Diet-Blog: Are We Too Obsessed With Processed Food?
Okay readers. Let’s hear it, “Yes!” Just watch television for a few minutes and you’re bound to be bombarded with numerous ads for sugary breakfast cereals, reduced fat mini-cupcakes, or low-carb crackers. The industrial revolution never ended, it just shifted focus. Diet-Blog ponders our obsession with processed junk food:
Go to any grocery store, and you'll see rows and rows of shelves filled with processed food. Many boast various health claims – less sugar, more fiber, low fat, heart healthy – you get the picture…Now Dr. Fuhrman also has a gripe with refined foods, centering on their lack of important dietary fiber and nutrients. He elaborates on this in Eat to Live:
… In my opinion, it's time to get back to basics and consume foods that will nourish our bodies. Then we might actually see a decline in obesity rates and our next generation might not die before their parents.
The reality is that healthy, nutritious foods are also very rich in fiber and that those foods associated with disease risk are generally fiber-deficient. Meat and dairy products do not contain any fiber, and foods made from refined grains (such as white bread, white rice, and pasta) have had their fiber removed. Clearly, we must substantially reduce our consumption of these fiber-deficient foods if we expect to lose weight and live a long, healthy life.For more on America’s obsession with industrialized food check out these recent posts:
Fiber intake from food is a good marker of disease risk. The amount of fiber consumed may better predict weight gain, insulin levels, and other cardiovascular risk factors than does the amount of total fat consumed, according to recent studies reported in the October 27, 1999, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.1 Again, data show that removing the fiber from food is extremely dangerous.
- Fad Diets: Low-Carb the New Low-Fat?
- NY Times: Michael Pollan on Nutritionism
- Eat like a Primate
- The Diet of a Paranthropus
