Designer Diet Fads
Paleo, Ketogenic, Atkins, The Zone: if your living in the 21st century than you have heard of at least one of these fad diets. They each have their own claims, but mainly evolve around weight loss. These types of diets include eliminating certain foods and restricting what you consume down to a numbers game. They all are high protein and low carbohydrate diets, just with different titles and though this may make you loose body fat and look more like a model on the cover of a magazine, its not the healthiest lifestyle mentally or physically, its also not sustainable for the body or environment, nor does it provide the real nutrients you need to thrive.
Due to the popularity of these fads driven by the media and big dollar signs, there are plenty of companies that focus on creating food products that meet the numbers requirements of a low fat, high protein, low carb diet and are utilizing ingredient substitutes to meet the trends, pushing real nutrition and balanced health aside. Most consumers get excited when they see low carb or sugar free on the food label. When you scroll down the Nutrition Label and see mostly all zeros in the percentile column, you think, “Oh well this is low in everything, so it must be good!” The problem here is our bodies are designed to consume and metabolize REAL FOOD- which yes, includes CARBOHYDRATES. We need calories and nutrients from foods that exist in nature. Relying on processed food manufacturers to design food products for us to eat so a certain diet can be followed is absolute nonsense, but a craze today non the less.
The processed food industry has gotten stealthy at additives and substitutes to fool you into thinking what your eating is really healthy. All those bright colored labels and catch phrases that the media pushes hard, such as: high protein, low carb, fat free, sugar free, low sodium etc. These products are designed this way to simply and purely to make money, they are not to get you healthy! If there is a trend, you can bet these companies will spend billions just to catch the wave and market their product to you. They will hire scientists to find some threshold of evidence or a well known athlete to ensure their marketing tactics work.
Worst Sugar Substitutes ( found in many processed foods) :
Aspartame
Sucralose
Acesulfame K
Saccharin
Xylitol, Sorbitol, Erythritol, & any other sugar alcohols that end in –itol
These sugar substitutes have been linked to migraines, optical dysfunction, kidney failure, bladder disease, obesity and Type II diabetes.
Consumers love to count what they are eating and restricting certain foods. It provides a sense of control and satisfaction that what you are doing is best for you, but is it really? If your banking on what you see on TV or in any popular media stream, its just another fad diet! We have apps and calories counters down to each nutrient, the daily pressure to hit your numbers goals is constantly haunting your mind, most of your brain power evolves around this exhausting counting and once you go over your goals everything else falls apart, you feel like you have failed. Humans have enough pressure each day, being chained to your phone counting everything you eat is certainly not going to help you be healthy or happy. It is encouraged to keep notes of what your eating so you can look back and honestly see how your eating and what needs improvement, but that’s really as far as it should go. You will dread food, it will become boring and all this counting is not going to add value or quality to your life. All that counting is mostly focused on eating the wrong kinds of food, such as, meat, dairy and highly processed products, which have been scientifically linked to heart disease, obesity, Diabetes and various types of cancer.
Don’t be afraid of real food in this age of designer processed food products! If you focus on implementing real, fresh food, you don’t need to do the dieting and counting and added stress to your life to fit a mold of a “diet” that is outdated and not healthy for your mind or body. Create a lifestyle for yourself where nutrition matters, no shortcuts, no excuses, because your health depends on it!
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