Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Health Risks of Processed Salt, Sugar and Flour in Foods

Processed salt, sugar and flour are considered "innocent" ingredients that gradually deprive the body of vital nutrients. These are white refined flour; white refined sugar and white refined salt, popular ingredients are considered poisons of the body. They are normally present in canned, processed and prepared foods, or your household flour or your table salt. Processed foods and other food by-products are some of the advancement that comes from the works of industrialization.

We see flour, salt and sugar as white as the by-product after the industrial processing. It was bleached and broken down from its natural color. Pure whole flour and raw non-refined salt are normally gray or brown in color, while raw sugar is golden brown. Thus, when these ingredients are processed for long term storage and mass consumption, they undergo arduous, chemical transformation. Medical practitioners emphasized to be watchful of the amount of calories we consume; however, attention is shifting to the type of calories our body consumed. More specifically, the kind of salts, sugars and flours in the foods we eat.

You can start to be aware of the processed sugar, salt and flour as silent poisons of our body.

Try to read the labels of the items before you buy. Sugar is normally listed as Fructose, Corn Syrup, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Sucralose or Saccharine. Try to avoid processed white sugar instead use natural brown sugar. Also try natural sea salt and rock salt because it is a good source of mineral-rich sodium and is now in a finer grain as well. When a bread product lists just flour, or enriched flour, try to choose bread with whole-wheat flour or another whole grain instead. This will allow a drastic cut down health risk from an otherwise healthy style of eating. A diet with lots of sugars, salts and flour-based carbohydrates is not within the healthy diet. Try using natural and unprocessed sugar, salt and flour to avoid irreversible risk on your health.

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Monday, July 5, 2010

Processed Sugar, Salt and Flour - Are They Safe?

There are some foods, especially baked goods that contain high quantity of refined sugar, salt and flour. It is difficult to say which of these three ingredients considered the most damaging to our bodies or the most prevalent one. Several years ago, flour was stone-ground and lacked some of the original nutrients from the grain. A grain of wheat has a number of layers to it that contains necessary nutrients that are normally lost when being refined. This is the reason why several manufactures were mandated to add vitamins and nutrients after it was processed.

Nowadays, you will see on labels of flour-based products appears as "enriched" flour and list the nutrients that are being added. Currently, wheat is still stone-ground, however, grained-based food are being refined down to empty calories because of industrial age of mass produced goods.

Empty calories are the main concern in refined sugar, salt and flour against their natural counterparts. When grains, raw sugar cane and salt rock are processed down into a refined state, the calories are then void of any nutritional value.

When we eat empty calories, our body in reality has a difficulty digesting and breaking them down. They also burn much quicker than calories that are digested with ingredients complete with nutrients. This is the reason why sugary foods frequently give us high energy but lost quickly to cravings. For hundreds of years, we have lived on processed ingredients and the harm has been silent and the poison unfelt. Their effect is said to contribute to an increasing obesity problem and subsequent diseases.

We cannot afford to take risk on the harm caused by consuming refined sugar, salt and flour. However, we cannot escape from these ingredients because sugar, salt and flour are found in almost every food. Sugars and salts are naturally found in various foods like sugar in fruit or dairy and salt in meats and vegetables. The difference is that, naturally occurring salts and sugars have little quantity of healthy nutrients. Nature has actually provided most all we need to live well and much of the food we eat is the product of industrial convenience more than enriched nutrition.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010

Slow Death by Refined Sugar

Did you know that an average person in North America consumes one hundred and fifty lbs of refined sugar annually! This is substantial when one compares it to the 5bs per annum in the early 1900's.

Sugar, particularly in its refined condition, seems to have numerous damaging consequences within the human body. To start with, it happens to be exceedingly acid-forming. Which means that the ingestion will toss off your current pH stability causing your blood et cetera to become increasingly acidic. The greater acidity in your body the more significant the opportunity for disease to blossom.

Arthritis, asthma, headaches, psoriasis, cancer, stomach gas, intestinal gas, osteoporosis, heart disease, weight gain, PMS, candidiasis, tooth decay, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, cancer sores, cataracts, gallstones, kidney stones, and cystic fibrosis are all diseases and conditions that are negatively affected by the intake of sugar.

Eliminating sugars from your diet can easily improve these types of and several additional ailments substantially. Oftentimes, a fabulous sugarless diet plan will extinguish the actual suffering entirely whenever coupled with a highly sensible healthy diet.

Nonetheless you likely have found that removing sugars from your diet isn't always easy, and only with a great deal of support are you able to be certain of getting good results.

Refined sugar has become one of the worst poisons it is possible to pollute your system with. The intake of sugars suppresses the immune system practically right away, decreasing the body's biological defenses and rendering it much less competent to stop dangerous pathogens.

Sugar - What happens?

Whenever you ingest sugars, blood insulin will be circulated from your pancreas, triggering the cells to take up glucose from your bloodstream as well then store it within the liver and muscle. Sugar goes in conjunction with mood swings. Whenever blood sugars are abnormally increased, the sugar behaves just like a drug, so you come to be more elated.

As soon as blood insulin packages your sugar away in your cells, heightened feelings will certainly turn bitter and your brain alerts that more sugar is required in order to restore the high. This is often the moment you feel yourself reaching for those sweets. You will discover your moods are consistent 24 hours a day with the introduction of a sugar free diet and that your body will actually utilize fat as the supply of energy and not sugars. Did you know that as soon as you ingest something sugary, your body stops using the fat is has stored for energy? There could be loads of toxins are stashed away within your body fat and you really want to get rid of them for sure.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of all the negative things about sugar.

KayLynne is student at the University of Guelph. Following completion of a Bachelor of Science she plans to further her schooling and become a Naturopath. She is a firm believer in natural health and fully supports the Total Wellness Cleanse Program created by Yuri Elkaim, RHN.
Total Wellness Cleanse
The Toxic Side of Food

How Refined Sugar Destroys Our Health

The term 'sugar' is commonly used to refer to any of the three substances, namely sucrose, lactose and fructose in crystalline form. The common denominator is 'sweet flavor' and therefore, the basic function of any sugar is to impart sweetness.

Types of sugar commonly known are:

- Food sugar - mainly sucrose, derived primarily from sugarcane and beet root; used for domestic consumption
- Fruit sugar - fructose; high fructose corn syrup is another form
- Glucose

What is refined sugar?

Simply speaking, it's plain or raw or naked calories, without the minerals and vitamins that are normally present in sugar obtained from natural sources. That is, it's pure chemically. During the process of refining, raw sugar is made to pass through a series of steps that involve mechanical and chemical processing. Though foods as honey offer a definite advantage in pure form as compared to adulterated ones, we hardly get it in this case. Except for improved physical features, it offers no nutritive value.

But how is it harmful?

As mentioned, refined sugar is devoid of any elements (read minerals and vitamins) that accompany raw sugar. Since these elements are essential for sugar metabolism, our body is not able to process these sugars via the normal pathway. This leads to the formation of 'toxic metabolites' as pyruvic acid and abnormal five carbon (5C) sugars. These chemical substances interfere with respiration at the cellular level (pyruvic acid in the nervous system including the brain and 5C sugars in the red blood cells). As a consequence, cells fail to function normally and eventually start dying. This is the onset of 'degenerative disease'.

Secondly, the mechanisms of digestion, detoxification and elimination require vitamins and minerals, causing their depletion further.

True, these elements may be supplied from other foods. However, natural foods only contain these in amounts just sufficient to metabolize the carbohydrates present in that food itself.

Thirdly, generation of high amounts of acids in blood forces mobilization of minerals as sodium, potassium, magnesium from other body parts resulting in imbalances. Calcium mobilization results in weakening of bones and teeth.

Fourth, intake of refined sugar in amounts higher than required amounts of natural sugar may lead to ballooning of liver, followed by deposition of fatty acids in other areas, and finally affect the vital parts as brain, heart, kidneys, circulatory system etc. causing severe symptoms.

In addition, it kills bacteria that produce glutamic acid (essential for brain function) in our intestine. In view of the above harmful effects, refined sugar has many-a-times been referred to as "Sweet Poison".

I am a qualified medical practitioner and a public health specialist, also trained in public health management. I have worked in the past for a major government run hospital (Delhi), Escorts Heart Institute (New Delhi), a public sector company, as well as the World Health Organization.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gaurav_Gupt

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