The Dangers of a White Trash Diet

According to the latest statistics from the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC):

• 66% of adults over the age of 20 are overweight (including obese)
• 32% of adults over the age of 20 are obese
• 17% of teens ages 12-19 are overweight
• 19% of children ages 6-11 are overweight

Those are really horrible statistics. We’ve become a large group of people, but we lie to ourselves to try to find peace with that by saying things like, “I’m comfortable with my appearance”, “I’m not as large as her”. or joke about it by saying “I’m shaking what my mom gave me.” I have news: your mom did NOT give you that. But she may have given you some bad eating habits.

There is no magic wand behind weight gain, and there are myriad reasons why we may suffer more or less from it than those around us. But there are some simple tips and nutritional insights I can give you that may help you. Since most people don’t like to read articles that are too long, I’ll keep it as simple as possible:

1. Stop eating white trash!

White trash is typically refined sugar, white bread, white rolls, bagels, white rice, white flour, tortillas, white potatoes, white corn, etc. But I like to expand this definition to include foods you’d expect to find at a typical American barbecue (I call it the “white trash barbecue”): hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, macaroni salad, fried chicken, french fries, potatoes chips, baked beans (sugar!), corn on the cob (metabolizes into sugar and starch!), and then of course, the pies, cakes, and muffins for dessert. And the beer and soft drinks to wash it all down.

The first glaring misconception with these white trash foods is that many of them aren’t “food” at all. They are refined and processed, extracting nutrients in some cases (to preserve shelf life), adding back synthetic nutrients, adding nitrates and nitrites as preservatives, sugars, corn syrup, etc. While many of us will avoid real butter or mayonnaise in an attempt to lose weight, we’ll still be eating these other non-food offenders all the time. At least our bodies know how to handle a “real fat” or “real food” like butter. With adulterated food products, our bodies have a hard time knowing what to store and what to burn.

The second obvious mistake with white junk foods is that most of them are metabolized on a high glycemic index and raise blood sugar, causing insulin to be released in the body; in turn, it tells your body to store any excess as fat or to create new fat cells. This response happens BEFORE you get to the gym. So the next time you think you’ll burn it off at the gym later, remember that your body is busy storing it hours beforehand.

Since your body doesn’t get the correct nutrients from “whole” foods (unadulterated, unprocessed, uncanned, unprocessed), he clings to everything he can.

2. Know the health history of which animal you are eating.

Do you know if your salmon was raised, pumped with antibiotics, and fed corn and pink dye? Many farmed salmon are. The vast majority. Are your chickens injected with saline to fatten them up or (again) fed corn feed and caged so they can’t move (so they gain weight quickly) and pumped with hormones and antibiotics? Make sure…sometimes they are raised without antibiotics, but are injected on the way to meat processing plants.

Same with beef. It’s still America’s favorite meat. But the vast majority of cows are kept in pens and fed only corn feed – AGAIN corn. They are kept confined so that they gain weight rapidly. They continually feed on what is NOT part of their natural diet. They are brought to full weight within 1 year (making them obese) so they can be slaughtered BEFORE they die from the ulcers they get on the corn fed diet (which as I said is not part of their normal way of eating ).

So we eat obese and sick animals. No wonder we ourselves are sick and obese!

The reason this is so important is also because of toxins and how they relate to fat cells and obesity. I recently worked at a women’s gym and EVERYONE there wanted to lose weight. But her eyes would cross if I told them they have an obvious gallbladder problem. So I know that to get people to listen, “weight is the bait,” so I’m going to tell you now why you should care about the health of the animal you’re eating.

Simply put, toxins are stored in fat cells. Those two things are married. So if you can detox, you will have an easier time losing weight. Ladies, pay attention to this: We naturally carry a higher percentage of fat on our bodies. So we are even MORE susceptible to toxin storage. And again, it creates the vicious cycle of difficulty and/or inability to lose weight. Meats have a higher percentage of fat and therefore it is more important to pay attention when considering their origins.

It is also widely believed (myself included) that these stored toxins are largely responsible for many of the cancers in our reproductive organs.

I myself am not a vegetarian, but I advise people to be careful when buying their meats. This is a big reason why we have such a sick society. We demand cheap food, but we definitely get what we pay for. Trust me, I’m very budget conscious these days and can’t always afford the highest quality food. But I HAVE decided to reduce the meat a bit so I can eat better qualities.

THE GOOD NEWS

As more and more people in the US are exposed to the truth about the food supply, vendors are listening to us and giving us what we want. We have more access to organic food than ever before; we have Farmer’s Markets, we have the Internet, so these things like “unhealthy farming practices” are no longer a secret for long. We can go to our local Trader Joe’s and order grass-fed beef. We can easily find “cage free/grazing allowed” chickens. The more people demand it, the more the economics of supply and demand will push prices into a more affordable range.

But awareness is key, and we need to make the changes ourselves AND tell our families and friends… that way, we not only encourage each other and gain support, but create the kind of demand for healthier food that they will help our bodies to be able to metabolize better.

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In conclusion, here are 2 simple things you can do right away for your health and the health of everyone you love: eat food in its natural state (more vegetables of all kinds and colors, not white trash!) animal health whose meat you are eating.

Watching your diet on both fronts addresses two KEY issues behind weight loss struggles for almost everyone: insulin and toxins. I guarantee that if you follow these two tips, it’s worth more than all the calorie counting, weighing food, and gastric band surgeries in the world.