Are you overweight? Often fatigued? Doctor nagging you to change what you eat? Spend too much time consuming fast food?
The vast majority of fast food should be outlawed -- or would be if I ruled the planet. The food is stripped of most nutrition, rarely fresh, often pre-packaged in bulk quantities at a production plant before being shipped to the restaurant. Thus, most of your fast food was prepared from frozen, canned, or dehydrated materials and reheated -- or worse, stuck under a heat lamp.
The "food" itself is mostly fats and simple carbohydrates, seasoned with salt and sugar... resulting in high calories and carbs and low nutrition, which will leave you wanting more about 30 minutes after finishing your meal... and the cravings will start anew. Don't forget what this stuff does to your blood sugar levels and spiking/tanking.
In fact, fast food should be rebranded as fast-way-to-die-food.
These establishments use the lowest quality ingredients (because of profits) -- which means more toxic chemicals, more antibiotics, more hormones, more pesticides -- as well as the worst additives in sugars, salts, and inflammatory oils. The food quality is some of the lowest in the land.
In fact, even the main ingredients (such as factory eggs, meat, cheese) are diluted with chemicals fillers and preservatives. In one study, a fast-food hamburger had a meat content is only 2.1 to 14.8 percent. Please do not even mention the completely chemical "meatless" burgers, which are the scariest. (Read more here.)
What's the harm in fast foods? Consider these ingredients:
Please start carefully reading and analyzing labels.
A 15-year study of more than 3,000 people found that eating fast food is linked to weight gain and insulin resistance. (Read more here.)
Real food is eaten in its most natural state and can contain these benefits:
In addition, eating fresh (or fresh-frozen), real food is healthier for your body, brain, heart, skin. Buying real food, especially from your local farmers and ranchers, builds community.
The closer you can eat food in its natural state, the better. Studies show the positive benefits from eating diets based on whole, real foods -- in reducing risks for heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.
When you do buy prepared foods, many experts (including Michael Pollan in his book Food Rules) suggest the Five-Ingredient-Rule, which states you should avoid buying any packaged foods with more than five ingredients -- and especially do not buy if you cannot pronounce the ingredients. (The idea is that the more ingredients and additives, the greater potential for harm and low nutritional values.)
Note about oils: Please ONLY use coconut, olive, or avocado oils in your cooking, baking. It's been shown that many seed oils are extremely harmful, causing inflammation, including: canola, corn, vegetable, sunflower, safflower, soy, cottonseed, grapeseed. (Most of these are also GMO.)
Super Foods:
While it is very important to clean up your pantry and focus on what you're eating, it's also important for healing to:
Finally, it goes without saying that healing comes in many modalities -- and the more of these you can start incorporating into your life, the better, faster, and healthier your healing.
Dr. Randall S. Hansen is an educator, author, and advocate, as well as founder and CEO of
EmpoweringSites.com,
a network of empowering and transformative Websites, including EmpoweringAdvice.com.
Dr. Hansen's latest book, Triumph Over Trauma, is available in paperback and ebook versions.
Dr. Hansen has been helping empower people to achieving success his entire adult life.
He is also founder of EnhanceMyVocabulary.com,
MyCollegeSuccessStory.com, and
EmpoweringRetreat.com.
He is a published author, with several books, chapters in books, and hundreds
of articles. Dr. Hansen is also an educator, teaching business
and marketing at the college level for more than 25 years. Learn more by visiting his personal Website,
RandallSHansen.com. You can also check out
Dr. Randall Hansen on LinkedIn.
