Eat Food

"Eat Food, not too much, mostly plants" - Michael Pollan

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Eat Food [mostly plants]

As a new blogger, I have been spending quite a bit of time on social media exploring pages, liking pictures, and commenting on exciting, motivating, or just plain pretty photos. I have been finding amazing new people and companies that share my love for food and that have inspired me to create great recipes and take beautiful pictures of food! This process has not only brought great joy to my life, it has also opened my eyes to some very interesting trends, patterns, and nutritionally aware people.

First, a little bit about my journey;

I became a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist almost a year ago. Since then I have been trying to find my place in the industry, but I have truly spent my entire life trying to understand food. We all love food; it is our favorite pass time, our favorite reward or just what we look forward to doing every couple hours to get us through the day. I have always loved food. My parents joke and tell stories about how I was not running around at birthday parties with all of the other kids; I was parked in front of the snack table, excavating a bowl of cheese doodles. I remember as a child sneaking into the kitchen at night to smuggle a snack across the boarder back into my room with the hopes of not getting caught by my mom. As I hit my teenage years there was more pressure to be skinny, pretty, and to fit in, so I remember cutting back on my intake of food and exercising a lot. At this time I was very active with sports and even though I was watching what I was eating, I was burning enough calories for two people. Naturally, I went to school to study Nutrition and Dietetics and received my BS in four years. I participated in a rigorous clinically based dietetic internship for 10 months and became a Registered Dietitian. Now, five years later, I am quite technically the “expert” in food and nutrition. Terrifying. But I have never been happier with what I have accomplished. I love my profession and cannot wait to own my own private practice! I know I have a gift for helping people and motivating them to reach their goals, but something has always been missing; my very own relationship with food. I have always thought of myself as a “healthy eater with a sweet tooth" and an athlete of sorts. I love to workout and I eat well, for the most part. More recently I have realized that I was very wrong…

Even with my degree in Nutrition and my vast knowledge of the subject, throughout my life I have always fallen for the ‘quick fixes’, the easy ways to lose weight, get fit, or slim down. I even worked for a soul-sucking, corporate, physician supervised weight loss program that I’m sure the down payment to participate in the program was to forfeit anything nutritious… I digress… After trying dozens of diets, watching dozens of documentaries, and doing a whole lot of soul searching, I figured it out. Eat food. How do you lose weight? Eat food. How do you get fit? Eat food. How do you get healthy quick? Eat food. How can I clear up my skin? Eat food. How can I sleep better at night? Eat food. I think you get it. Everyone, eat food. Sounds really easy right? You are all probably thinking, duh, what else would you eat besides food?? Well let me tell you… you may want to sit down for some of this information. I am only going to discuss two of our food industries demons in this post, but I promise their will be more to come!

#1, Monosodium Glutamate

Also known as, MSG; monosodium glutamate is an additive in food that creates the sensation of savory. This is that sweet and salty combination that our bodies and brains crave. I’m sure most of you are thinking, ‘Oh I can just skip this section, I don’t eat that stuff anyway’. Keep reading. MSG got its name and reputation from being the additive in Chinese food that was associated with negative health risks. We quickly saw companies and restaurants advocating for the removal of MSG from their ingredients list nation wide. They plastered NO MSG signs behind the check out counters and wore this new trendy label as a badge. While this is all fine and good, it may have quite possibly been a large-scale ploy to distract the population while the food industry was adding MSG to almost everything we eat. This is where you may want to make sure you are sitting down... To date, 80% of all of our food in this country contains MSG [Fed Up]. Eighty Percent of all of our food in this country contains M-S-G. If you are not completely floored by that statement, you may now skip to the next section. Questions should be flooding your head at this point of how, why, where, what? That is good. That means you actually care and understand the amplitude of what I just said. I will answer one of the only questions I know the answer to. How did we not know that they were flooding our food with MSG, and that answer is simple; they just didn’t tell us. Have you ever seen the ingredients ‘spices’ or ‘natural flavors’ or ‘hydrolyzed soy protein’? These are fancy, misleading terms that mean ‘we added whatever the heck we want, including MSG’.

If you are now wondering why they would add this harmful substance to 80% of our food, you can be rest assured that it is to quite frankly make you addicted. It is a known fact that MSG has extreme addictive qualities, so what better marketing tactic than adding it to all of the food they want to sell. If you are wondering what this ingredient has to do weight gain or weight loss, let me shed some light on that skeleton in food industries closet.

MSG makes you fat. Period.

Here is just one study among hundreds done on lab mice that involve injecting them with low to high levels of MSG. To no ones surprise, the lab mice got fat. But not only did they get obese but they had complete endocrine dysfunction, decreased hypothalamic dopamine levels, and elevated cortisol levels. If they were humans, they would be on their third diabetes medication, second hypertension medication, and most certainly on the fat track to chronic illness and premature death.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3785512?dopt=Abstract&holding=npg

#2 Aspartame

Aspartame is the technical name for the brand names NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, Equal-Measure, and Splenda etc. . It was discovered by accident in 1965 when James Schlatter, a chemist of G.D. Searle Company, was testing an anti-ulcer drug… If that doesn’t immediately make you suspicious, again, you may stop reading now. Aspartame has to be one of the most cynical, cruel, and deceitful substances the food and drug administration has ever put on the market, and they know it! As we all sit and watch our nation become more unhealthy, more overweight, and more sick, what does our FDA do? Make everything "healthier" and "low-calorie" by reducing the fat and sugar and adding chemicals. They decide to strip our food of every last minuscule drop of nutrients it has and replacing them with poison. Literal poison.

Not on board yet? Here are some facts. Aspartame accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA. Seventy-five percent. Many of these reactions are very serious, including seizures and death. A few of the 90 different documented symptoms listed in the report as part of aspartame dangers are: Headaches/migraines, dizziness, nausea, numbness, depression, rashes, weight gain, tachycardia, vision impairment, lost of taste, slurred speech, breathing difficulties, heart palpitations, anxiety attacks, memory loss, vertigo, muscle spasms, and unfortunately, so many more… If you think because you are healthy and fit you can have as much aspartame or artificial sweeteners as you’d like, you’re sadly, very wrong. Let’s talk about if you are not healthy and well, shall we?

According to researchers and physicians studying the adverse effects of aspartame, the following chronic illnesses can be triggered or worsened by ingesting aspartame: Brain tumors, Multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, birth defects, diabetes, and chronic fatigue; just to name a few. So, if you, or a loved one has any of these chronic conditions or any condition for that matter, be sure that the intake of aspartame will make it worse!

Aspartame is made up of three chemicals: aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol. Just to review, I did say chemicals. Aspartame is made up of three chemicals. (…for the record, that is three more chemicals then I want in my body…) The book Prescription for Nutritional Healing, by James and Phyllis Balch lists aspartame under the category of "chemical poison." As you can see, that is exactly what it is.

In conclusion, eat Food. Eat plants. Don't take your food out of a package. Don't eat substances that contain colors that are not found in nature. Don't fall for the quick fixes and the low-calorie gimmicks. Don't eat calories, Eat Food. Eat Fat; good, healthy, energy packed fat. Eat Protein; lean, antibiotic free, grass fed, pasture raised, protein. Eat Carbohydrates; whole grain, sprouted, unrefined, unbleached, unprocessed carbohydrates. Eat Fruits; colorful, local, fertilizer and pesticide free fruits [or as close as you can get]. Eat Vegetables: green, orange, yellow, purple, colorful, wholesome, nutrient rich, vitamin packed vegetables.

Eat Food.

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