Whatever happened to the way we used to eat through the wisdom of our grandmothers?
I’ll tell you; they have been replaced by “official advice and guidelines” of the government. Whoever said the government was right about anything, much less the foods we should be eating!? The two official regulators of our food supply in this country are the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) which are both heavily influenced by food and drug manufacturers whose priorities are not our good health, but instead processed foods distribution.
Before the food industry invented the “processed food” method there were only a few ways to preserve our foods, primarily by eating local, freezing, salting foods, or preserving them in their natural sugars. Most people think processed foods were invented when the United States was innovating to put man on the moon in the 1960s, but in fact it goes back to when the United States entered WWII in 1941. This was the year that M&Ms were created by the Mars Company. They wanted to allow soldiers to carry chocolate around with them while marching in warm climates without the chocolate melting. Forrest Mars innovated the process to turn sugar into the candy-coating for their chocolate “pellets”.
Processed foods are those that typically manufactured to be provided to consumers in a box or bag and contain more than one item on the list of ingredients. By definition, a processed food is a food item that has had a series of mechanical or chemical operations performed on it to change or preserve it. While processed foods is much more than just adding sugar, it is the primary additive in all processed foods.
Why is sugar a primary additive of foods?
The basic use of the term “sugar” is generic for the sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates or monosaccharides known as glucose, fructose and galactose. Natural sugar is found in our fruits and vegetables and extracted from beets and cane plants. The primary use of sugar in these forms is to sweeten a food or preserve it, but more and more we use sugar to modify the texture of prepared foods, fermentation, other flavorings and coloring agents, and even bulking up foods.
Sugar is a source of energy for the body, but only glucose can be used by the brain and the red blood cells to feed our bodily organs. All other forms of sugar are metabolized by the body as waste but that does not mean it is dispensed out of the body without consequence. The body also makes its own glucose from the foods we eat whether they have glucose in them or not. Too much daily glucose affects our body’s functionality negatively, especially our immune system.
In the early days of processing foods there were only a few forms of sugar that we would use in our food supply as preservatives, today there are over 50 types of sugars and at least a dozen that are combined to “hide” them in our everyday processed foods. These include terms like high fructose corn syrup, dextran, dextrose, diatase, fructose, maltodextrin, and ethyl maltol (sounds like some kind of gasoline).
Not only is this sugar used as a preservative, but as humans began eating foods with added sugars, the food industrial complex realized how much more they were selling of these foods to consumers. The food industry took notice and learned that the sweetness turns out to be an addictive forming additive and just like drugs, where when the body adjusts its tolerations and reactions to such stimulants, the body requires more and more to get any satisfactory of perceptive joy from the experience.
This goes all the way back to the beginnings of Coca-Cola wherein 1885 pharmacist, John Pemberton, created a formula of elixir to help with his morphine addiction he developed after being wounded in the American Civil War. He needed something to help him continue to function well in everyday life and as a pharmacist who better than to combine complex elements into something tasty. Initially, he thought his “joyful feeling” was due to the coca leaf and the caffeine in his version of Coca-Cola but the feeling was only temporary and not due to the coca nor the caffeine. Instead, his temporary joy was due to the mounds of sugar (9 teaspoons) that goes into each twelve oz bottle of Coke. As we all know, Coca-Cola took off and has become the largest beverage company in the world.
Why is this talk of sugar important?
Before 1980, the only people in the world with Type II Diabetes were alcoholics – why alcoholics? Alcohol prevents the liver from producing the all-important glucose we discussed earlier. This leads to hypoglycemia and it keeps the pancreas from producing the insulin that enables what glucose is created to enter the bloodstream. When appropriate amounts of glucose is not processed by the body, it energizes the red blood cells that feed the organs of the body, fostering the disease of Diabetes. With Diabetes, glucose builds up in your blood but doesn’t get to your cells to be burned off as energy by your daily metabolic functionality as a mobile human. Additionally, most all forms of alcohol are high in sugar adding more to the burden.
The same thing has been happening to all American people since the propagation of processed foods using sugars as preservatives and ultra-sweeteners pushing the addictive nature of sugar to increase consumption.
Today, there are more than 30 million Americans with Diabetes and another 70 million who are borderline Pre-diabetic – that is one third the population of the US. Children have historically been immune to Type II Diabetes because they were playing all the time, running around outside, and burning calories that required insulin to deliver glucose to the cells of the body. But due to the sedentary nature of children today together with the huge increase of their daily intake of sugar, more than 60,000 children under 18 are diagnosed with Type II Diabetes and it is believed that one of every three children today are Pre-diabetic likely to become Diabetic in their childhood or early adulthood. The trend is also moving rapidly to the youngest of our children where even infants are being born Diabetic from parents who are diabetic and/or do not eat healthy during pregnancy.
How much sugar do we need?
We must realize that out of the 600,000 food items we have in this country, 74% of them have unnatural added sugars, other preservatives, and additives our bodies do not need. We must read the labels of all our food, identify all the forms of sugars in them, and add them up to find out how many teaspoons, ounces, or grams they hold – then add the portions you give your child with the other foods they eat and drink during the day. If your child is getting more than six teaspoons, 1 oz, or 25 grams, of added sugar a day, you need to start changing the way you buy your food.
As I said, one Coke will supply your child with 1.5 times the amount of sugar they need that day. That is before you even feed them any processed foods.
Don’t think Gatorade is your friend!
You should delete all soda and energy drinks from your child’s daily diet. They don’t need them! Even if they are playing sports, they only need to replenish electrolytes and hydration that you get through plain old tap water. Sports drinks are only recommended over plain water to replace fluid and electrolytes when exercising longer than one hour or in hot environments.
But you should read the label on all supposed electrolytes replacement drinks, like Gatorade. Yes, it will provide you with small amounts of potassium, calcium and magnesium but also 30 grams of sugar in the 20-oz bottle of Gatorade. These drinks were made to athletes, not kids playing on the playground and definitely not for those with sedentary lifestyles. That 30 grams of sugar in one bottle is at the daily recommended amount as mentioned above, and before your child eats all the other stuff during the day.
Think of exercise as a gift, not a punishment.
At the end of each day, we really only want to be able to effortlessly play with our friends, children and grandchildren, and get around the house and town without huffing and puffing. This does not take much exercise and it not only helps with your mental state, but it’s the regularity of activity that burns calories without telling your body “you need to store up those fat cells so you’ll have the energy for that workout again this week.” So, whatever it is that you like doing best, walking briskly, jogging, biking or swimming you should do them at the least four days a week but you don’t have to do them more than 30 minutes a day. While you won’t lose a great deal of weight quickly, by exercising and getting your metabolism activated daily at the same time you quit drinking sugar infused drinks, desserts every day, and other high sugar processed foods you will get your health under control.
Your brain is lying to you!
Kicking the sugar addiction is hard because sugar tricks your brain into thinking you need it and need more of it to survive – that is false and your brain is lying to you! The truth is if you change your sugar intake from processed sugar in drinks and desserts as well as the more than 75% of processed foods that add all kinds of sugar types to instead those sugars you get naturally in your fruits and veggies, you will get enough sugar your body truly needs to operate in a healthy state.
Here are some of the benefits of reducing your sugar intake to 9 teaspoons for men, 6 teaspoons for women, and 3 teaspoons of sugar a day for children:
Younger looking skin!
Higher amounts of sugar in your bloodstream create a molecular avalanche called glycation. Glycation is the process that hinders your body from repairing your skin’s collagen which is the protein that keeps your skin looking healthy and maintain its elasticity. This is what keep you from premature wrinkles.
Longer lasting steady energy throughout the day!
Added sugars are simple carbohydrates that are digested fast and enters your bloodstream all at once. This is what produces that sugar-high feeling, but also are burned quickly. Once you are addicted, within minutes your brain will be telling you “I need more”, so you eat or drink more. Instead, if you eat natural sugars along with proteins (about a two to one ratio), your body will not burn them so quickly. You will likely not get that sugar high you have craved before when you were addicted to sugar, but then you’re going to gain a happier life because you feel better throughout the day.
The reduction of bad abdominal fat!
The fat around your mid-section is called visceral fat and this is the most dangerous type of fat because it forms around your organs constricting their efficient functionality. These fats bring on inflammation that leads to heart disease and cancer. So, eat intently to reduce the fat around your abs!
Dropping the fat that leads to Type II Diabetes!
Processed food sugars increase your insulin creation and don’t just add visceral fat to your mid-section, it turns those fat cells into calorie storage facilities. Natural sugars from food don’t trigger insulin creation and thus don’t tell the fat cells to hoard calories that will never be used. What is amazing when you convert from processed added sugars to natural sugars of the foods you eat, your body will also not tell your brain that you are hungry all the time but still will increase your metabolism burning more calories. This is what reduces your chances of becoming diabetic, gets you off the pre-diabetic list, and will keep you Type II Diabetic free for life!
How does the Jones Family do it?
For nearly a decade now, my wife and I have been buying all our primary meats and veggies from Southern Foods at Home. Southern Foods is a Farm to Table service that delivers right to our home the healthiest, safest, highest-quality foods than we can get at any grocery store. While the average distance the foods provided at the grocery store is 1,500 miles, Southern Foods sources directly from their owned farms and other vetted farms in Georgia and the Carolinas. Their foods are all-naturally aged, certified vegetarian-fed free-range meats, 100% Sashimi Grade seafood, and Vine-ripened farm-fresh vegetables direct from the farm to your table.
They own the processing facilities that are USDA inspected every day. After being hand trimmed, flash frozen and vacuum sealed, Southern Foods delivers directly to our home saving time and cutting out the middleman grocers.
This way they are able to provide their service at an affordable price for any family. We are a family of six and spend right at half of what the USDA says an average of six spends on food every year.
So, if you live in the Southeast and you’re looking to get your family away from processed foods and onto all-naturally aged, certified vegetarian-fed free-range meats, 100% Sashimi Grade seafood, and Vine-ripened farm-fresh vegetables direct from the farm to your table, let me know.
Your first meal is on the House!
Check out https://www.southernfoodsathome.com/free-sample/ and tell them...
Dr. Gordon Jones sent you.
Live healthy and be well!