go you hear about processed foods and the difference between them and non processed foods. It seems that all this discussion is creating a great deal of confusion as to what processed food is and why you should avoid it as much as possible.

Processed foods are items which have been artificially altered through freezing, canning, dehydration, chilling, and any other way, mostly to make them have a longer shelf life so they can be stored, and sold for longer periods of time. More common uses of processed foods is in ready made meals which are sold to busy people to cook on the microwave.

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Which is better organic food vs ordinary? Food is food, right? An apple is an apple, regardless of how it was grown.

Or is it?

To understand the value in each option you need to understand how each was produced.Ordinary farming practices have moved away from the family farm. More and more of our food comes from 'farm factories', you could say. That is huge industrial type farming operations. This conventional farming allows chemical pesticides and herbicides. Then there are chemical fertilizers or even sewage sludge.

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When you’re walking down the supermarket aisle looking for a good dog or cat food, you have no choice but to rely on what advertisement looks best or what food is cheapest. Unfortunately, neither of these tactics will get your pet the proper nutrition because pets digestive systems were never meant to eat processed foods in the first place.

In fact, if owners knew exactly what went into making dog and cat chow, they’d never let their pets touch the stuff again. For example, the fat in food is often left over cooking grease that’s been sitting in 50 gallon drums in the sun. Vets say the processed food can lead to serious health problems, such as skin and digestive conditions.

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Modern diets consist of over-processed foods and lifeless foods which produce little enzyme activity and contain little or no fibrous material.  We are eating devitalized foods that are not fresh, with fewer nutrients.

All the natural fiber, such as grain peels, have been removed in the refining stages.  Because of this the diet is poor in fiber, digestion is slow and the  waste materials stay in the body longer.  This sets up the perfect condition for toxic materials to form.   Also, processed foods can contain huge amounts of chemicals and toxins which were added in the processing. We are eating lots of chemicals like coloring agents, artificial flavors and preservatives that can make the food appear more attractive and taste fresher. Even non-processed foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, whole grains and meats often contain chemical residues from pesticides, herbicides, hormones and other products used to make them grow.  All of these substances reduce the amount of Vitamin E available for biochemical and physiological processes.

During one experiment in the early 1970s people were served an oddly tinted meal of steak and french fries that appeared normal beneath colored lights. Everyone thought the meal tasted fine until the lighting was changed. Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill.

Studies have found that the color of a food can greatly affect how its taste is perceived. Brightly colored foods frequently seem to taste better than bland-looking foods, even when the flavor compounds are identical. Foods that somehow look off-color often seem to have off tastes.

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I do a lot of reading on subjects related to health and fitness, and the results of a recent compilation of nearly 200 studies involving millions of people caught my eye. Over the years the debate has gone back and forth over which foods are healthy for the heart and which ones aren’t.

The results of this recent study appear to leave us with a short list of proven heart-healthy foods and some “question marks” about popular, frequently consumed food items. Those foods that appear to be well established as being good for the heart include vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes, whole-grain products, yogurt, fish and the monounsaturated fatty acids found in olive oil.

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Those who wish to avoid additives in their food may choose to shop and eat organic foods only. There are many issues for choosing to 'go organic' and additives found in processed food is just one of them.Another of these reasons may be climate change.

Many people are leaving the car at home and walking to the shop instead, and that's great, but are we also thinking about the effect of what we are buying on.

The environment around us? Farming is another major link to the amount of emission such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane that is being released into the atmosphere. Organic farms have been found to use 50% less energy than non-organic farms.

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