Eating Healthy Myths Destroyed

 by: Dr. Jamie Fettig

All Refined Carbohydrates are Hazardous to Your Health. The average American eats over 300 pounds of sugars each year. Most of this is because of all the sugar that is added to the everyday foods most people eat. Sugars are refined carbohydrates include anything that ends in Aose.@ Sucrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, maltose, dextrose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup and sugar all count as sugar. An easy way to remember this is anything that rhymes with Agross.@

I am not talking about sugar naturally found in fruits and other such sources. If nature put it there, it is usually fine. And again, how it affects you will depend more on you individually than the type of fruit itself. Yes, sugar is natural, but it is not fresh. And when you add it to another food, the other food is not pure either.

Refined carbohydrates also come in the form of grains and flours. Most pasta, bread, flour, and other grain-based products are refined, almost to the point of sugar, and to the point where the refined carbohydrates respond in the body the same way sugar does.

There are two big reasons why refined carbs and sugar are so bad, as well as hundreds of smaller reasons. The two big reasons are these:

1. Refined carbs and sugar have no vitamins, minerals, or anything else that is needed to operate and run a healthy body

2. Refined carbs and sugar cause blood sugar levels to be artificially raised and lead to all the problems that come with high blood sugar levels.

First, the refining process takes away all the vitamins and minerals that are naturally found in whatever plant is being refined. There is nothing left but pure carbohydrates.

Why are vitamins and minerals so important for you anyway? Let me give you a little example of why vitamins and minerals are so important. If you want to build a brick house, what do you need? Well, you need bricks and mortar, and wood, and windows and doors. You need some basic stuff to build that house. What if you don't have bricks, or mortar or windows or doors? How well do you think the house will function after you are done Atrying@ to build it? Not very well.

Vitamins, minerals and nutrients are like the bricks, mortar, windows, doors, wood, etc. of the house. They are the parts that your body uses to build you. If you don't give your body those key building blocks, things in your body are not going to work very well.

If you try to substitute cheap, not so good imitations, if you tried to build a brick house with a bunch of rocks, the house would not be as good. If you tried to use old, warped windows, the house would not function very well. If you used wood that had holes in it and was not complete, your house would not be very functional. For your body to continue to function at its best and do everything it used to, your body needs to continually be replacing the broken down worn out parts with new parts. And if the new parts, if the vitamins and minerals you give it are not whole, or not enough, your body is going to break down. If you give your body less wood than it needs, so you cannot finish the roof, you might be able to keep the wind out, but when it rains, you get wet.

The second reason refined carbohydrates are not good for you is that refined carbs drastically alter your blood sugar levels. What is the big deal with this? The easiest to show you is what happens to you after you eat. You get really tired and lethargic. You have trouble staying awake and you want to go to sleep. Guess what? The rest of your body is doing the same thing. Your cells are going into a Asugar coma.@ Your mind, which controls everything, is also going to sleep on the job. Your brain is not doing everything it needs to do to keep you functioning properly. And if your brain is not doing its job properly, anything could be going wrong with your body, and often is.

Refined carbs/sugars also are one of the main contributing factors to heart disease and high cholesterol levels, as I showed you earlier.