Many of the foods we eat today are deep fried; we eat a lot of french fries, fried chicken, even fried vegetables. Unfortunately, most of the oils we use to fry with are partially hydrogenated oils. Partially hydrogenated oils are bad because they lead to diabetes, cancer, heart disease and obesity. Most partially hydrogenated oils are made from soybean oil.

Soybean oil is partly to blame for our country’s obesity problem. Soybean oil limits the functionality of the thyroid, draining our energy levels, and making us less likely to exercise. When your thyroid is depressed, it slows down your metabolism; therefore, you begin to gain weight.

Those who eat a lot of health products tend to eat a lot of soy; after all, the orientals have been eating it for centuries! What most people don’t realize is that while this is true, they didn’t eat soy in everything like we have begun to do. Oriental cultures used soy primarily for soy sauce and tofu. We have soy milk, soy burgers, soy baby formula…but too much soy is one thing that’s helping us all get fat.

In general, soy has been linked to many health conditions including thyroid dysfunction, infertility, increased risk of cancer, heart disease, Type I Diabetes and malnutrition. Yes, I wrote that! Eating a soy-based diet can actually starve your body of nutrients. Once you add in the fact that most partially hydrogenated oils are derived from soybean oil, you have a toxic mix of dangerous ingredients! With most of us eating this toxic mixture on a daily basis, is it any wonder that our children’s rates of Diabetes and obesity have risen so high?

One thing you may not know is that the soy plant itself is actually toxic to humans. Interesting, right? The plant that so many health gurus tout as being super healthy is actually toxic to our systems. Soybean oil contains a poisonous chemical called PHG; this chemical slows your blood circulation, causes your blood to clot, damages the central nervous system, interferes with digestion and can cause memory loss. Doesn’t that sound like a great “health food”?

Have you ever seen vegans that looked extremely malnourished? If you have, then they are probably eating a diet of soy: soy burgers, soy milk, soy bars, soy supplements, etc, etc. Soy contains high levels of phytic acid which block your body’s ability to absorb minerals and vitamins from the foods you eat. This causes you to actually become malnourished – the exact opposite of what everyone expects from soy foods!

Many may argue that soy is a great way to get protein for those who don’t eat meat. Well, that’s not true…because soy has a lot of enzyme inhibitors, meaning your body can’t make use of all that protein!

You already know that you should be avoiding partially hydrogenated oils, which is normally made from soybean oil. Now you have a ton of other reasons to avoid soy altogether. Science has proven that soy is not the health food that everyone believes it to be, yet health “gurus” keep promoting it as the best thing since sliced bread. Be healthy, and avoid soybean oil and soy products!

Read More…Ezine

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A recent study published in the journal Thorax has linked eating burgers to a higher risk of asthma in children. The researchers studied 50,000 children from 20 different countries. Interestingly enough, the results varied based on how rich the country was.

Parents of the participating children were asked to describe their children’s diets and if they had ever been diagnosed with asthma or experienced breathing difficulties such as wheezing or shortness of breath. These children were monitored between 1995 and 2005.

In wealthier countries, eating a minimum of 3 burgers a week was linked to a higher risk of asthma. Researchers don’t believe that this is in itself a specific cause of asthma, more that it’s an indication of a broader problem with poor dietary habits that increase the risk.

Another factor seems to be the location of the children. Different foods seem to lower the risk of asthma in children, depending on what country the children live in. In poorer countries, plenty of fruits and vegetables in the diet seemed to lower the risk, while in richer countries a diet that included fish resulted in less cases of asthma.

Researchers did advise that the test did not take obesity into account; obesity has already been proven to be a risk factor for asthma in children. Personally, and perhaps especially since this fact has been proven, the researchers should have accounted for varying levels of obesity in the study participants.

What this study says to me is that an unhealthy steady diet of foods that are high in fat can lead to asthma in children. Of course, with all of the other health problems such a diet can cause, who wants to eat like that anyway? We should be feeding our children lots of healthy fruits, vegetables, lean proteins and grains.

Read More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10218859

Once again, the food industry is claiming that consumers are too stupid to understand what ingredients on a label mean. This time, The Corn Refiners Association has petitioned the FDA; they are requesting permission to change the name from “High Fructose Corn Syrup”  to “corn sugar”.

Seriously? What do they think changing the name will do? We still know how bad HFCS is for us; our bodies still don’t metabolize the man-made sugars in the same way.

Apparently, the higher-ups in the food industry think that the name “high fructose corn syrup” is too confusing for us peasants to understand.

Audrae Erickson, president of The Corn Refiners Association, had this to say:

Clearly the name is confusing consumers. Research shows that ‘corn sugar’ better communicates the amount of calories, the level of fructose and the sweetness in this ingredient.

HFCS has become widely known by the general population as an unhealthy ingredient; research by the NPD shows that 58% of Americans are concerned about health risks posed by HFCS. This petition to the FDA seems more like an attempt at a coverup; many Americans would not realize that “corn sugar” is the same thing as HFCS. Therefore, until we got the news spread around about the dangers of this “new” ingredient, people would still be endangering their health and the health of their children.

The most logical solution to the fact that people are discovering how unhealthy HFCS is for our children would be to stop using it. This apparently reeks of too much common sense for the food industry people!

Ms. Erickson goes on to say that,

The name is confusing, and consumers don’t understand that [HFCS] has the same calories as sugar. They also think it’s sweeter tasting. That’s why the alternate name provides clarity for consumers when it comes to the ingredient composition and helps them better understand what’s in their foods.

My question is this: how are our brains, which this woman obviously thinks are puny, going to see the same ingredient differently simply because they change its name? IF The Corn Refiners Association is successful with getting the name of HFCS changed to “corn sugars”, it will be a vast injustice.

Information about our foods is not made readily available; they don’t publicize things like this on the evening news. Instead, we have to actively search for the information. Because of this, the general public will not be aware that “corn sugars” are just another name for the same killer ingredient: high fructose corn syrup.

Read More: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/a-new-name-for-high-fructose-corn-syrup/