Warning: These “Health Foods” Are Making You Sick

When it comes to healthy eating, it’s hard to know what to choose and what to avoid. Between low-fat and low-carb, vegetarian and carnivory, it seems like we just can’t come to a consensus on which foods are truly the healthiest and which we should steer clear of. How can anyone possibly make any sense out of all the conflicting information floating around?

Truth is, a lot of foods get tagged as “healthy” and are promoted by mainstream experts even though it later turns out they have many harmful effects. Here are a few of the items you may want to think twice about the next time you reach for them at the supermarket.

Spinach

Dark, leafy greens get a lot of respect on this site. They are loaded with vitamins and minerals, and humans have been thriving on vegetables similar to these for a long time. Spinach, however, stands out as the most problematic due to its high levels of oxalates.

Oxalates are natural compounds that pose a double-pronged problem. First, it binds to the calcium in the leaves, drastically reducing the amount of this important compound that gets absorbed by your body. Second, 80% of all kidney stones are composed of oxalates and studies have found that dietary oxalates are at least partially to blame!

If you are eating spinach every day, it would be wise to vary things up a bit by occasionally replacing it with other greens. If you like raw spinach salads, start making them with lettuce half the time. If you like a side of cooked spinach with dinner, replace it with other dark greens such as collards, kale, and chard. The lower oxalate content makes the high levels of vitamins and minerals much more bioavailable, plus they taste much better, too!

Whole Grains

One trend that is really picking up is the “healthy whole grain” movement. This is largely a response to the growing amount of evidence that implicates highly-refined grains as the main contributors to the obesity epidemic.

Since our bodies break down the carbohydrates found in whole grains much slower than those in refined grains, there is a smaller insulin spike in the bloodstream and therefore less fat stored in the body’s tissues.

Additionally, whole grains are supposedly healthier than refined ones because they retain all the nutrients found in the bran and germ, parts of the plant removed in the refining process.

First off, grains, like beans and dairy, are a relative newcomer to the human diet. As such, we have not yet evolved the ability to process this type of food in the same way that ruminants such as cows, with their multi-chambered stomachs, can. Gluten intolerace, celiac disease, leaky gut (ewwww…), these are but a few of the gifts that grain consumption has given to the human race due to its rapid adoption.

As for all those nutrients? Sorry to ruin the party, but whole grains also contain loads of phytic acid, which binds to the nutrients and effectively blocks them from being absorbed by your body. Let me say that again: Even though whole grains have more nutrients than refined grains, your body is unable to absorb them. You would be much better off replacing these grains with such vitamin-rich sources as meat and vegetables.

If you absolutely love your grains and can’t stand the thought of giving them up, you can learn a valuable lesson from modern hunter-gatherer societies, many of which prepare grains in a way that maximizes nutrient absorbtion. Soaking, sprouting, grinding, and souring whole grains has been shown to reduce the phytic acid content while preserving the vitamins and minerals. So if you need a grain fix, it’s best to spring for sourdough or sprouted bread instead of 7-grain, and soak your rice until it sprouts before cooking it.

Vegetable Oils

Plant foods have a certain amount of sanctity in our culture. Most nutritionists advise substituting plant products for animal products in your diet. As a result, most people have cut back on fats such as butter and lard in favor of their “healthy” counterpoints in the plant world: processed vegetable oils.

Don’t get me wrong, SOME vegetable oils have a proven track record of health benefits, and these tend to be the more ancient oils that can be easily obtained without industrial processing. (Olive oil, coconut oil, and sesame oil, these are the MVPs of the vegetable oil world.) The cheaper corn, sunflower, and soybean oils are essentially made in a factory, with massive amounts of processing necessary in order to extract the oil. (Think about it, do you think it is easy to get oil out of a corn cob?)

The primary problem with vegetable oils is their sky-high omega-6 fatty acid levels. Excessive omega-6 causes inflammation and blocks the many benefits of omega-3 fats, which are currently (and rightly) getting a lot of attention in the media. There’s also solid evidence pointing out that an excess of these fats can lead to homicidal behavior!

These are “essential fats” only in the sense that our bodies cannot produce them on their own. We get WAY too much omega-6 in our diets. The ideal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats based on modern hunter-gatherers and anthropological evidence of our ancestors’ diet is between 1:1 and 4:1. Most estimates of modern American diets put our ratios at something more like 10:1 to 30:1!

So get rid of your vegetable oils (except for olive oil) and pick up some coconut oil and sesame oil. While you’re at it, get some butter as well. Plenty of it. The more you use, the better your scrambled eggs taste!

But Wait, There’s More!

In the next post, I will look at a couple more “health” foods that you’d be best avoiding. In the meantime, let me know if this has changed the way you’ll shop for groceries in the future!

Tagged as: confusion, grains, greens, oils, real food