Are You Filling Up On Real Food or Fake Food?

When you are sifting through the deluge of information about diet and nutrition and which foods are good for your health and fitness and which foods are not good for your health and fitness, a general question to ask yourself is: "Has this food been altered from its original state?"

The alteration of food can occur in many different ways.

Foods are altered through processing.

Processed foods are often cooked at very high temperatures which destroy nutrients by completely wiping out many vitamins and denaturing minerals. These cooked foods are then canned or frozen and often cooked again in home kitchens. Sugar, salt, preservatives, stabilizers, and/or color enhancers are usually added.

Fresh and unaltered foods, like fresh fruits and vegetables, are without question a thousand fold better for you than processed, canned or frozen fruits and vegetables and other canned products.

Foods are altered through refining. Most bread is the end product of pulverizing wheat berries through processing and refining. Uncle Ben’s white rice is a refined food. Instant oats are refined foods. White sugar in any form is refined food. Refined foods are stripped of many, if not all, of their original nutrients. They fill you up with too many calories and not with health-supporting nutrition.

As if processing and refining are not bad enough, foods are also preserved. In today’s world, the preservers of choice are chemicals, and especially salt. Salt is pumped into almost all processed foods, particularly breads—just read the labels. Salt is one of those chemicals that we accept as part of our daily diet, but it is known to be hard on the body and detrimental to human health.

And then there are those foods, or, rather, pseudo-foods, that are completely manmade from chemicals, not made from real foods at all. Read the labels of foods, and you will soon become familiar with the chemicals that you don’t want to put into your body.

To give one example, imitation strawberry flavoring, found in ice cream, jello, juice drinks, candy, popsicles, desserts, cakes and pastries, can be created from over a dozen different manmade chemicals. That is not food. That is a chemical cocktail completely void of any nutrition whatsoever. Yet we fill up on these pseudo-foods every day.

Once a food is altered from its original state, nutrients are lost.

In this world of food and diet madness and confusion, let’s make this simple.

Is a fresh apple better for you than a piece of apple pie? Of course it is. And to take it one step further, is an apple better for you than applesauce? Let’s put it this way. Do you suppose a fresh apple has more nutrients than a product made from an apple that has been peeled, cooked and canned?

Is corn on the cob better for you than canned corn? Once the corn is removed from the cob, cooked, processed, and preserved, then reheated in your kitchen, how many nutrients do you suppose are left in that corn? And what about the corn chip that is created from the original corn on the cob? How good are these processed and packaged and often fried and salted foods?

Is whole wheat and brown rice better for you than refined flour and refined rice? You bet.

Is a fresh, green-leafy vegetable salad better for you than frozen or canned vegetables? You bet.

Are fresh homemade juices better for you than orange juice made from orange concentrate or V8 juice which is not only cooked (cooking kills nutrients), but is canned and loaded with salt and chemicals. You bet.

In today’s grocery store, how many processed, packaged, refined, preserved, and manmade foods line about 90% of the shelves; foods that you love to eat and constantly beckon to you and tempt you? How many of these foods do you fill up on every day?

Furthermore, if we are filling up on altered and manmade foods, then how much space do we have in our stomachs to eat the foods that have the very best nutrition for premium health and fitness? Not much.

Today’s modern world affords us many privileges, not the least of which is the privilege of choice. All year round there is a wide selection of fresh, whole foods from which to choose. If you want a long life with health, fitness, mobility, joy, and purpose, then choose to eat unaltered fruits, vegetables, raw nuts and seeds, whole grains and beans.

Make every choice count. These are the very choices that determine not only the number of your days, but also the quality of your days.

So make your choice—starting today.