ToP 5 BaD FoOdS/DaNgErOuS

The Five Top Contenders in The BAD FOR YOU FOODS Category

The Five Top Contenders in the BAD FOR YOU FOODS category.

It's hard to believe those foods that taste sooo good can actually be bad for you. We often hear it said that there are no bad foods, only foods you should eat in moderation.

The following foods are "bad foods". Not just eat in moderation, but actually avoid whenever possible; hard as that may be. They have no nutritional value and provide the body with a healthy dose of toxins. Any food that doesn't provide nutritional content is a toxin to the human body as well.

Here are the 5 worst foods ...

1. Doughnuts

Doughnuts are fried, usually in trans fats; they are full of sugar and refined white flour. Store-bought doughnuts are made up of over 35 percent trans fat.

An average doughnut will provide you with about 200 to 300 calories. This is mostly from sugar, all the while providing very little nutritional content.

Starting your day off with this American idea of a breakfast food is worse than no breakfast at all. Not only will it quickly raise your blood sugar level, it will also drop quickly and will leave you hungry again much sooner than a bowl of oatmeal.

2. Soda

One can of soda has about 10 teaspoons of sugar (3.33 Tablespoons, nearly 1/4 cup), 150 calories, 30 to 55 mg of caffeine, not to mention the large amount of artificial food colors and sulphites. Diet soft drinks are no better, as they are filled with harmful artificial sweeteners like aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet, and Canderel). Aspartame is listed as an excitotoxin. This ingredient alone inflicts damage on brain and nerve cells by literally exiting the brain cell to death.

Drinking soda has been linked to osteoporosis, obesity, tooth decay and heart disease. Despite how awful it is to our health, the average American drinks an estimated 56 gallons of soft drinks each year (if my math is right, that is over 597 cans). Sadly, soft drink consumption among children has almost doubled in the United States over the last decade, due in part to our schools trading the health and future of our students for money. Soft drink companies make attractive deals with our schools to sell their products. School hallways are often lined with soda-filled vending machines. The large soft drink companies make deals with schools, offering commission on the sales and/or a large lump-sum payments to have this front row seat at our student’s money, future, and health. With soft drink vending machines at a school, a student’s soft drink consumption can increase by as much as 50 cans per year.

3. French Fries (and nearly all commercially fried foods)

Potatoes are bad enough when consumed in their raw state, due to how their simple sugars rapidly converted to glucose that raises insulin levels and can devastate your health. But when they are cooked in a trans fat at high temperatures, it gets even worse!

Anything that is fried, even vegetables, has the issues of trans fat absorption and produce the potent cancer-causing substance acrylamide.

Acrylamide is a carcinogen that is produced when foods are browned, (boiling and steaming are ok) during baking, frying or deep-frying. Over-cooked foods produce a large amounts of acrylamide. Acrylamides can also be created during microwaving.

When foods are fried in vegetable oils like canola, soybean, safflower, corn, and other seed and nut oils these become particularly problematic. These polyunsaturated fats easily become rancid when exposed to oxygen and produce large amounts of damaging free radicals in the body. They are also very susceptible to heat-induced damage from cooking. What is not commonly known is that these oils can actually cause aging, clotting, inflammation, cancer and weight gain. Not to mention that many of these oil are toxic to the body, having to be treated before we can consume them. Due to heavy lobbying and marketing campaigns to convince the public that the more healthy fats (such as the tropicals, like palm and coconut) are "bad for you" these oils have been promoted as the healthy choice in oil.

I have read a suggestion that it may be possible to create a "healthy french fry" by cooking it in a healthy fat like virgin coconut oil. Due to its high saturated fat content, coconut oil is extremely stable and is not damaged by the high temperatures of cooking.

4. Chips

This includes all those bagged crispy, salty fried snacks found in the snack food aisle in most grocery stores. Potato chips, corn chips, tortilla chips, puffy cheesy thing, and more, are fried in, so high in trans fats. Thankfully, due to the bad press trans fats have been getting lately many of the producers for these snacks are moving away from frying in these "bad fats". Unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that they have to fry these at high temperatures, potentially leading to the formation of acrylamide, the carcinogenic by product from browning foods, discussed briefly above.

The potatoes and corn used in these products are frequently GE (Genetically Engineered)/GMO (Genetically modified organism). The European market has banned the use and importation of GE/GMO foods due to the dangers they create. Not only is there a vast environmental danger to growing these foods, they also will be changing the face of farming. No longer will the little guy or the father in a third world country, be able to feed a family, they will be at the mercy of the seed producers to purchase the seed and needed chemicals to grow these GE/GMO foods. Not only does this force the small farmer (non agra-business farm) out of the market it will also take away the right to grow our own food. GE/GMO’s are also unsafe for the human body.

Depending on what and how the food produce was genetically modified it can result in animal diseases crossing over to humans, allergies and other new kinds of diseases. Just one GE/GMO Corn product has an Ampicillin resistance gene, inserted into the corn. There is already widespread antibiotic resistance, and Ampicillin is used in human health care. This isn't even the tip of the ice berg on the GE /GMO issue.

5. Fried Non-Fish Seafood

Fried shrimp, clams, oysters, lobsters, calamari, etc., arrive on your plate with the quadruple whammy of trans fat, acrylamide, mercury and the possibility of parasites, bacteria and/or viruses, even resistant strains. Many of these may not be killed with the high heat of frying.

Sadly, our oceans are heavily contaminated with toxic mercury and the aquatic "critters" that live and eat in the oceans are obviously also loaded with mercury, which we ingest when we eat seafood.

Mercury in the body can damage the developing neurological systems of fetuses and children, and cause memory loss, tremors, anxiety and other health problems in adults. In addition mercury can increase their risk of myocardial infarction and cardiovascular death according to recent studies as published in the American Heart Association journal, Circulation, and recent reports in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Not to "dis" non fish sea life, but they are known as the scavengers of the sea and dine on things that are harmful to the body. They are eating dead and decaying sea life, parasites and diseases included.