Read Your Food Labels, people!!

Every day, people are being deceived into thinking they are buying healthy foods when they buy things with such labels as 'fat free', or 'sugar free'. They faithfully buy these products but then notice no improvement in their health, rather they notice the weight stays on and perhaps piles on even more, and their cholesterol levels keep rising.

Take a look at the food ingredient label below, from a 'health food/cereal'. What do you think of it?

I tell you, the box that this product came in, is probably healthier than the product itself.

Most every week at the surgery, someone will moan to me that they don't understand why their health indices are not improving, seeing as they eat only low or no fat products and don't use sugar but use sweeteners.

So today let me explain to you once and for all what's what.

Whenever a food claims to be fat free or low fat, (check the ingredient label and you will find that...) sugar has been added to it to make it palatable for you. This is processed sugar. Guess what happens to it in your body: it wreaks havoc to your metabolism, and drives your hormones to cause you to store it as fat.

So your processed 'fat-free' foods are actually making you fatter and sicker.

Whenever a food claims to be sugar free, chances are it contains sweeteners like aspartame. Apart from the fact that aspartame is a known poison (a later article will deal with this very real, very serious issue), feeding your body with these 'low calorie sweeteners' also messes with the hormones that control hunger and satiety, causing you to have impaired controls such that you are unable to know when you are actually full - so you wind up eating more overall, leading to overall weight gain.

When a food contains sugar, it's processed sugar, which causes you to release the hormone insulin. Insulin being released more than normal due to high sugar intake (such as if you eat the product whose label is shown above ), causes your body to store the excess sugar as fat. The more fat you have the more insulin resistant you become, and this puts you at risk of a whole host of chronic deadly diseases, including diabetes mellitus and heart disease, not to mention overweight and obesity.

Note that 'sugar' on a food label ingredient list, includes anything that ends in '-ose' eg dextrose, fructose (with high fructose corn syrup being one of the worst out there...), sucrose, etc.

Folks, ignorance is NOT bliss.
What you don't know WILL hurt you.

Take control of your health today: read labels. Avoid processed foods. Avoid fat-free or sugar-free things. Avoid foods containing sugar.

Rather, seek out sources of food which are wholesome and healthful and have had minimal handling from origin.

If you eat meat, seek out the free range, grass-fed variety, which has not had any hormones or antibiotics injected into it (such chemicals get stored in the fat of such animals, so if you're not getting your meat from a farm that rears grass-fed , chemical-free animals, you should eat lean cuts of meat).

If you take dairy, seek out raw dairy that's from cows that have been reared as described above (grass fed, chemical-free). Unprocessed dairy is healthy if you're not allergic to dairy. It's the processed stuff (pasteurized, UHT ) that causes a lot of harm though.

Train yourself to enjoy the sweetness that comes from fresh fruit- but don't over eat these either as too much of a good thing can be bad...

But please do not be one of those people who gets deceived by smart, glossy marketing tactics.

Read your food labels and don't get suckered into unhealthy foods and drinks pretending to be healthy.

For an overview on what constitutes a healthy lifestyle, pop on over to www.doctorkem.com and read about
The 8 Pillars of A Healthy Lifestyle





About The Author
Dr Kem Thompson is a General Practitioner, Author and Speaker. She specializes in Healthy Lifestyle medicine and is passionate about health & fitness, personal development and Women's issues. Subscribe today to her no-nonsense FREE 'Health & Success Newsletter' to receive practical tips, techniques and strategies you can use NOW to improve your health and life. You will receive 2 thank-you gifts when you subscribe at http://www.doctorkem.com