Let’s Talk Junk Food
There is junk food and then there is junk food – of which you may not even think is junk food.
The junk food you are all familar with are the lollies, soft drinks, chips, sweet biscuits etc. And then there is the food hidden in our shopping aisles with claims of being healthy – baked not fried, good in fibre, protein etc which they may well be but it doesn’t actually make them ‘healthy’ or good for us.
The food we think is food, like breakfast cereals, biscuits, sauces, packaged dinners is in fact junk food of a type – maybe not as bad as a bag of lollies however is often of very little nutritional value or what value it has is negated by the other ingredients being added. Think sugars, additives, preservatives, flavours, colours and ingredients we can’t even pronounce – with very little real food in them – frankly we have been misinformed, some intentionally, some not.
Having worked in the food industry, I was responsible and saw it first hand on how to market it. Some products I worked on where very healthy like Farmers Union Greek Style Yogurts still made with good quality ingredients – some were iffy at best – think Diet Yogurts. We added lots of flavours, thickeners, colours and artificial sweeteners.
And we are consuming food that was not even around 100 years ago. Hence we are experiencing disease as we have never experienced before. This is partly why…After the war years and exploding population it was determined that to feed the mass there were 4 problems*
The solution to four problems plaguing humanity was to
- How to produce enough food to feed almost everyone
- How to do so inexpensively
- How to preserve that food so I can be stored and transported safely
- How to make it highly palatable
HOWEVER if you have all these 4 characteristics you pretty much guaranteed to end up with the SAD (Standard American/Australian Diet)…..cheers to that!
BUT the fifth criterion missing is
- How to make it harmless – the SAD was not generated to harm us but the fact is it has – if consumed in excess – and it’s the consequence of the four points colliding with millions of years of eveolution. It’s sort of like cigarettes – it slowly kills us or at most makes the last years of our life in disease.
When you are out shopping next, stick to foods that are unprocessed or minimally processed think meat, vegetables, fruit, quality dairy, nuts, seeds, and quality oils. Lastly read the labels if there is added sugar, colours, flavours, numbers in brackets or ingredients you don’t know then leave it on the shelf.
And if you want some real food recipes, feel free to explore our ALTA Fitness Recipe Page.
*Dr Peter Attia MD – Outlive The Science of Art & Longevity and The Drive Podcast