Avoid Eating These 4 Unhealthy Foods to Live a Long Life
What you eat is directly related to how long you live.
So, today we are going to look at what are the foods harmful to your health.
They are so deadly that causes some diseases like cancer and heart diseases and sometimes if it’s not treated timely then it causes death too.
Let me go deeper into this to explain why.
Eating well is very important for good health.
I’ll explain all these foods which is worst and unhealthy for your body.
Now the question is,
What makes food, an unhealthy food?
So, what makes food unhealthy?
Here’s the answer.
The preparation of food and ingredients contains in food are the reasons that makes food unhealthy.
Let’s understand by example,
When you go to the market to buy vegetables or food ingredients, you buy them by seeing if they are good to eat or not.
So, the question is, if you check the vegetables to see if they are good to eat or not, then how do you know what kind of vegetables they used in cooking? What kind of edible oils do they use in their cooking?
All of these things have to do with your diet.
So without further ado, let’s get started.
Contents
1. Junk Foods or Fast Foods
2. Saturated Foods
3. Processed Meats
4. Added Sugar
1. Junk Foods or Fast Foods
The global fast food market size was USD 862.05 billion in 2020. And it’s expected to grow around 1428 billion by 2028.
In fact, world’s largest fast-food chain, McDonald’s, sold up to 300+ billion burgers. And that numbers are still growing.
CDC data of consumption of fast foods by sex and age: United states [2013–2016] shows that:
During 2013–2016, 36.6% of adults eat fast foods in united states alone. That’s mean, over 80 million of the peoples eating fast foods every day, which is huge numbers.
What fast food does in your body? and why it’s not good for your health?
People eat fast food for two reasons:
First reason is Taste and the second is that you don’t have to wait for long time. Just place an order and your burger will be ready in just 4–5 minutes.
But is it really good for you?
Actually, what makes fast food unhealthy is its preparation method and ingredients.
Ingredients which is harmful to your body are excess amount of sodium, high amount of sugar and unhealthy fats.
Sodium
Your body needs small amount of sodium (salt) to work properly but if its limit exceeds then sodium can be bad for your health.
The FDA finds higher intake of sodium in human body increases risk of high blood pressure, and because of this you get very close to the diseases such as heart and kidney diseases, stroke and heart attacks.
Sugar
Higher sugar intake causes high blood pressure, diabetes and fatty liver disease.
Trans-Fat
Unhealthy fats include trans-fat which increases the risk of heart attack, type 2 diabetes and stroke.
There is zero amount of trans fat intake required for our body.
It’s also bad for cholesterol level.
One study {1} shows that, at the young stage (Adolescent stage), junk foods have negative impact on brain functions results cognitive impairments and altered reward processing.
Cognitive impairments {2} means difficulty to learn new things, remember things, affects concentration and decision-making process also.
Solution:
1. Avoid eating too much fast food. For example, if your daily habit is to eat 2–3 burgers a day, then correct it and eat 1 burger a day. It’s just an example, not recommendation.
2. Try to make your burger at home.
3. As per American Heart association, track your intakes and limit your calorie intake from saturated fat i.e., 5 to 6%
For example, if you need 2000 calories a day then you need to take only 120 calories from saturated fat.
Which means 14–15 gram. This is a recommendation by AHA.
4. Read nutritional information of pre-packaged foods. (food labels)
5. Cut on salt and sugary fast foods.
2. Saturated Fat Foods
Saturated fat is unhealthy fat along with trans-fat.
Many studies {1} have found that eating unsaturated fat foods rather than eating saturated fat foods in diet, reduces the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular heart diseases and chances of death.
Firstly, take a look at this amazing video about what is fat?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhUrc4BnPgg
What is saturated fat?
Saturated fat is a type of fat contains fatty acid molecules and its less healthy than unsaturated fat.
Fat is one of the major Source of the energy along with protein and carbohydrates which helps your body to absorb vitamins. Our body needs moderate consumption of fat in order to work properly but too much fat causes weight gain and type 2 diabetes early.
Saturated fats mainly come from animals which is meat and dairy and they can also be found in fried and packaged foods.
Why saturated fat is bad for health?
I’ll explain this in detail.
Saturated fats are unhealthy because they can increase LDL (bad) cholesterol level in your body. It increases the risk of heart diseases.
LDL stands for low-density lipoproteins. If you have a high LDL level, that means you have too much bad cholesterol level in your blood which leads to increase the coronary artery disease.
Coronary artery disease causes when plaque builds in arteries of your heart. Because of formation of plaque, arteries become narrowed which causes slow blood flow towards the heart.
Blood carries oxygen to heart. All the heart need is oxygen through blood.
If blood flow blocks completely, then it causes serious heart attack.
That’s why, saturated fats are unhealthy for your body.
Saturated fat is not only a single nutrient. Actually, it’s a group of different fatty acids and they have varying effects on health.
Examples of saturated fatty acids:
· Myristic acid contained in dairy products. This fatty acid consumption increases the LDL (bad) cholesterol level in your body more than other fatty acids. So, try to get moderate consumption of this types of foods.
· Palmitic acid contained in palm oil and meat. Palmitic fatty acid also increases LDL (bad) cholesterol without affecting HDL (good) cholesterol.
· Stearic acid contained in cocoa butter and meat. Stearic fatty acid lowers bad cholesterol. That’s mean it’s a healthy fatty acid.
· Lauric acid contained in coconut oil and palm kernel oil. Lauric acid beneficial to your body because it raises HDL (good) cholesterol level.
· Butyric acid contained in butter.
Solution:
Eating too much saturated fat increase risk of heart diseases, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) therefore. you have to take proper care of it.
1. Eat heart-healthy diet
We are talking about avoid saturated fat foods. So, just avoid it. For healthy heart, eat diet in which saturated fat is not needs to be too high. In replacement, go for eating polyunsaturated and monounsaturated foods which can helps to reduce bad cholesterol in your blood and lower the risk of heart diseases and stroke.
Polyunsaturated Foods contains plant-based cooking oils includes canola and olive oil. Fish oils include omega-3 and omega-6 foods contains fatty fish like salmon and trout.
Monounsaturated Foods contains some cooking oils include canola, peanut and olive oil.
2. Eat white meat chicken except red meat. Choose skinless and trimmed meats over poultry skin and visible meat fat.
3. Avoid fried foods because it contains bad saturated fat.
4. Eat sugar free pudding over brownies and sugary doughnuts.
5. Use canola oil for baking.
6. Get regular exercise for healthy heart and whole body.
Avoid:
· High-fat cuts of meat (Red meat and processed meat)
· Whole milk
· Ice cream and its products
· High fat cheese
· Avoid smoking
3. Processed meat and red meat
Internal study published in 2012 founds eating red meat causes cardiovascular diseases and of course, cancer. But here, I’m just talking about red meat.
Then how dangerous would red meat which is processed?
Here’s the thing. I’m not saying don’t eat a single piece of red meat.
Red meat is a source of high-quality protein and other nutrients.
In fact, red meat contains vitamin B12 which helps to make DNA. Red meat also contains zinc and iron which is also good for health.
But, eating too much red meat could be bad for your health.
Let’s get directly to the main point.
Research shows that eating red meat and processed meat daily, can increase the risk of coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and definitely, colorectal cancer.
American Heart Association states that red meats have more saturated fat than others such as chicken and fish and saturated fat is bad for your health as I said above.
So, what’s the actual meaning of processed meat?
Processed meat purpose is to give you same flavor like fresh meat.
Really?
Here’s the truth.
So, the main purpose of processed meat is to increase the shelf life of meat.
But why?
Because fresh meat or meat which is not processed has shelf life of over 4 to 5 days. But, on the other hand, processed meat can last for 3 to 4 weeks. Big difference in both.
But reason behind this long shelf life, the meat has been transformed by many processes include fermentation, salting, smoking and many others which enhance the flavor of red meat.
Therefore, because of long shelf life, the big advantage for meat seller is reduces wastage of meat and expenses.
Why processed meat is bad?
I already said that processed meat can increase heart diseases, diabetes and many other diseases include cancer.
Northwestern Medicine and Cornell University founds that eating too much processed meat and unprocessed meat (red meat) increases the diseases which includes heart diseases, cardiovascular diseases and even causes death.
According to recent study of JAMA internal medicine, peoples who eat high amount of red meat and processed meat but not eating fish or poultry, were significantly associated with cardiovascular diseases and risk of death.
Solution:
1. As per world health organization, 10 studies estimates that eating 50 gram of processed meat daily, increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%. Now you decide how much meat you want to consume daily. As per my suggestion, your processed meat consumption needs to be 0%. Because, life’s taste is better than processed meat’s taste.
2. On other hand, you can eat red meat but it’s consumption also needs to be moderate.
In fact, Cancer council recommends the limit of eating red meat is 1 serve per day or 2 serves 3–4 times a week. Cutting down red meat and processed meat can reduce your risk of cancer, as per cancer council.
3. Obviously, limit your intake of red meat has known benefits which is reduce the risk of death. I mean don’t eat a single piece of red meat. Replace poultry or fish over red and processed meat. Remember, there is not any safe level to eat red meat. Therefore, you have to add this to don’t do list. And by the way, happy journey.
4. Add eggs, fish and chicken to your meals for protein power.
5. Vegetarian diets can be healthy. It’s better than eating salty and preserved meat.
4. Added Sugar
The Study of Pub Med states that, higher consumption of sugar sweetened beverages (SSB) is associated with obesity and weight gain.
Another study states that excessive sugar intake is also associated with cancer risk include breast cancer. Cancer risk also observed for dairy products and sugary drinks in that study.
According to Heart organization, too much added sugar may increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, colon cancer and pancreatic cancer, high blood pressure, kidney and liver diseases, retina and nerve damage and obviously, type 2 diabetes.
Added sugar vs natural sugar
Added sugar is a sugar which are added during processing and packaging of foods. It includes sugar drinks, candy, cereals, desserts and dairy products include flavored yogurts. It’s not healthy for your body.
Natural sugar consumption is okay. Natural sugar is naturally forms in food which is plant based include fruit and vegetables.
As per study of JAMA Internal Medicine founds that high-sugar diet causes greater risk of heart diseases.
They found that peoples who eat their 20% calories from added sugar, increases risk of cardiovascular diseases by 38%.
Let’s see the solution.
Solution:
1. American Heart Association recommends no more than 38 grams of added sugar per day for men and 25 grams per day for women. Reading food label is the best way to monitor your added sugar intake.
2. Avoid added sugar sources include corn syrup, fruit juice concentrates, corn sweetener and malt sugar.
3. Most of the added sugar comes from energy and sugary drinks, soda, grain-based desserts and syrups. Therefore, avoid all these types of foods.
4. Choose natural over processed. Eat natural fruits which has natural sugar.
