Let’s take a look at cereal first.

Many boxes of cereal use words like “Made with Whole Grain”, or “Low Cholesterol”, however you should always check the labels of everything you consume, not just for calories and fat, but for sugars!

How much cereal does a normal person eat? Everyone I know eats a normal-sized cereal bowl full to the top and sometimes even has seconds! I used to do that too. It takes quite a bit of the stuff to fill you! Well let’s take a look at the nutrition label and find out what we are supposed to eat… according to the manufacturers, that is.

Let’s use Honey Nut Cheerios as an example, but take a look for yourself on the nutrition label of any cereal box of your choice. For now we’ll look at this one together.

The first red circle shows that one serving should be 3/4 of a cup. 3/4 of a cup?? Who eats that little cereal?? Even one cup isn’t enough to fill a bowl… we tried it!

The second circle shows the amount of sugar inside. 9 grams. Doesn’t sound so bad. Did you know that 4grams of sugar = 1 teaspoon? So basically there is approximately 2 teaspoons of sugar for every 3/4 cup of Honey Nut Cheerios.

Here the picture shows 3/4 cup of cereal. Below is a regular size cereal bowl, after we poured in 3/4 cup of cereal. It isn’t even half full!

So what’s the point (You’re probably asking)? Let’s do the math. Let’s say you pour yourself a full normal bowl of cereal.

That is about 4 times the suggested serving amount. So 4x 3/4.

We said that there are 1 teaspoon of sugar for every 4 grams. So 9grams x 4(servings)= 36grams. Now let’s see how many teaspoons of sugar that is… 36 divided by 4= 9 teaspoons of sugar, plus the amount of sugar in your milk, as well as the sugar from your juice. What if you have a second bowl of cereal?

The scary part is that Honey Nut Cheerios aren’t even that bad when it comes to sugars as a lot of other cereals are. Do the research yourself. And this is just the sugar we’re talking about.

How about the sodium, as well as the calories? 110 calories for ever 3/4 cup x 4 (for approximately a full, normal sized cereal bowl) = 440 calories! This is without the milk and the other breakfast items we mentioned! As for the sodium… 170mg x 4 = 680mg of sodium! That seems like a lot!

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Parents still give it to their kids and people still drink it! Why? Because it’s sweet, it tastes good, and most importantly…it’s cheap!

Aside from the high amount of sugar and calories, guess what one of the ingredients is?

Vegetable oil! It’s true, they use it as a thickener. You can see for yourself on the ingredients label of the drink. It’s kind of disgusting thinking you are drinking fattening, artery clogging, vegetable oil just so that the manufacturers can save money!

Also, many other drinks like this one contain sodium benzoate. Sodium Benzoate is used in just about every canned drink, fruit juice, pickles, etc., as a preservative. But did you know that Sodium Benzoate is also used in fireworks and as chemical to prevent mildew and rust. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_benzoate). It was also recently used as a corrosion inhibitor in engine coolant systems. And we eat / drink this….why? Because it is a lower costing preservative and manufacturers probably need to add preservatives so they can produce more products cheaper and in larger amounts.

How about a food product like Cheetos or cheesy twists, or even gummy-bears? Well these foods aren’t aren’t natural! You can’t find it somewhere on the earth growing naturally. They were brewed up by scientists! Just as pesticides came to be within the last century. Farmers spray fruits and veggies with pesticides (obviously to keep the bugs off so they can grow a larger amount of produce) but if they’re enough to kill and keep away insects, why would humans want to ingest that?

On top of the pesticides, most grocery stores then put wax on their fruits and veggies! Why? So they look better on display! In many states it is illegal for stores not to let you know if there is wax on their fruits and vegetables or not, so read up! Search the internet for your local grocery store’s policies on waxing. Definitely buy organic products if you can. They are a little more expensive, but you can’t put a price on your health. Even something that grows underground like potatoes, or carrots, that you think don’t get sprayed with pesticides… well, farmers usually have pesticides in the soil in which these vegetables grow in.

Cancer and diabetes as well as many other new-age diseases could caused by our lifestyle. The foods we eat, the drinks we drink, not getting enough exercise, smoking, etc. have long been thought to cause most disease.

That could be true. If you think about it, if these diseases were hereditary, why didn’t they exist centuries ago? Like in the decades before scientists and farmers started using chemicals in our food and before manufacturing companies began adding so much sugar and salt but displaying the nutrition information in a way that confuses people.

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Take a look at these two pictures and think about how you would feel after eating the fruits and vegetables vs the junk food. Your answers might be (after eating junk food): tired, bloated, greasy, gurgley, gassy, sick.

Or (after eating fresh fruits or veggies): awake, energized, fresh, satisfied, healthy, clean.

Just like people say, you are what you eat.

We should also note that most juice is pasteurized, (heated) which kills off many important nutrients, but leaving in the juice’s natural sugars (in fruit juice, that is usually a lot of sugar!). Check your juices nutrition labels and be aware of how much sugar you are taking in. We also probably know that if you leave a piece of steak in a bowl of coca cola for a couple days, the cola will eat away at the meat leaving just the bone! Imagine what it does to your body? Your organs? Most people don’t give soda to their dog, cat or newborn baby… you don’t let them smoke either or give them alcohol. The majority of people don’t, at least. People usually think it’s not good for them. But if you think about it, adults, kids and teens have the same organ systems that babies and most animals have. People tend to forget this and think they can consume anything!

In fact, one study done by the Swedish National Food Administration (WHO 2002) showed that foods like potato chips and bread typically contain acrylamide, which is a chemical that has been proven to cause cancer in animals, and is now labeled as being “probably cancerous to humans”. Acrylamide is produced while cooking at higher temps, usually by frying and roasting foods. That’s why higher levels of the chemical are usually found in potato chips, biscuits and bread. It’s also been found that roasting coffee beans can produce significant amounts (CCPA 2006).

In any case, it just seems natural and almost obvious that if people ate more natural foods that originated from earth, there would be much less cancers and other diseases linked to chemicals or too much sugars.

What can be done? Check out the next page –>

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DO choose butter over margarine. There are some butters which are easy to spread if that is your concern.

DO drink more vegetable juice than fruit juice. Also eat more vegetables than fruits. While fruits are healthy, vegetables generally contain the same vitamins, but contain less sugar. Even further, buy a juicer and juice your own fruits and veggies! That way you skip the pasteurization process and get the full amount of nutrients.

DO choose organic foods whenever possible.

DO eat meats that are high in protein, low in fat (because fat holds a lot of toxins from pesticides, antibiotics, and other chemicals that animals eat). Turkey or other poultry is always a good choice, chicken comes second to turkey though. Substitute beef or pork (if you can) with turkey anytime possible. There is turkey bacon, turkey burgers, etc. Fish is also good, but do the research on where it comes from. Is it wild or farmed? Does it contain heavy preservatives or any metals? This DO is of course for those who are not vegetarians.

DON’T eat white bread! It turns into just sugar once digested, and contains hardly any nutritional value! What’s the point of eating it?

DO choose whole wheat bread. Some breads may say on the label “Made with 60% whole wheat…” forget it! Get only 100% whole wheat products. Anything else is just a marketing scheme to make it look healthy, when the only true healthy bread is whole wheat. Even better if it is organic of course, because then you know the wheat had not been sprayed with pesticides.

DO drink plenty of water, approximately 6 glasses a day. Filtered water of course. This not only keeps you hydrated, but flushes toxins out of your body and keeps your appetite suppressed throughout the day.

DO choose to eat foods that have been around for centuries.

DON’T choose to eat something scientists brewed up recently, because they are only finding out about the long-term effects of those products in our generation.

An ideal breakfast: a bowl of puffed wheat cereal (0 grams of sugar per serving, also high in protein and fiber), with organic milk, sprinkle on a little brown sugar for taste, with a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, vegetable juice, or organic milk, and perhaps a piece of buttered organic whole wheat bread with some peanut butter, and one piece of fruit.

References and Sources:

World Health Organization (2002) http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/release32/en/index.html

Chemicals in Food (1961 ) The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health 81: 62
SAGE Publications
DOI: 10.1177/146642406108100204

Cancer chemical found in coffee. (2006, April). CCPA Monitor, 12(10), 8.

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