JOIN USWhat you eat as low-calorie food is still calorific. In fact, all processed foods are detrimental to your health in the long run. Dr Anu Gupta disabuses you of wrong notions about food, advising you to cut the junk out.
Did you say you want to have a supple physique, renewed energy and radiant skin? Then it’s time you started eating more of real foods. The solution to wellness, really, is simple. We need to forget the fancy food lingo, stay away from anything branded with a health claim (carrots don’t need health claims) and stick to the basics. Eat foods that are as close to their natural state, and good health will follow. Weight loss will be a given. Most people have little or no idea about what constitutes real foods and what constitutes junk.
What are real foods?
Real food is one that can be found in the wild. They are the foods that cannot be found in the aisles of grocery stores. They are not found in bags or boxes. They are natural, whole and nutrient-dense. They, typically, do not contain added ingredients like sugar, salt or fat. They are the foods our ancestors have been eating since eons. Real foods rot and grow mold over time.
So what is junk?
If food can sit in your pantry for months or years and not go bad, that’s junk for your body. If it contains ingredients that you can’t pronounce, that’s literally trash. Yes, this rules out anything that contains processing chemicals or preservatives and almost everything that contains more than a few ingredients.
Junk foods are synthetic and the ingredients are subject to heavy tampering and modifications.
Here is why you should discard the junk and start eating foods that will love you back:
Foods and moods
Want to know why you feel groggy, low and irritated, all for no apparent
reason? It’s time you look at what’s on your plate. Few realise that junk foods can also cause people to become angry and depressed. You can’t expect to feel great if you continue to eat junk food often. On the other hand, real food levels out your mood, making you feel lighter and more productive.
They’re addictive
It’s no wonder that you “can’t just eat one”. Scientists have already proven the
phenomenon of food addiction time and again. Junk foods are designed to light up the reward centre of your brain, causing release of dopamine, that gives one the sensation of pleasure. Now, pleasure is not that bad. In fact, it’s rather good and
important for you to feel it often.
However when the brain is stimulated in this way with highly-rewarding food (junk), it can drive addiction in the same way that addictive drugs do, thus resulting in you wanting more and more of it. To put it simply, junk food is addictive and drives chronic overconsumption of calories, leading to fat gain.
Wrecking digestion
None of the chemicals added in junk foods - that scientists have recently invented - are suited for or recognisable to the human body. They are foreign agents and the body just doesn’t know how to handle them. When you eat foods that your body doesn’t recognise, it panics.
Try as it might to heal itself and be healthy, it cannot succeed if harmful foods constantly work against it. It doesn’t matter if it’s low-calorie, sugar-replaced, low-fat or low-carbohydrate; no amount of chemical tweaking will make unhealthy food healthy. If it has chemicals in it, it is quite likely not good for you. Those chocolate cookies, instant noodles, french fries and frizzy drinks pollute your internal ecosystem and produce toxins that clog the body.
Inviting chronic illnesses
Even if you don’t have a weight problem, do pay attention to your eating habits.
Recent scientific data has shown inflammation to be the main culprit in causing various debilitating illnesses, including heart disease, dementia, neurological problems, respiratory failure and cancer. Junk foods may contain dozens of artificial chemicals that are in no way real food. These include preservatives, artificial colours, artificial flavours, texturants and so on.
Food manufacturers claim that artificial food additives are safe, but research shows otherwise. A hundred years ago, a strawberry milkshake would’ve consisted of milk and strawberries only. Today, it’s a mix of dozens of chemicals, professionally engineered by scientists in a lab, to make sure it is incredibly tasty and addictive. We are not designed to consume chemicals. When we do so for prolonged periods of time, things are bound to get messy.
Weight struggles
Junk foods are grossly devoid of nutrients. You can’t fool the body into assimilating artificially-added nutrients. Further, there’s no way that a lab can “add back in” all of the thousands of photochemical and trace nutrients found in whole foods.
Science hasn’t even begun to uncover all of them. The best way to ensure your body gets the benefits of all the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that nature has to offer is to eat real, whole, unprocessed foods.
Take home message
Junk foods do not belong in our bodies. Our bodies are extremely clever. When we try to feed them something that is processed, they recognise that they’re
eating something, but can’t figure out what it is because it’s missing so many
nutrients and its molecular structure has been altered.
So, to make up for the missing nutrients, our bodies tap into their own reserves and they end up taking minerals from our blood and bones. Obviously, this is not a smart move in the long run. Modified foods contain phosphate additives that magnify taste, texture and shelf-life. These carcinogens also cause rapid aging, kidney failure and weak bones. By eating local, fresh, whole, real foods you really can’t really go wrong. Your body is designed to eat food in its most natural form, and if you feed it accordingly, the body will reward you by carrying you through a long, healthy and happy life.
(The author is a Delhi-based weight-loss specialist)