Eat Healthier: Healthy Eating Made Easy

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn

Eat Healthier: Our obesity epidemic is getting worse. Recent surveys in the United States show that two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese. This bodily swelling isn’t only affecting adults–childhood obesity is rising almost as fast.

What was once called ‘adult-onset diabetes,’ a chronic illness that often develops along with obesity, is now seen more and more frequently in our kids. Most of us have a general understanding of what’s causing this epidemic–few of us exercise enough and our diets aren’t as strict as they should be.

But in our defense, the official advice regarding how we should eat is often confusing and seems to be constantly changing: “Avoid saturated fats! Eat fat-free foods! No wait, eat more good fats! Take a daily vitamin! Actually, the benefits of daily vitamins don’t hold up to study!”

Eat Healthier by Knowing What to Eat

How are we supposed to know what’s best for us? Carbohydrates seem to be the current dietary whipping-boy. Since the whole Atkins diet craze started, no one eats bread or pasta anymore without almost choking on guilt.

But all carbs are not created equal. In order to be healthier by eating more sensibly, it’s fair to divide carbohydrates into two major categories: good carbs (‘complex carbohydrates’) and bad carbs (known as ‘refined,’ or ‘simple carbohydrates).

To make the distinction, a person needs to be better educated about how food is processed and how it is sold. Food manufacturers don’t expect the average consumer to put this much work into feeding themselves, so they’re content to keep pushing whatever is cheapest and tastiest while we watch our waistlines continue to expand.

Where to Find Refined Carbohydrates in Foods

pasta

Of course, most of us have heard we need to be avoiding bad carbs, especially in their most sinful form: white processed sugar. Unfortunately though, when we think of sugar, we too often think of less frequent indulgences: donuts, candy, and soda pop.

But sugar is sneaky and it has a much more common form that is sneaking up on us all the time: refined carbohydrates. Refined carbs are constantly sneaking into our diets with different names like ‘white flour,’ ‘bleached flour,’ and ‘enriched flour.’ These are the most common ingredients in most commercially available bread and pasta.

Types of Flours

Flour

These different types of flour are all adulterated forms of flour that food manufacturers make a bigger profit on. Real, natural whole wheat flour is a complex carbohydrate that has a lot going for it. In its natural form, wheat does contain sugar, but it is sugar naturally balanced out by the vitamins, minerals, and fiber that are also contained in the wheat.

Unfortunately for food manufacturers, whole wheat flour spoils more quickly, which can make the manufacturing and transporting of food costly and complicated.

To increase their profit margins, these companies refine the flour by stripping off the outer layers of the wheat–the bran and endosperm–thereby losing the vitamins and minerals and leaving primarily the sugary starch. Hence, white flour.

Not Healthy Food

This sugary powder is not a nutritious food and it spoils far slower, making it a lower-cost, less complicated situation for food companies. White flour does not exist in nature, it’s purely a product of modern food engineering. Also, because our bodies love the quick easy calories, we eat lots of it. Food manufacturers give us more and more and we keep buying it. It’s a win-win for them but a lose-lose for us.

We enjoy eating refined carbs and we love the quick energy they give us, but refined carbs also make us more fat with frequent sugar-crash headaches while also letting us develop chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart failure. Naturally healthy foods don’t do this to us, but refined carbohydrates are not healthy food.

We really need to be aware of this. In fact, famous food author Michael Pollan encourages us to stop thinking of refined foods like white flour as ‘food’ and instead call them ‘food-like synthetic substances.’

How to Find Disguise Refined Foods

Food manufacturers are nervous about us becoming mad that they’re trading our health for their profit, so they’ve come up with all kinds of tricks for disguising their refined foods. The crazy amount of different bread labels are a testament to their sneakiness.

‘Multigrain,’ ‘cracked wheat,’ even ‘made with whole wheat’ all sound healthy enough, but they’re all terms meant to disguise bread and pasta made primarily with refined flour–foods that will give you a pleasant sugar rush, but leave out the all-important fiber and vitamins that would keep you healthier and feeling fuller longer.

Eat Healthier by reading the Food Label

So how do you protect yourself? How do we beat these greedy food companies at their own game? Read the whole label, not just the front. Flip that loaf of bread over and read the back of the label. Right under the box of nutrition facts will be a list of ingredients.

The first–the very first!–ingredient needs to be ‘whole wheat’ or ‘whole wheat flour.’ If ‘whole wheat’ comes second or third, or especially if it’s not even listed, put that bread back on the shelf and keep shopping. Food manufacturers are counting on us to not pay attention.

They want us to keep buying convenient sugary bad carbs that are cheaper to put on store shelves. These foods might taste great, but they’re making us tired, irritable, and overweight.

In Closing

Be smart, read labels, get back to healthier and more natural food. Good carbs might cost a bit more than their sugary relatives, but they’ll never let you down. They’ll help you manage your weight by giving you longer-lasting energy and keeping you fuller longer.

Complex carbohydrates will also help you avoid chronic disease, keeping you out of the doctor’s office and free to live the healthy life you really want for yourself. Choose good carbs, be thinner, feel healthier, and live better.

Most Popular

Get The Latest Updates

Subscribe To Our Weekly Newsletter

No spam, notifications only about new products, updates.

Categories

On Key

Related Posts

Cute Girly College Ruled Composition Notebooks

Share: In a world dominated by digital tools and apps, the humble college-ruled composition notebook remains a steadfast ally in the quest for productivity. This timeless tool offers unparalleled benefits,