Seven Secrets. for a Healthier Diet

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1 Seven Secrets Easy Ways To Improve Your Diet T for a Healthier Diet Teagan King HealthFoodMadeEasy.com

2 SEVEN SECRETS FOR A HEALTHIER DIET Not everyone is ready to clear their kitchen of every bit of food that isn t found on the super healthy food list. Some people do better with a gradual change. Other people enjoy the clean sweep method of throwing out anything not considered good, healthy food. Whichever camp you fall into, here are Seven Secrets for a healthier diet. 1. Change what you drink. Are you hooked on soft drinks? It doesn t matter if you call these fluids pop, soda, coke, or whatever! And it doesn t matter if you re drinking regular soft drinks or diet drinks, you re better off eliminating both kinds from your diet. If you drink regular soft drinks, you are getting a huge surge of sugar in your bloodstream every time you consume one. I doubt I really need to tell you this is not good for you. Then there s all those empty calories! Obesity is a contributor to all kinds of health problems, so there s no good reason to consume all those calories devoid of nutrition. So what can you drink instead? Well, obviously water is a good choice, and your body can use water to help flush out toxins. However, some people don t want to drink water all the time and would like a little more variety. Teas of all kinds are good, and the occasional cup of coffee even has health benefits. There are also some bottled or canned drinks for when you re on the go that have flavoring without sugar or artificial sweeteners. Those made with stevia, a natural sweetener, are a good bet.

3 And if you can t live without a can of cola now and then, or whatever your favorite flavor soft drink happens to be, try Zevia for an occasional treat. This brand of soft drink can be found in health food stores or buy Zevia online. It is sweetened with natural stevia. It s expensive when compared with regular soft drinks, but sometimes you can catch it on sale and stock up. And if you just can t stand it without a regular soft drink, at the very least cut back on your soft drink consumption! Try to drink a little less each week, and gradually replace those soft drinks with healthier alternatives. For instance, if you always have a soft drink for lunch, change it to something like iced tea or water for that one time a day. Then move on to another time of day you usually have one, and switch that to something healthier also. Gradually you ll wean yourself from the need for that can of cola! If you stopped reading right here, and didn t change another thing about your diet, you d still be doing your body a huge favor by just changing what you drink. But make your body happier and read about more ways to change your diet for the better! 2. What s for breakfast? If your idea of breakfast is a donut and cup of coffee, it s time to rethink what you re eating. The studies showing people do better when they eat breakfast are talking about consuming a healthy breakfast and sorry, but that donut isn t it! Here again, it s important to avoid consuming so much sugar. A balance of protein and carbohydrates works better. For simple, easy breakfast, consider fruits, whole grain breads, and some form of protein. An example would be a healthy smoothie made of those ingredients.

4 If you enjoy eating cereal, look for whole grains that don t have a lot of added sugar. Oatmeal is a good breakfast food, but not the little packets of instant oatmeal that are half sugar! You can make oatmeal in a pot on the stove, in the microwave, or overnight in a little slow cooker. Eggs have gotten a bad rap in the past, but they are actually good for you. They are packed with protein! Boiled or poached, they re great for breakfast. Scrambled or fried are good also, as long as you watch the oils you re using to prepare them. 3. Change the oils you use. Speaking of cooking oils, a lot of people aren t aware how important it is to be using oils rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. The average diet has far too much Omega-6 and not enough Omega-3 in it. This imbalance helps produce a chronic inflammation in the body which can lead to all sorts of diseases. (The Great Cholesterol Lie has good info on this. Other good resources are books promoting foods high in omega-3 fatty acids, such as the classic The Omega Diet.) Here s the scoop. Oils are divided into three groups: saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated. This classification is derived from the number of bonds in the fatty acid chains of the oil. (It s a little bit technical, but hang in there just a minute!)

5 Saturated fats have single bonds between all the carbon atoms. Monounsaturated oils have only a single double bond in the chain while polyunsaturated oils have two or more double bonds in their fatty acid chains. However, not all polyunsaturated oils are created equal. Those oils that are high in omega-6 fatty acids may lower your cholesterol, but while getting the LDL cholesterol levels down is considered helpful by some medical practitioners, they also lower the HDL cholesterol which is the good cholesterol. These oils are also thought to possibly increase blood pressure and the risk of blood clots. On the other hand, poly-unsaturated oils that are high in omega-3 raise the levels of the good HDL cholesterol and help lower blood pressure and risk of blood clots. These oils include: Fish Oil Canola Oil Flaxseed Oil For even better results, use the monounsaturated oils. These oils not only help the HDL cholesterol levels, they lower LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, AND they may help lower your blood pressure. These oils include: Olive oil Canola oil (has both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated oils) Walnut oil

6 Saturated fats are not included in the oils as they are usually solid or semisolid at room temperature (butter, meat fat, cheese). The exceptions to this are palm oil, palm kernel oil, and coconut oil. Those 3 oils can be totally liquid, or may solidify depending on how they are processed. While saturated fats should be a more limited part of a healthy diet, more and more research indicates that coconut oil has healthful properties that can make it a good addition to your diet. Changing what oils you use is a very easy way to make your diet healthier so next time you need to buy oil, remember to get those high in omega-3 fatty acids. Canola oil is a good, bland all-purpose oil. Olive oil is good for cooking and salad dressings, as is walnut oil. Make the switch and change your diet for the better! 4. Eliminate Tans-fats While you are adding good oils that are high in omega-3 fatty acids to your diet, work to eliminate trans fats. And in this case, I do mean work. While it is becoming easier to find foods without trans fats, you really have to be diligent to read the labels on foods to find out which ones have trans fats. If you have somehow missed the rising negative publicity about trans fats, most of these substances are made by putting plant oils through a hydrogenation process and may contain up to 45% trans fat compared to the total fat. Baking shortenings usually have about 30% trans fats, whereas natural trans fats found in animal fats such as butter contain only 4%.

7 Trans fats contain no essential fatty acids. More and more scientific evidence shows trans fats produce health problems. However, they are good for increasing the shelf life of baked goods, for instance, so food manufacturers like to use trans fats. They are in all kinds of foods, so it s important to read labels to see what s there! However, with all the negative publicity surrounding trans-fats, it is becoming easier to find foods made without them. A lot of breads, for instance, now contain labels saying No Trans Fats. So while it means you might have to read the ingredients list, the easy choice to better health foods is to buy the foods labeled to have NO trans fats! 5. Reduce or eliminate the amount of HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) in your diet. So what exactly is HFCS? It is a chemically modified corn syrup, not a natural product. To quote Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest: "High-fructose corn syrup starts out as cornstarch, which is chemically or enzymatically degraded to glucose and some short polymers of glucose. Another enzyme is then used to convert varying fractions of glucose into fructose," says Jacobson. "High-fructose corn syrup just doesn't exist in nature."

8 He criticized early versions of the Corn Refiners Association's ad campaigns promoting HFCS because of their claims that high-fructose corn syrup is a "natural" product. The battle rages as to whether HFCS in and of itself is bad for you in the same way trans fats are bad for you. What IS certain, however, is the fact that too much of any high-calorie sweetener is bad for your health, and this stuff is everywhere! This ingredient has found its way into more and more of our food supply. It is a cheap sweetener, but it s not just in sweet foods. You will find it in some of the most unlikely places! Foods that you might not consider sweet often have high fructose corn syrup. Make no mistake, food manufacturers have done plenty of studies and know the human palate likes sugar, fat and salt. They aim to please that palate and sell as much of their products as possible. Not surprisingly, the bottom line is usually of more importance than whether a food is actually healthy. Caveat emptor indeed! Let the buyer beware, because it is up to YOU what foods you put in your mouth to fuel your body. And in the case of HFCS, the less you consume the better. Even if you feel it is safe, which is debatable, it is still a sugar and there is far too much sugar in the average diet. This creates known health risks, so it s only prudent to cut back on HFCS as much as possible. Here again, read the ingredients labels, and when you have a choice between a food product with HFCS and one without, choosing the one without HFCS is an easy way to improve your diet. 6. Shake the sugar habit! While some research suggests that HFCS has the potential for more health risks than other sweeteners, the fact is the average person s sweet tooth is way out of hand. We are accustomed to consuming a lot of really sweet foods.

9 Cutting back on the amount of sugar we put into foods is important for improving health. Easy changes include things such as gradually decreasing the amount of sugar you put on cereal, or in tea or coffee. If you re cooking or baking, cut back the amount you use in a recipe. Most recipes can stand the reduction, though you have to be more careful with how you change recipes for baked products. Even easier is to change from using sugar as your most used sweetener to stevia. It has no calories and is a natural product. It can be found in most health food stores or online in a liquid or powdered form. I believe you ll see more and more products available made with stevia. Truvia has already made it to the regular grocery stores. It is a natural sweetener made from rebiana, the best tasting part of the stevia leaf, erythritol and natural flavors. Erythritol is a sugar alcohol, another natural sweetener. This substance is 60 70% as sweet as table sugar yet it is almost non-caloric, does not affect blood sugar, and does not cause tooth decay. Although it is a sugar alcohol like xylitol and maltitol, it is absorbed into the bloodstream in the small intestine, before it enters the large intestine. Because of that, it usually does not have the laxative effects so often experienced after consumption of the sugar alcohols xylitol and maltitol. Artificial sweeteners are not the answer. The human body does not recognize these substances, and research is showing that the brain doesn t get the signal to quit eating! So instead of helping people lose weight, artificial sweeteners at best do nothing, and at worst tend to make people eat more. There are also many health risks associated with various artificial sweeteners. So when cutting back on sugar, if you need something sweet as a replacement, try Stevia or other natural sweeteners instead.

10 7. The Right Salt As for salt, most convenience and restaurant foods are loaded with it. And here again, it is a substance found in foods you wouldn t normally think of salty, such as pudding mixes. Too much table salt, or sodium chloride, in the diet it linked to hypertension and other disorders. Getting total control of your salt intake would mean cooking all your food from scratch. However, there are more and more salt-free choices on the market, and when the choice is available, choose the salt-free product. If it tastes too bland, you can always add a little salt, but you can t take it out once it s there! And you can control exactly how much salt you add. You can also control what KIND of salt you use. Obviously, table salt is the cheapest and most widely used form of salt. It is actually 97.5% sodium chloride and 2.5% chemicals such as moisture absorbents, and iodine. Dried at over 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, the excessive heat alters the natural chemical structure of the salt. According to Dr. Mercola, What remains after typical salt is "chemically cleaned" is sodium chloride -- an unnatural chemical form of salt that your body recognizes as something completely foreign. This form of salt is in almost every preserved product that you eat. Therefore, when you add more salt to your already salted food, your body receives more salt than it can dispose of. Natural crystal salt always promotes a healthy balance and does not contribute to high blood pressure like typical table salt. Natural salts such as Himalayan Salt have not been processed, so the salt retains its natural properties, crystalline structure, and trace minerals. The exact composition will vary. Sea salts are also usually not as processed as refined table salt, and retain the trace minerals.

11 While much of the medical community may scoff that there is any difference between using table salt and other salts, most alternative health practitioners would disagree. If the choice is between a refined product vs. a natural one, the latter wins most every time. Bonus Secret: Eat Low on the food chain. When choosing foods to eat, the closer it is to the original form, the more nutrients it has. The more you heat, water down, or otherwise process a food, the more nutrients are lost. Worse, most processed foods have chemical additives. All too often somewhere down the road it is discovered the additive is bad for your health. Food dyes would be an example. In much of Europe, even fast food places like McDonalds must use plant based dyes in their products, such as strawberry sundaes. In the U.S., where there is no legislation against it, we get to eat chemically produced dye. Many of these are linked to health problems. Refined flour is another prime example. The nutrients are stripped out in the refining process to make white flour, a few synthetic nutrients tossed back in, and the flour proclaimed wholesome. Instead, it spikes blood sugar and has lost much of the value as real food whereas whole wheat and other whole grain flours have nutrients left in and are a much better food value. The bottom line is that the less processing a food has, the fewer added chemicals, and the more nutrient dense it is -- providing more nutrients for the calories it contains the better that food is for you.

12 Summary of the Seven Secrets for a Healthier Diet. Whether you choose to do all of these at once or just try one at a time, these secrets will build a better diet. 1. Change what you drink, avoiding soft drinks and opting for water, teas, or other healthy beverages. 2. Eat a healthy breakfast to start your day off right! 3. Change the oils you use so that you have a better balance of Omega- 3 fatty acids vs. Omega-6 fatty acids. Remember, always opt for the Omega-3 oils! 4. Eliminate trans fats in your diet as much as possible. They have no redeeming value whatsoever and many health risks. 5. Reduce your consumption of HFSC (High Fructose Corn Syrup). Whether you believe it s bad like trans fats or not, it s a high-calorie sweetener found in far too many foods. 6. Reduce your consumption of regular sugar as well, and use natural sugars instead. 7. Cut back on refined table salt. Opt for natural salt when possible. And remember to eat low on the food chain, putting as many healthy, nutrient dense foods in your diet as possible. Best wishes for healthy diet and a happy life! - The Folks at HealthFoodMadeEasy.com