Certainly you don’t have to look too hard to see that folks in our country don’t look undernourished. But the truth is, many Americans are eating excess calories from processed food and are quite undernourished without even knowing it! Sound surprising? It was for us at first too…
All About the Labels
If you’re weight conscious (and who isn’t these days) you probably look at the label on food before you buy. It tells you all the healthy vitamins and minerals in the product, so you think you’re doing right, especially if it’s low cal. But there’s a difference between naturally occurring vitamins and minerals in your foods, and the junk in processed foods. Here’s the kicker… the more processed foods you eat the more vitamins and minerals you actually need. So even though you may eat your “healthy” meal from a package, your body craves more and more.
Our bodies need vitamins and minerals to make necessary chemical processes take place. That includes processes that regulate sugar and burn fat. Processed foods contain an overload of hidden sugar, meaning we need more and more vitamins and minerals to do the work when we eat them. It becomes a cycle of eating more, yet needing more and this gives a look into why diabetes is a growing epidemic.
How Come We Just Keep Getting Larger?
The big gulp soda isn’t the only thing to blame. Your Great Grandmother wouldn’t recognize much of the food we eat; processed with refined flours, trans fats and laced with high fructose corn syrup. (We’d be willing to bet that the food she prepared tasted a whole lot better too!)
She served up a natural, unprocessed diet with lots of fruit and vegetables, often homegrown, very similar to the alkaline diet and containing an abundance of nutrients—higher levels of vitamins, minerals and essential fats. Animal food was also healthier than current farm raised food and pretty much everything was eaten fresh.
It goes without saying, there were no nitrates and other chemicals used to process and preserve food like the food of today. Add to that, industrial farming has also taken a toll on our soil, depleting it of the elements that create nutritious food. And if that’s not enough, refined foods are stripped of their nutrients during the refining process. Just processing whole wheat to white reduces fiber by 80 percent and similarly reduces vitamins and minerals. So, food manufacturers started adding in synthetic versions of missing nutrients, no surprise … it isn’t working.
Switching Your Diet
If all that bad news makes you want to reach for a donut, hold strong and read on because there are easy solutions…
Have you ever eaten a piece of fruit right off the tree and thought “Wow! That tastes soooooo good!”? If you have you know you can’t beat the taste of fresh fruit and vegetables. At Qure we say-”Go Alkaline” and adopt these simple changes:
- Drink lots of water, make that Qure Alkaline Water with a pH of 9.5+. Remember one of the benefits if you are trying to get rid of excess pounds—water can help make you feel full between meals. It’s the perfect accompaniment to an Alkaline Diet.
- Adopt a plant-based foundation—fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, seeds and whole grains are important building blocks for health. High in everything you need; vitamins, minerals, fiber and more.
- Use healthy plant based oils—extra virgin olive oil, flax oil, nuts and seeds are the way to go. Avoid processed and rancid oils.
- Eat small amounts of lean animal protein—cold-water fish that are free of metals and other contaminants are the best. Wild game can be a good source of omega-3 fats because of its diet of wild plants.
Try it, and see how much better you feel in just a few weeks. We here at Qure want you around, enjoying a healthy vibrant life for many more years to come!