By
Dr. Joseph Mercola
with Rachael Droege
If you woke up this morning and ate what you considered to be a
healthy breakfast: wheat toast, orange juice, and eggs cooked in
vegetable oil, you’ve just succeeded in eating three of the
five "health" foods to avoid. It can be frustrating to
determine what truly is healthy with all of the new health claims
coming out, not to mention the old, deep-seated claims that are
just plain wrong but are so engrained in our heads that they’re
hard to change. The following five foods are widely known as generally
"healthy" foods, but as you’ll soon read, you’re
much better off without them.
Wheat Bread
Since 1990, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines have recommended that Americans
eat six to 11 servings of bread and other grain foods every day,
and many consumers dutifully purchase wheat bread as opposed to
white bread because they believe it is more nutritious. The American
Academy of Pediatrics even says that 'whole-wheat bread offers a
nutritional advantage over white bread.'
While this may be true to some extent, wheat bread should not be
considered a healthy or necessary part of the diet. Wheat is often
contaminated with mycotoxins
and no matter what the form, wheat, whole wheat, cracked wheat,
sprouted wheat, and so on, they will all be capable of causing the
same problems including:
Intolerance to wheat is far
more common than doctors typically recognize. I was once fooled
enough so that when I was in medical school nearly 25 years ago
my nickname was "Dr. Fiber," as I was always preaching
the benefits of whole grains.
Little did I know that wheat, and nearly all other grains, rapidly
convert to sugar and rapidly
accelerate aging and chronic illness in most, although certainly
not all of us.
Unless you are seriously underweight, most of us would best be
served by limiting or avoiding wheat altogether. I was well over
40 years old before I realized this kernel of truth and I probably
chopped a good 20 years off the end of the limit of my life span
by not applying it earlier.
If you have a metabolic
type that is carbohydrate oriented (this is only one-third of
people) and you are not overweight and don’t have high cholesterol,
high blood pressure or diabetes then grains are a possible option
for you. But, rest assured that if you indulge in grains to excess
you are heading for any number of diseases. I encourage you to read
my new book to find out
more about your nutritional type and why avoiding wheat will likely
mean an increased level of health for you.
Vegetable Oil
Polyunsaturated oils, which include vegetable oils like corn, soy,
safflower and canola , are
the worst oils you can eat, as generally Americans’ intake
of omega-6 fat from these vegetable oils is far too high.
Experts looking at the dietary ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty
acids, which are the healthy fats found in fish
oil and cod liver oil , suggest that in early human history
the ratio was about 1:1. Currently most Americans eat a dietary
ratio that falls between 20:1 and 50:1. The optimal ratio is most
likely closer to the original ratio of 1:1. For most of us this
means greatly reducing the omega-6 fatty acids we consume and increasing
the amount of omega-3 fatty acids.
Further, polyunsaturated oils are the worst oils
to cook with because they tend to become easily oxidized or
rancid when exposed to heat from cooking. This results in the formation
of trans fat and damaging
free radicals.
Unfortunately, the truly healthy oil, coconut
oil, is regarded as the ‘dangerous’ oil and vegetables
oils are regarded as healthy, when it should be the other way around.
Soy
In recent years soy has emerged as a ‘near perfect’ food,
with supporters claiming it can provide an ideal source of protein,
lower cholesterol, protect against cancer and heart disease, reduce
menopause symptoms, and prevent osteoporosis, among other things.
However, numerous studies have found that soy products may:
Perhaps the most disturbing of soy’s ill effects on health
has to do with its phytoestrogens that can mimic the effects of
the female hormone estrogen. These phytoestrogens have been found
to have adverse effects on various human tissues, and drinking even
two glasses of soy milk daily for one month has enough of the chemical
to alter a woman’s menstrual cycle.
Soy is particularly problematic for infants, and soy
infant formulas should be avoided. It has been estimated that
infants who are fed soy formula exclusively receive five birth control
pills worth of estrogen every day.
Pasteurized Dairy
Despite the widespread notion that milk is healthy, drinking pasteurized
milk is frequently associated with a worsening of health.
This is particularly sad because milk is one of the healthiest
foods available prior to its being pasteurized. Raw dairy, as opposed
to the pasteurized dairy that is sold in most grocery stores, is
something I strongly advise nearly everyone to regularly consume.
If you are a carb metabolic
type then raw milk is typically preferable, while if you are
a protein type raw cream is likely a better choice due to its higher
fat content.
The pasteurization process creates many problems in milk. As Sally
Fallon of the Weston Price Foundation states:
Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content,
denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamin B12 and vitamin
B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated
with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth
problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and
cancer.
Calves fed pasteurized milk die before maturity. Raw milk sours
naturally, but pasteurized milk turns putrid and processors must
remove slime and pus from pasteurized milk by a process of centrifugal
clarification. Inspection of dairy herds for disease is not required
for pasteurized milk.
Although raw milk is not commercially available, I have found a
truly superior source of "real" organic raw dairy: Organic
Pastures Dairy Company. Never processed, never pasteurized and
never homogenized, these raw dairy products are high in antioxidants,
vitamins (including B-12), all 22 essential amino acids, natural
enzymes, natural probiotics and good fatty acids. Also, none of
the individually named cows are ever given antibiotics, hormones
or GMOs--and only pasture, natural grains, and approved organic
homeopathic methods are used to feed and care for the cows.
In addition, if you are in the Chicago area there is an Amish farmer
who comes in regularly and has developed a legal cow-share program,
and you can purchase the raw
milk through him. If you live in another area, Sally Fallon
has compiled a Web
site that provides further information about this important
food source, including where you can purchase
raw milk.
Orange Juice (and All Fruit Juice)
Fruit juice has about eight full teaspoons of sugar
per eight-ounce glass. This sugar is typically a fruit sugar called
fructose, which is every bit as dangerous as regular table sugar
since it will also cause a major increase in insulin
levels.
Further, many commercial orange juices are contaminated with mold
from damaged fruit that are processed. So if you drink commercial
orange juice regularly you will be exposed to these mold toxins.
This doesn’t mean that you should avoid
fruit, just fruit juice. When the fruit is intact and whole,
its fiber will somewhat moderate the release of fructose into the
bloodstream as well as somewhat moderate insulin release. However,
if you are overweight, have high blood pressure or high blood sugar,
it would probably be wise to avoid most fruits until you have these
problems under control.
This is especially true if you are a protein nutritional type. Carb
types do far better with fruits, especially citrus fruits, in general.
