Two generations of packaged/processed food! 

I was chatting with an acquaintance a few weeks ago at the lap pool in town.  She was my oldest son’s age (40+).  She told me that she started working out and changing her diet when she noticed that way too many friends her age were dying of diseases that would normally affect people in their 70s and 80s.  She observed from this: hers was the first generation to survive on packaged foods from start to finish! 

Amongst other things to fix this she was exercising regularly. She was hoping that it wasn’t too late to change her lifestyle and her future.  She was forcing herself to cook, to change her habits in that respect as well getting more exercise. 

The biggest issue, she found, was that it cost way more to eat healthy food.  It’s considerably cheaper to do a grocery shopping for packaged and processed goods than it was for fresh food. 

It is sometimes hard to convince people that if they are healthier and have more energy, that they will be more productive, more efficient and generally much, much happier.

Processed Food: Bad

“Researchers found that for every 5% increase in consumption of ultra-processed foods, there was a corresponding decrease in cardiovascular health. Subjects who consumed less than 40% or of their calories from ultra-processed foods had double the chance of having “ideal” heart health compared to people who ate 70% or more of their calories from ultra-processed foods.”
Life and Health 

Two factors enter into this.  One is that the packaged foods are over processed and the other, often more damaging is the additives.  Most of this comes from the fact that these processed foods will last for a very long time on the shelf or in storage without going ‘bad’. 

Some of the food additives that are in pretty much all of your packaged foods are high fructose corn syrup, Monosodium glutamate (MSG), food colouring, artificial flavours and a number of preservatives.

I’m going to talk about just two of the worst here.  Both high fructose corn syrup and monosodium glutamate (MSG) make you hungrier.  Not considering other damage that they can cause, this is one of reasons people gain more weight from eating fast food and soda.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

It used to be that you could just count calories to control your weight.   High Fructose Corn Syrup changed this.  Some years ago this sugar substitute became cheaper than sugar due to the government subsidization of the corn industry in the United States.   Thus, it became the go to sweetener for almost everything including soft drinks.  It is about half the price of sugar. And way more deadly! 

There are dozens of articles, if you search, on this additive. 

High Fructose Corn Syrup Triggers Fatty Liver Disease

And others:

This article has links that show how High Fructose Corn Syrup can lead to leaky gut and cancer:

“High fructose corn syrup has led to so many diseases found in the American culture today including heart disease, cancer, inflammation, leaky gut, fatty liver disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, and so much more.”

When my kids were growing up in the 90s, I would tell them to go with known evils like sugar.  We would have sit down dinners as much as possible.  This kept the family as a family and also educated the kids on cooking and eating non packaged goods.

The United States spends more than any other country in the world on health care and has the highest obesity rate in the world.  The US rates something like the 34th healthiest.  Behind many third world countries.  Many of those countries are are not eating packaged goods. 

Fast Foods and Sodas

Most of your soft drinks like Coke and Pepsi use high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar.  (In the USA.)  Pretty much anything you order at McDonald’s or Burger King will use high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar.  The same goes for most other fast food in North America.  And because high fructose corn syrup, like MSG below, leaves you hungry*, most people know that they had better 'super size it'.  Thus eating way more than they actually need.

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)

I used to be on the road a lot. Microwave cooking in hotels.  I spent over an hour - probably closer to two hours - in a supermarket once, reading the ingredient lists and I could not find one frozen dinner product without monosodium glutamate.  Not one.  This was almost 20 years ago.  From that point on I stayed in hotels with kitchenettes so I could cook. 

MSG by any other name:

I’ll get to the damages caused by MSG in a moment but here are a few names it is hidden under: Yeast Extract, Glutamic Acid, hydrolyzed protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed animal protein, ‘protein fortified’, enzyme modified.  Thus you have ingredients like whey protein isolate, soy protein isolate, autolyzed plant protein, natural flavors,  caseinate, and dozens of others.

Some of the side effects/symptoms that are more immediate are burning sensations, heart palpitations, sweating, chest pain and nausea to name only a few. 

Here is a really scary article on longer term effects of MSG found at the National Library of Medicine:

“Simultaneously it is being implicated for varied pathological condition like obesity, gonadal dysfunction, learning difficulty etc. … “  

And the purpose of MSG is to increase flavor.  Foods are so over processed these days that MSG and way too much sodium need to be added to enhance flavor.

Another article from a site called Truth in Labelling.  Rodents are not naturally fat.  They were purposefully fed MSG to make them fat.  Rats will not normally become overweight.  One of the ‘side effects’ of MSG is that it blocks the ‘I’m full’ receptors in the brain, resulting in continued desire to eat.**  This way various remedies for obesity could be properly tested on rats and mice. 

“MSG is now a research tool used to produce obesity...

By the early 1980s, evidence of monosodium glutamate induced brain lesions and resultant endocrine disorders, including obesity, were so well documented that researchers interested in brain function and/or development of drugs with which to treat disease conditions in which glutamate played a role, began to use monosodium glutamate as an ablative or provocative tool with which to kill selected brain cells and induce obesity.”

Take the time and read the full article here: Truth in Labeling 

All of this dramatically weakens one’s immune system.  For example, obesity has been found to make people more sensitive to contracting Covid-19.  These additives also adversely affect one’s cardio vascular system which is another thing that flu type viruses attack. 

I’ve always felt that one’s ‘target’ should be health as opposed to weight loss. If you are eating proper food and getting some exercise regularly, with appropriate supplements, you should end up healthy. 

Eat healthy foods, get outdoors, get some exercise.  Get proper sleep and rest when you need it.   And make sure you get a good vitamin D supplement. 

In conjunction with getting rid of these drinks, use Thentix on your skin.