LET THE PURGE BEGIN

We are surrounded by fried foods, canned goods, boxed sweets and goodies, microwave dinners, and frozen processed foods. It is so easy to eat trash. It does give you a second of satisfaction but once you’ve finished your meal, you feel exactly like what you ate…garbage.

For today, your goal is to get rid of the temptations in your pantry and fridge. Check your pantry for white breads, flour pasta, pancakes, canned goods, top ramen, bread crumbs, canola oil, table sugar, chips, cookies, cereals, and anything that lasts for more than a year.

Check your fridge and freezer for microwaveable chicken dinners, corn, ice cream, sodas, packaged juices, sugared drinks, syrups, and anything that has a purely sugar or fructose content. 

But do not throw these away…donate it to people who need it. Remember that unhealthy food is better than no food. 

You might ask yourself, what can I eat for breakfast if I can’t eat bread and cereals? You can eat fruits and vegetables. You can have oats. You can have bacon and eggs! You can drink your green shakes. 

“Breakfast food such as pancakes with syrup and cereal is I think an American concept. In other countries like the Philippines, they eat fish and rice for breakfast. Other people eat their leftovers from last night’s dinner for breakfast.” 

“What your brain sees and what you want to eat is not necessarily what your body wants and needs. The mind is often exploited by advertisements. That is why it is tempting to reach for fried foods and soda. But your stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys, arteries, and muscles do not want those foods.” 

THE SCIENCE

“What is the difference between table sugar, fruit sugar, high fructose corn syrup? 

Fructose is a type of sugar naturally found in fruit and honey. Its a monosaccharide just like glucose, whereas table sugar (sucrose)- the white granulated stuff we sprinkle in coffee or dump into a bowl of cookie batter- is a combination of glucose and fructose, thus making it a disaccharide (two molecules linked together). High-fructose corn syrup, which is what we find in our sodas, juices, and many processed foods, is yet another combination of molecules dominated by fructose- it’s 55 percent fructose, 42 percent glucose and 3 percent other carbohydrates.High fructose corn syrup was introduced in 1978 as a cheap replacement for table sugar in beverages and food products.” 

“Evolutionarily, sugar was available to our ancestors as fruit for only a few months a year ( at harvest Time), or as honey, which was guarded by bees.  But in recent years, sugar has been added to nearly all processed foods, limiting consumer choice.  Nature made sugar hard to get; man made it easy.”

Dr. Robert Lustig et al.

“When we eat 100 calories of glucose from a potato, our bodies metablolize differently and have different effects than if we were to eat 100 calories of sugar comprising half glucose and half fructose. Your liver takes care of the fructose component of sugar.

Glucose from other carbs and starches, on the other hand, is processed by every cell in the body. So consuming both types of sugar (fructose and glucose) at the same time means your liver has to work harder. Most especially in liquid forms found in soda or fruit juices.

And the science is well documented: Consuming fructose is associated with impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, high blood fats, and hypertension. And because it does not trigger the production of insulin and leptin, two key hormones in regulating our metabolism, diets high in fructose lead to obesity and its metabolic repercussions.”

A study done in 2008 from the Mayo Clinic and published in the Archives of Neurology, looked at the effects of the duration of diabetes. According to the Mayo’s findings, if diabetes began before a person was sixty-five years old, the risk for mild cognitive impairment was increased by 220 percent. The authors described a proposed mechanism to explain the connection between persistent high blood sugar and Alzheimer’s disease, in reference to cognitive decline and accelerated aging. 

Compiled and written by: Loudette Ma Paz Guevara

Reference:  

• David Perlmutter, MD with Kristin Loberg,“Grain Brain,” The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar- Your Brain’s Silent Killers, Chapter 4, Not a Fruitful Union, This is your Brain on Sugar ( Natural or Not) subtitled Sugar and Carbs 101, pge 104-106

• R.H. Lustig, et al., “ Public Health: The Toxic Truth About Sugar,” Nature 482, no. 7383 (February 1, 2012,): 27-29

• R.O.Roberts, et al., “ Association of Duration and Severity of Diabetes Mellitus with Mild Cognitive Impairment,” Archives of Neurology 65, no.8 ( August 2008):1066-73