Author Credits, Audrey Sommerfeld, Founder and the CEO at Jump To Health Inc.
Globally obesity is on the rise, and with it increases in health challenges like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, memory, mood, and gut issues. This increase can be traced back to flawed research that moved us all to eating ‘low fat’ and more carbohydrates – with the food pyramid telling us to eat 6-11 servings of carbs like pasta, bread, cereal, and rice each day. These carbs turn into sugar in the body, spiking insulin, cravings, feeding cancer, disrupting our gut health, and leaving us feeling depleted. We eat too many carbs, which are typically low in nutrition, and then eat more because they provide that sugar feeling when we eat them.
There are only 3 things food companies can do to make food taste good – sugar, salt, fat. In the early 1990s, when fat was removed, sugar increased. We went from eating about 26 pounds of sugar per person, per year to now well over 150 pounds or about 8 oz. a day! We don’t think we are eating this much- but it is hidden in ‘healthy’ foods. Yogurt can be like eating 6-7 donuts for breakfast. Barbecue sauce like melting a candy bar on your dinner. Ketchup can be 1/3 sugar and also a lot of salt or sodium – so we are pouring sugar, salt on our French fries that were coated in sugar to make them brown and crisp.
A key challenge is education. We lack nutrition education in our schools. Even our physicians and health care workers get typically less than 10 hours of nutrition training. So what can you do? Start simply –if you see sugar listed in the first 4 ingredients on a label – avoid it. Learn about different types of sugars – some sound healthy like crystalline fructose (a type of high fructose corn syrup) or fructose, because we know fructose is found in fruit. But in fruit, this sugar is offset by fiber. In many foods, there is no fiber to offset the impact of these sugars in your body. So add a prebiotic fiber to the diet to help offset and slow the absorption of sugar hidden in your food while you boost your gut health and boost the healthy probiotics in your gut that have an impact on your sleep, your mood, even your memory. This will help you feel fuller, and eat less too.
Hippocrates said “Let Food Be Thy Medicine, And Let Medicine Be Thy Food”, and today as we all focus on our immune system during a global pandemic, let’s take time to learn about healthy eating, and not be swayed by the politics of our food supply. Education and good nutrition have the power to make us feel more energized, to boost our gut health and our mood, to support our immune system, to help us have inner energy naturally. With good nutrition and quality supplements, we don’t need those high caffeine drinks or stimulants to lose weight. We can end our addiction to sugar, and push back by taking control of our health, and learning. With good quality supplements, and healthy eating programs, we can work to help others live better and get Inner Fit.
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