High glycemic foods (sugar, high fructose corn syrup, whole wheat bread), vegetable oils, xenoestrogens, and other poor food choices found in grocery stores and fast food outlets are highly toxic to your body’s metabolism and should be avoided in a healthy diet.

SUGAR

It is widely known that sugar makes you fat, and gives you excess calories with little in the way of healthy nutrients. Small amounts of natural sugar are not a problem. However, when you eat a piece of cake and ingest 40-50 grams of sugar in one sitting, or a bag of candy with 35 plus grams of sugar, or drink a soft drink with 45 grams of sugar or more… Or even a so-called “healthy smoothie at the local smoothie shop that contains a whopping 80 grams of sugar, equal to 320 Calories, because of the many fruit syrups that are included in them.

• Sugar causes extreme fluctuations in blood sugar, and excess blood sugar causes Glycation inside the body, which accelerates the rate of aging in organs, including skin, arteries and joints.
• Sugar also raises triglyceride levels to dangerous levels, which can lead to heart disease.
• High sugar levels can cause type 2 diabetes because, over time, high glucose levels lead to insulin resistance.
• High sugar levels also diminish the activity of white blood cells, making infections more likely, and even allowing cancer cells a better chance to spread throughout your body.

 

WHOLE WHEAT BREAD

There are 3 main reasons why wheat is toxic to your health:

Reason #1: Wheat has a higher glycemic index than most other carbohydrates

All breads, bagels, cereals, muffins, and other baked goods cause higher blood sugar levels than carbohydrate sources found in vegetables.

However, wheat contains an unusual type of carbohydrate not found in other grains called Amylopectin-A, which has been found in some tests to spike blood sugar levels higher than even pure table sugar. In fact, Amylopectin-A (from wheat) raises blood sugar levels more than almost any other carbohydrate source based on blood sugar response testing that has been documented in numerous studies.

For example, Mike Geary, a certified nutritional expert, performed a blood sugar test using his blood glucometer 45 minutes after he had eaten 2 slices of wheat bread vs a bowl of oatmeal, with equivalent grams of carbohydrates.

The blood sugar test results of wheat versus oatmeal:

2 slices of whole wheat toast:

45 minutes after consumption, blood sugar spiked from 86 fasting level to 155.

1 Bowl of Oatmeal

45 minutes after consumption, blood sugar increased from 86 fasting level to 112

Because wheat has a higher glycemic index, it maximizes blood sugar elevations leading to cellular glycation, rapid aging, weight gain and increased diabetes risk. First off, High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) has been added to whole wheat bread to improve the taste. Second, most of the wheat bread found in stores is actually white bread dyed brown.

High blood sugar levels cause “glycation” in the body due to Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs).  AGEs speed up the aging process throughout the body damaging all of your organs and tissues, including joints, arteries and skin.

Over time High blood sugar levels dramatically increase the levels of AGEs in your body. This is why type 2 diabetics frequently look older than their real age. However, this age-increasing effect is not just limited to diabetics.

 

Reason #2: Gluten and other gut-damaging compounds

The truth is that even if you are not officially “gluten intolerant” or “gluten sensitive“, there are numerous published studies that indicate that gluten can cause inflammation in your digestive system, and even cause “permeability” changes in your gut, which can lead to a health condition called Leaky Gut, as well as other digestive issues and autoimmune problems.

Scientists theorize that the reason gluten is causing these digestive system problems is due to the excessive hybridization of wheat over the last 50 years, which has created newly modified gluten molecules that are foreign to the human digestive system compared to the ancient wheat that humans ate for several thousand years historically, and even compared to the wheat that your grandparents ate 50+ years ago.

Reason #3: Antinutrients and mineral blockers

One of these antinutrients, called phytates, block the absorption of certain minerals like zinc, iron, manganese, and calcium.

Since most people eat wheat with every meal (cereal in the morning, bread on sandwich at lunch, and pasta or bread at dinner), excessive wheat intake may also cause a mineral deficiency in your body over time that leads to other health issues.

Wheat has other mineral blockers and antinutrients aside from phytates, such as lectins.  Lectins are another constituent of wheat that causes gut irritation.  This is another reason to minimize or eliminate wheat from your diet.  There’s absolutely nothing “essential” about wheat in the human diet…It simply does more harm than good.

 

VEGETABLE OILS

Vegetable oil actually comes from any combination of corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil, safflower oil, and/or cottonseed oil, all of which are loaded with toxic chemicals that appear during the harsh conditions used to process these oils. Here are three important reasons why processed vegetable oils are toxic to your health.

Reason #1: Vegetable oils contain trans fats

You know you should stay away from foods that contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. However, refined vegetable oils contain trans fats due to the extremely high heat, solvents, and pressure they are exposed to during the refining process.  And this includes so-called “expeller pressed” vegetable oils as well.

All of this high heat and high pressure processing along with the use of hexane solvents actually forces some of the polyunsaturated content of vegetable oils (yes, even so-called “healthy” canola oil) to be transformed into trans fats and something even worse called “MegaTrans” fat.

According to Mary Enig, a nutritional biochemist, “Although the Canadian government lists the trans fat content of canola at a minimal 0.2 percent, research at the University of Florida at Gainesville, found trans fat levels as high as 4.6 percent in commercial liquid canola oil“.

 

Reason #2: Vegetable oils contain oxidized fats

Free radicals formed during the refining of vegetable oils create these “oxidized” or “mutant” fats, which may damage cell membranes and chromosomes, which lead to massive inflammation in your body.

All vegetable oils contain oxidized fats due to the refining process, which alters the polyunsaturated fat contained in vegetable oils. Expert Nutrition author, Catherine Shanahan, MD, calls the fats in vegetable oils “MegaTrans”, because they are similar in chemistry to trans fats, but appear in higher concentrations.

And MegaTrans from vegetable oils are found in virtually ALL restaurant fryers and almost ALL processed packaged foods, as well.

French Fries Harm Arterial Function:

Catherine Shanahan, MD, cites in her book Deep Nutrition a study from New Zealand that showed that subjects who ate french fries from a restaurant fryer displayed immediate harm to endothelial function in their arteries, going from a normal 7% dilation before eating the french fries to 1% dilation AFTER eating french fries.

 

Reason #3: Vegetable oils alter the ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3

Vegetable oils are mostly made up of inflammatory omega-6 fats, while having very little anti-inflammatory omega-3 fats.

The healthiest ratio from the scientific literature appears to be a ratio of 2:1 or even 1:1 for your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio.  However, most vegetable oils skew your ratio as high as 20:1 or even 30:1 in favor of harmful inflammatory omega-6 fats.

These omega-6 fats are the “mutant” damaged MegaTrans type that harm the tissues of your body.

As a quick note, the solution to all of these major problems with vegetable oils is to use healthy oils like coconut oil, olive oil, macadamia oil, avocado oil, and grass-fed butter, all of which are much healthier than vegetable oils and don’t cause any of the problems described above.

 

XENOESTROGENS

Xenoestrogens are chemicals in the food supply and the environment such as pesticides, herbicides, and certain petrochemicals from air and water pollution, household cleaners, plastics, cosmetics, etc. that can react with your hormones and make your body store excess abdominal fat.

Xenoestrogens have an estrogenic effect in your body.  Excess exposure to these chemicals can cause hormone balance disruptions for both men and women. When exposed to these estrogenic chemicals on a daily basis, they can stimulate your body to store belly fat, along with many other problem, including cancer risks. Hence, they are called “endocrine disrupters.”

 

CRUCIFEROUS VEGETABLES

Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, bok choy, cabbage, etc. contain very specific and unique phytonutrients such as indole-3-carbinol (I3C) that help to fight against these estrogenic compounds.

 

MILK

Healthy alternatives to soy milk, which is loaded with inflammatory substances, are coconut milk and almond milk that contain healthy fat and protein.

 

POOR FOOD CHOICES

Here is a more extensive list of toxic foods on the market:

• Whole grain breads
• Whole grain cereals
• Whole grain crackers
• Soy milk
• Tofu or “veggie burgers” (non-fermented soy can have adverse effects on hormone levels)
• Orange juice (added HFCS)
• Apple juice (added HFCS)
• Skim milk or homogenized milk
• Margarine (loaded with trans fat, even “MegaTrans” fat)
• Pre-packaged “diet” dinners
• Sport drinks (loaded with sugar and HFCS)
• Protein bars (most are candy bars in disguise!)
• Overly processed meal replacements (with more junk than healthy ingredients)
• Rice cakes (excessive blood sugar spikes)
• Pasta (excessive blood sugar spikes)
• Diet ice cream or diet desserts
• So-called “energy” drinks
• Low-fat foods (usually replaces fat with more sugar)
• Low-carb processed foods (processed foods contain unhealthy fats)
• Soybean oil, corn oil, canola oil and other toxic vegetable oils

 

CONCLUSIONS

Because sugar, wheat, and vegetable oils are toxic components, you should think twice about eating cereals, breads, bagels, muffins, candy, and processed foods or fried foods from grocery stores and restaurants. Foods that are fried or cooked in hot vegetable oils are particularly toxic to one’s health.