Fuel
Your body evolved to crave high calorie meals, which kept us motivated as hunter-gatherers. Now, we don’t have to hunt or gather to find high calorie meals, they are in our refrigerators, in our schools, and on every street corner. The challenge now is to avoid unhealthy high calorie meals.
Simple. Eat this:
Fruits
Vegetables
Beans
Lean meats
Whole grains
Junk food is not a food. It's a toxin.
The food industry has been very effective in taking our money. This unscrupulous industry uses salt, fat and sugar to create cheap, technically edible products or "junk food" that cause diabetes, and heart and liver disease. Period. These foods can easily cause pre-diabetes, non-alcholic fatty liver disease and hypertension by the age of 13yo. They are toxins and should not be consumed. Double period.
If it was not a food 100 years ago, it is not a food today.
As much as is possible we should focus on eating whole foods. What is a whole food? Whole foods have one ingredient. Look at all the different foods in the picture above. They all have one ingredient. There are a limited number of non-whole, or processed foods, that are still healthy like whole grain breads, low fat greek yogurt, and humus. Read the label, if the food your holding has ingredients that sound like chemicals, put it back on the shelf.
In general, if it was not a food 100 years ago, it is not a food today.
"But, whole foods are expensive"
They are and they are not. First of all, we need to make sure we are comparing fairly:
- Whole foods are actually food. Junk foods are toxins. So comparing prices is not really fair.
- If you include the costs of Type 2 Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, liver disease, stroke, emotional distress, missed school and work, toxic junk foods are not so cheap.
So we need to compare apples to apples, not apples to toxic junk food.
Caloric density and "feeling full"
- Foods vary in their caloric density, which is to say a cup of cheese is going to have way more calories than a cup of carrots.
- We "feel full" when the foods we eat fill up and stretch our stomach
In the picture above, you can see that 500 calories of cheese will leave you still feeling hungry, while 500 calories of fruits and vegetables will leave you feeling full.
Eat fruit, vegetables, lean meats, beans and whole grains...
- All snacks: fruits and veggies
- Start breakfast with a bowl of fruit
- Start lunch and dinner with a large salad
- All grains/breads/pastas should be whole grain
- Stick to only lean meats like fish and chicken, avoid red meats
- Shop the outside or perimeter of the grocery store first
- The center isles are where the toxic junk food lives
- Children will be more likely to eat well if you shop together and include your them in choosing fruits, vegetables, lean meats, beans and whole grains
There is help
If putting whole food meals on the table is too expensive for your family, tell your doctor, case worker or contact a local food dispensory.