Let’s play a game: What spikes your blood sugar, surges insulin, promotes diseases, speeds the process of calories turning to body fat and has little affect on your appetite? Sorry, vegetarians – it isn’t meat, it’s refined foods.
Refined foods are fiberless plant foods that have been denatured and stripped of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other vital nutrients. Basically imitations of natural foods, they are devoid of any nutritional value that does not satisfy hunger and just causes major damage to your health. Examples of refined foods are white flour, wheat flour, pastries, white pasta, white rice, French fries and chips, all of which consist of simple carbohydrates.
What you should be looking for are foods enriched with complex carbohydrates. For those on a “low carb” diet, people are trading in those complex carbohydrates, which is a definite offset for a healthy diet due to the fact they are just trading one problem for another. Their diets are lacking nutrients, particularly antioxidants and vitamins only found in plant foods that are essential for good health. These carbohydrates enrich health, maintain blood sugar levels, and keep you feeling full longer because they contain natural fiber and all natural nutrients, thus keeping you away from constant trips to the buffet line.
Unfortunately for vegetarians, just because they think they are much healthier compared to those who do eat meat doesn’t make it so. The refined foods they most likely eat are just every bit bad for the body as if they chowed down on some animal flesh. So for those of you not abstaining from meat for reasons related to the animal activist movement, you’ve probably been wasting your time.
Refined foods also lose all natural flavorings. Basically, you’re enjoying the fresh taste of chemical flavoring. Sounds mouth-watering, right? Think about this: billions of dollars are spent by manufacturers to fund research to mix ingredients to seduce the consumer. Do you crave chocolate? It’s not just chocolate you’re craving. Chocolate consists of 50% chocolate and 50% fat. Still sound appealing? Maybe Americans are just addicted to fat. Maybe that’s why there are 10-car-long lines at all times at fast food joints. We have not only lost our taste for natural, whole foods, but we have come to prefer the taste of chemicals in our diets.
