The Biggest Lie Of The Food Industry
Exercising is good for our health but eating well is much better
You have probably received a lot of advice in the past about what is best for your body to lead a healthy life. Personally, for a long time I thought that if I wanted to lose weight, I would need to spend a lot of hours the gym or at least in physical activity.
I just want to avoid this being an article of advice or activities that you should do to lose weight because, in reality, I want to share objective information about what has happened in the food industry since we managed to industrialize our meals and how it has impacted our lives.
The consequences of an inadequate diet
I would like to settle for thinking that an inadequate diet only translates into consequences such as obesity or lack of energy without major worries, however for our bad luck it is not like that.
Some of the consequences of not eating the correct nutrients can include diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, or even a possible myocardial infarction unexpectedly and suddenly.
It is very serious what can happen from consuming saturated fats and sugars that we find in many delicious foods in the supermarket and therefore it is very important to be critical consumers of the products that we buy and eat every day.
The other side of the coin
Our analysis begins with the work of Ancel Keys, a key person in the formulation of food policies around the world and for whom we know that saturated fats can cause cardiovascular disease in people.
Keys also developed a nutritional formula called the K-ration that was delivered to soldiers who fought in the Second World War and that played a fundamental role in solving the nutritional need of those people who needed to make their resources more efficiently.
Today we are waging a war but against misinformation, advertising messages that encourage us to consume products that can harm our body, and especially against a sedentary lifestyle that causes many health problems with very unfavorable consequences.
For a long time, it has been mentioned that cholesterol is a cause of cardiovascular problems that in many cases can end people’s lives.
However, today we have more recent studies that show that cholesterol is necessary for proper cognitive performance and that it is even used by the brain, in fact, no matter how much effort we make to reduce the consumption of cholesterol, the brain will be responsible for producing the missing amount.
With the above, I want to share with you that our attention has been diverted many times from sugary foods to others with high caloric or saturated fat content to inhibit their consumption and favor the purchase of other types of foods.
A matter of business
Today the offer of products to increase the sales of companies and their profits is based on strategies that can use misinformation, misleading advertising, and even conduct manipulated studies to increase the credibility of their story and gain more customers.
As a consequence, many countries even force companies to indicate information on the type of nutrients, fats or negative aspects that food may contain to better inform the population and avoid future problems.
It is then that we will also put on the scene John Yudkin who was a founding professor at Queen Elizabeth College in London and who represented one of the Keys’ detractor voices in the analysis of health deficiencies due to an inadequate diet.
We commented that John Yudkin is a voice of criticism since from his professional perspective he blamed sugar consumption for problems such as diabetes, cognitive deficiencies, tooth decay, obesity, and even heart attacks.
Another researcher who jumped on the scene was Pete Ahrens who had concluded that the consumption of carbohydrates from cereals, sugars, and flours was a factor associated with heart disease and being overweight.
However, the voices were not heard with the same spirit and consequently, the truth of Keys was the one that triumphed for a long time since it had the support of media such as the New England Journal of Medicine that in an article published in 1967 confirmed the version.
This publication pointed out that the consumption of fat and cholesterol was the main cause of heart problems in humans and consequently the damage that sugar produces was minimized as if it were a minor problem.
The food industry has benefited for many years from this truth because in reality talented people are hired to design addictive foods even though one of the main attractions is the delicious taste of sugar.
The disadvantage of consuming so many products with excess sugar is that our pancreas loses the ability to supply so much insulin to process the sugar in our body and that is when we develop overweight problems or diseases such as diabetes.
The wellness industry
Because our priorities as a world society have changed and in a certain way war conflicts have evolved towards technologies and it takes less physical effort to win wars, we now focus on the well-being of our body and health, which is fantastic, but we must do it in an informed way.
While it is true that physical activity, exercise, and training is essential for the proper development of our body, the reality is that the six-pack is built in the kitchen more than in the gym.
Recent studies show that if we consume fats, sugars, and carbohydrates in excess, the time we spend in the gym will not matter because it will never be enough to process what we have put into the body and in fact, we run the risk of injuring ourselves by lacking the genuine nutrients that contribute to our body.
Therefore, we must be more critical when paying for expensive gym memberships and in our diet to achieve better results in our life. Regardless of our age, correcting our habits will generate immediate results that will even make us feel better on a day-to-day basis.
According to recent information, it is very important to include foods such as fish, eggs, fruits with low sugar levels such as avocado and blueberries, as well as green leafy vegetables such as broccoli or spinach in our daily diet.
The importance of physical movement
Physical movement is very important for our body since it can even be thought that spending a lot of time sitting in front of the computer is as dangerous as smoking for our health.
The reason is that our body was designed to move, to run, to jump and survive by adapting to different environments or geographical conditions, so in the past running long distances could be a survival factor rather than training.
I consider that not being able to exploit our physical potential is something unfair to ourselves and I consider that it is something we cannot allow. It is essential to find a way to do justice to our nature and resume the activities that characterize us as human beings.
It’s a matter of freedom
A better quality of life translates into freedom from diseases, illnesses, and, above all, from negative conditions for our body. By nature we have the right to be happy and for this, it is essential to have good health.
That is why I invite you to investigate more than what is convenient for your body and your mind to lead a better quality of life. We all have the right to consume foods that do us good and help us improve our quality of life, the best way to demand that from companies is through informed consumption.
The day companies realize that their inventories of sugary, greasy products with little nutritional supply remain stagnant in their warehouses, they will know that they will have to modify their value offer to deliver what we deserve.
At the end of the day, no one is against companies making profits from the sale of their products, but we should be against paying for problems that come packaged with attractive colors and striking characters.
I hope you enjoyed this piece , thank you very much for reading.
