It seems a little bit ironic that so many people seemingly “know ” what good nutrition is, yet so many people suffer from diet and lifestyle ailments and disease like being overweight or obese, chronic fatigue,  type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high triglyceride levels.  There is a clear disconnect, and until the bridge is built it’s a reality to say that nothing will change.

Food is killing you.

Nobody wants to admit that because it’s not recognized as so in the mainstream media.  In fact, it may offend you and your family to even read those words.

If you dig a little deeper you might be surprised on how the food industry has conditioned us to be addicted to food, and essentially has us buying more and more of the food that our bodies are allergic to, causing so many health problems ruining our lives and in the long run cutting our lives short.

Here are 3 signs you might be living in the invisible food prison:

1. MSG in Food

80% of  processed  foods contain MSG.

It’s no secret that MSG (monosodium glutamate)  is used to make lab rats obese.  Rodents aren’t naturally overweight or obese so they make a perfect test subject.  When obesity needs to be studied, the fastest way to do this is to take a rat and feed it MSG.  If eating MSG is a tested and proven method for obesity on rodents, than what happens to humans when they eat MSG?

When you eat MSG it stimulates your pancreas to crank out 3x as much insulin as it normally would. Your body doesn’t know what to do with the excess amount of converted sugar in the blood stream so it stores it as fat.  Additionally, because of the extreme surge of insulin upon ingestion, around the corner lies a blood sugar crash, which tricks you into being hungry way sooner than you should be.  When blood sugar levels drop like the hearts of Miami Heat fans did when LeBron opted to head back to Cleveland, then you are vulnerable to make some questionable food decisions.

John Erb, the author of  , and a former researcher at the University of Waterloo in Canada, explains the full history behind MSG and how food companies have snuck the destructive ingredient in many foods under a different name

“Sneaky ” Food Industry Names for MSG:

• Gelatin
• Calcium
• Caseinate
• Ajinomoto
• Monosodium glutamate
• Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein (HVP)
• Textured Protein
• Monopotassium glutamate
• Hydrolyzed Plant Protein (HPP)
• Yeast Extract
• Glutamate
• Autolyzed Plant Protein
• Yeast food or nutrient
• Glutamic Acid Sodium
• Caseinate Autolyzed Yeast
• Vegetable Protein Extract
• Senomyx
• Natural flavor

2. Sugar

Nearly 70% of Americans and 1.5 billion people worldwide are overweight, and that’s expected to balloon to 2.3 billion people worldwide by 2015. The big player in this epidemic?

Sugar.  

According tohere is sugar by the numbers:

• Sugar is eight times more addictive than cocaine
• The average American eats 1 pound of sugar every day.
• There are 600,000 processed food items in our environment, and 80% of them contain added sugar.
• 90% of kids and 50% of the U.S. population drinks soda once a day.
• One can of soda a day increases a kid’s chance of obesity by 60%.
• You have to walk 41/2 miles to burn off one 20-ounce soda
• You’d have to run 4 miles a day for a week to burn off one supersize fast-food meal
• Nearly 70% of Americans and 1.5 billion people worldwide are overweight.

With a diet consisting of that much sugar daily, you have an elevated insulin spike which spurs a series of events leading to more belly fat, boosting your bad cholesterol that contributes to heart disease and it also impacts your hormones that can lead to depression and decreased sex drive.  Sugar is the real deal when it comes to food addiction, that’s why you can’t seem to shake it.  It needs to be taken seriously.  I typically advise people to look at it like an addiction and treat it like one.  This is a brain chemistry issue, not a will power issue so that’s where we need to start.  For most, supplementing with some free form amino acids like L-glutamine, L-tyrosine and GABA can jump start a re-boot to their brain chemistry relieving the monstrous cravings for sugar.  Once these are leveled off, then think about adding in unprocessed foods that taste great.

3. Animal Protein

For many of us, consuming animal protein is just a part of life.  We grew up eating it, we grew up being surrounded by it and till this present day we don’t know any other way but to base our nutrition and meals around animal protein.  Steak …..it’s what’s for dinner. Right?  But what if you could satisfy your protein requirements without animal protein?  Not only satisfy your nutritional requirements, but what if you could be healthier without animal protein?  Crazy to think, I know, but lets consider that heart disease and cancer are amongst the largest causes of death today.   Increasing research is now showing that there is a correlation of animal protein consumption and these two factors of heart disease and cancer.

Heart disease is the number one health problem today according to the American Heart Association, and is the leading cause of death. The controversial piece in that fact is that most heart disease cases are diet related caused by animal product consumption.

According to, affluent people can afford to eat a diet with a central focus of beef, pork and/or chicken, and almost all do. Most also have one or more risk factors that predict premature death and illness:

• 1/3 Have elevated cholesterol due to cholesterol in animal product and saturated fat
• 1/3 have hypertension
• More than 30% are obese
• More than 65% are overweight
• 1/2 die prematurely of heart disease
• 1/2 men develop life-threatening cancer
• 1/3 women develop life-threatening cancer
• Over age 60, 30% have gallbladder disease
• One in seven suffer with severe arthritis
• Most have GI troubles

 advocates that a diet rich in vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts and fruits is the exact diet that not only can reverse heart disease but is also the cure to type 2 diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and will also protect against cancer.

Cancer is another health problem that plagues many people.

Conventional thought assumes it’s genetic and there is some validity in that, however what is more and more apparent is that diet and lifestyle have a huge influence on the risk of getting cancer as well.  The Physicians Committee, in their write up,  , demonstrates that those studied who avoided animal protein were much less likely to develop any cancer type disease. It was interesting to find that the increased amount of fat intake derived from animal protein and dairy product has a direct impact on a women’s risk to get breast cancer due to higher levels of estrogen production. Similarly for men, with colon cancer, a diet high in fat derived from animal and dairy product increased their risk significantly.

Photo – shutterstock.com