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I overheard two women chatting walking near market square in Portsmouth New Hampshire recently. Two young families walked by and I was fairly near them sipping my coffee as we entered a crosswalk.
One said to the other, “Back in my day, in the 60s through 70’s, People seemed a lot slimmer. Now everyone it seems busting out of their clothes and moving slower.
As I’ve lost a fair amount of weight over the last few years I’ve become like an old smoker.
I never realized when I was larger how large the population has become. Not that there’s a direct correlation but recently I heard near 33 percent of the population in the United States is either diabetic or pre-diabetic.
The ladies had a point. As I gazed across the stream of people, I realized many people were obese. Some over overweight. Few were slim. A startling number of children I’ve noticed recently are overweight This is consistent with the numbers you’ll find online about obesity and weight in America.
The new slim of today is carrying a few extra pounds. It doesn’t make sense that so many people struggle with weight problems. No one wants to be overweight.
So why don’t they just stop eating so much? You might have just thought, “I did stop eating so much! It’s not working!”
I’m here to tell you today that eating too much isn’t the real problem. Overeating does cause weight gain, but the issue in America today is that we don’t know what we’re eating in our food.
We’re ingesting a toxin that creates a vicious weight-gain cycle.
If you’re dieting and exercising and wondering why you can’t lose weight, why you’re sick and exhausted, you might be surprised to learn it’s the type of sugar in most of the food we eat.
Sugar….Sugar consumption in general is a problem. We’re not made to process so much sugar. It’s causing inflammation that leads to disease, throwing off hormones and making us tired, and leaving us craving more.
Excess sugar leads to heart disease, the number one killer in America. Most Americans are aware of this problem, and yet so few actually change their diet to a low sugar diet.
We’re seeing an epidemic of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune diseases related to inflammation, and many other modern day health issues.
We know this is diet related. Why aren’t we doing more?
High fructose corn syrup is a huge problem. Even if that were cut and we used sugar in products again, we would be eating too much. The problem is that sugar and corn syrup in everything, and very hard to avoid. Even when we do change our diet and buy “healthy” foods, we don’t feel better.
Let’s say this is what you eat in day:
Yogurt for breakfast
A mocha on the way to work
Two granola bars before lunch
A sandwich for lunch along with sweet tea from a bottle
An afternoon latte (you think it’s healthier than a mocha)
A small pack of fruit cocktail
Steak, potatoes, and broccoli for dinner with wine
I’ll admit that this doesn’t sound that unhealthy to me. Some of it sounds actually good for your health. Let’s go through it more closely.
A plain yogurt with fresh fruit would be healthy, although dairy also causes problems for our health. The store bought yogurt with the fruit in it has a mind-blowing amount of sugar. It feels like a healthy treat, but it has sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup.
The mocha… Well, we’ll talk about coffee drinks in a bit. The flavorings are full of corn syrup.
You’re also getting high fat dairy, or possibly soy milk which causes hormones problems similar to a thyroid issue.
The granola bars are health food, right? Probably not. Very few are low sugar. Most are held together with corn syrup.
The bread in the sandwich has high fructose corn syrup, and so does the dressing.
That sweet tea? It might have sugar, which would be better, but bottled sweet tea usually has corn syrup instead.
The latte also has corn syrup. That fruit cocktail is packed in corn syrup too. It’ll give you a spurt of energy followed by a crash.
Your dinner is healthier, but the potatoes might have some ingredients you’re not aware of, if they came from a mix. A glass of red wine can be healthy.
This day’s menu is pretty typical for many American women. We think we
have some health foods in there, but really we’re eating sugar all day long.
That’s why we wake up already tired, sometimes not feeling well, and wondering what on earth is going on with our body.
Here is the startling truth…
Do you remember the Batman movie where the Joker poisoned random products? People had no way of knowing if they were exposed and how much poison they had consumed or put on through makeup.People would suddenly start laughing and die with a big Joker smile stuck on their face. Commercially produced food in America is basically the same situation.
We have an ingredient in almost all foods, and it’s one that we can’t really Process. It’s a type of sugar that’s even worse for us, as I’ll soon explain.
How did this sugar problem start?
In the 1970s, the government realized America had a heart disease Problem. After some studies, they decided that Americans ate too much fat, and so the war on fat began. The science behind it had found that with more fat in the diet, people had more heart problems. These studies noted an increase in sugar, too, but it apparently made more sense to blame the fat. The public was told to cut fat. Food companies introduced low-fat products. They took the fat out, which made food taste bad, so they replaced the fat with different forms of sugar.
Japan discovered a way to make sugar out of corn: high fructose corn syrup. It’s sweeter than sugar and MUCH cheaper to produce. It’s smooth, so it makes products soft, creamy, and sweet. Turns out, it works well in sauces, breads, and almost ALL packaged foods.
America went from eating moderate amounts of cane sugar, aka glucose, to eating more and more fructose. A lot of sugar, or any food for that matter, is not good for your health. If you eat salt in everything, you’ll encounter different problems.
This was my dad. He had to see the salt on his food in to determine if he had enough.
Moderation is key.
But since 1970, Americans have eaten more and more fructose until it’s at an alarming rate.
Some estimates suggest so of us are eating nearly 150 pounds of sugar a year, and nearly 60 pounds of that is fructose. They don’t know what they’re eating.
You might be worried because you drink soda and eat treats. You know you need to cut back. Or, you might be thinking that you don’t eat much because you buy healthy food.
Do you buy crackers? Weight loss snacks?
It is everywhere, and we need to start looking at the label.
My solution to the challenge was to start relying on whole foods. You could take some keys from the paleo way of eating. Quite simply if kill it or it didn’t grow from the ground you should not eat it.
I know there are many reason to justify why this won’t work for you. However even if you take this approach with two of your three meals you’ll be reducing your sugar/fructose intake significantly.
My starting point on this journey was 1. My morning coffee and 2. My coke with lunch. Let’s just say I made some small changes first to get the ball rolling.
And if you are in New Hampshire anytime soon, Portsmouth is a great little coffee city. And on a side note my coffee? It was black as it always is now a days as part of my morning routine and when I’m out and about.
Keith
