Consumers, read your labels! I just heard yet another story about people in an office telling each other a package of Red Vines was fine to eat because the label read, “fat-free”. Just read the nutritional information on any package that says “low-fat”, “fat free”, or “non-fat” and you will likely find that the amount of carbohydrates in the product is sky high.
For instance, Red Vines contains 35 grams of carbohydrates per 4 pieces. Just imagine what your body would be subjected to if you ate more than that.
Different people have different caloric intake needs – depending on how active you are. According to WikiAnswers, “if you are eating 2,500 calories a day, the recommended daily intake is at least 313 grams of carbohydrate. If your daily calorie intake is 2,000 calories eat at least 250 grams of carbohydrate per day. 1,500 calories a day equals to 188 grams of carbohydrates per day.” But don’t be fooled. Where health is concerned, carbohydrates means the natural kind, like those found in fruits, vegetables, and whole, sprouted grains – not the processed, package garbage sold in most grocery stores (and many natural food stores). If all the carbs you eat come from junk, you will soon be on your way to a myriad of lifelong health issues like heart disease, Diabetes, high blood pressure, and stroke.
Fats and carbohydrates are both important sources of calories. One reason why you might feel like you can eat a whole box of crackers, for example, is the fact that crackers do not truly satisfy your hunger. This is because all the fat calories have been replaced with carbohydrates. So you eat and eat and eat more carbs, until your body has no choice but to gain massive amounts of weight. Your body is still starving and your hunger levels are not abated.
When you are dealing with excesses, you can encounter tremendous problems. This is true with overloading your body with carbs. Too many of the wrong types of carbs will cause a failure in your digestive processes on many levels, which leads to other problems in the body including the heart, nervous system, and elimination systems (kidneys and other detoxification systems).
The opposite can occur as a deficiency in the elements and nutrients your body needs to be healthy, such as fats. Fats are critical in so many parts of health – skin, eyes, hair, cardiovascular, nervous system, digestion, and feeling full. The bottom line here is that anything which isn’t a whole food is going to be unhealthy for consumption.
Ask yourself, when you are purchasing fat free, low-fat, and non-fat products…are these foods a whole food? If the answer is no, putting the product back on the shelf should be all that much easier to do.
A good example of an unhealthy, fat-free or low-fat food is low-fat milk or non-fat yogurt. These products are not healthier because the fat has been lowered. In fact, the dairy product is unhealthier because it has been changed from the natural, whole-fat food it originally was. The body cannot properly absorb calcium, protein, or fats from a dairy product that has been made low or non-fat because all the proper digestive enzymes and other important substances in a whole-fat food are no longer present to aid the digestive system in absorbing the nutrients. Low-fat and non-fat dairy products, when consumed, will effectively leech calcium from the bone. Disrupting the natural molecular content of calcium, fat, and protein in meat and dairy products by artificially making these foods low-fat will consistently cause health problems to occur such as weight gain, osteoporosis, and heart disease.
One problem in our society lies with the fact that if people have to take time to prepare something, they are less likely to “have enough time” or become motivated to restructure their day to enable the needed time for cooking and preparing foods. The more convenience foods we eat, the more our health declines. If we take time to grow and purchase healthy organic foods and make meals from scratch, we are going to see an amazing difference for the good in the way we feel, look, and live.
So stop counting calories! If you are purchasing processed food, it doesn’t matter how few calories it contains. It will create adverse health conditions for anyone who regularly consumes it. Everyone needs the right amount (depending on your health, level of activity, etc. ) of healthy, unadulterated calories from natural, whole, organic foods. Until the public realizes this fact, we will continue to see monumental amounts of chronic disease and obesity amongst the population.
For more information on eating healthy fats and avoiding bad carbohydrates, visit Food and Healing.
The New York Times has a good article supported by a medical doctor and a nutritionist about the dangers of low-fat diets.
Agriculture Society 