Salma, a beautiful 32-year-old mother of four with a weight problem, was always on severe weight loss diets drinking about seven diet-colas a day. She would lose a couple of kilos a week. For years, she kept those yo-yo diets and relied on rigorous exercising. Two years ago, she collapsed and her blood count plunged to dangerous lows. At first, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She nearly underwent chemotherapy hadn’t her family insisted on further tests revealing lupus, an autoimmune disease.
Salma rejected the steroids prescribed for her joint pains and to arrest the progression of her disease. She sought alternative medicine. She was first treated with homeopathy, detoxification, and a strict macrobiotic diet. Later, she felt much relief in her joint pains with acupuncture. A true miracle was at hand. She is almost back to normal and her disease regressed. She is now very careful with her diet and health. She stopped diet colas along with severe diets and exhaustive training. I am always in touch with her about her condition. We exchange advice and information.
Aspartame, an artificial sweetener in diet soft drinks, becomes a toxic chemical in the body causing headaches, anxiety, depression, seizures and autoimmune diseases. Avoid it to prevent health disorders. It also increases craving for carbohydrates. Stevia, a natural sweetener, is an alternative to artificial sweeteners.
There are several other foods and substances to avoid or taper. Limit frying as a form of cooking. Fast food restaurants, in particular, use damaged fats (trans-fatty acids, oxidized, hydrogenated) and saturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats (nut, seed, soybean, corn) in their natural form are healthy for you. But when they are processed through high temperatures, their natural configuration changes, becoming a carcinogen in the body. In short, excessively heated oils damage your health at the cellular level. Shortening and margarine are also harmful due to the hydrogenation process.
Refined and processed carbohydrates (white rice and flour, cereals) deprive you of good fibers. Eating too much of these starches depletes your body of B vitamins. Refined sugars are also harmful by causing vitamin and mineral deficiencies and elevated insulin in your blood. Sugars promote metabolic aging, too.
High consumption of caffeine (coffee, tea, chocolate) is damaging to health and addictive. A healthy body, free of toxins and addictions, stays young and energetic.
Smoking is a major health hazard, along with environmental pollution, which causes many diseases including cancer. Keep away from tobacco smoking as well as second-hand smoke, radiation, and chemical exposure for their harmful effects to the body.
I purposely kept fast food at the end of the article so that I can expand on it freely and explain why you should avoid it or at least minimize it.
Fast food, in my view, is a main contributor to obesity and disease in adults and children alike. It is an American culture that has invaded our markets with fast food restaurant chains — MacDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Kentucky’s, Chili’s, Pizza Hut, and more than I can count. I am not against American restaurants, but it is the quality and quantity of food and the way it is prepared that I oppose. Where do I start? I am not sure where or how. The list is just too long.
Steroids and antibiotics in fast food meat and chicken are harmful to health, and so is the quality of fats and oils that fry them. The fats used in these restaurants come from saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, hydrogenated oils, and processed fats.
Bread and pizza dough are made from more than just flour, water and salt. It includes sugar, milk and butter that make it soft and doughy. The cheese on the burger is processed. The ketchup, bottled sauces, relishes, meat tenderizers and other condiments contain sugar and chemical additives. Soft drinks, cakes, pastries, doughnuts, molasses, ice creams and milk shakes and others have large amounts of sugar and soda, with chemical additives to enhance flavor, color and appetite. Another cause of worry is the gigantic portions of the meals and drinks served at these chain restaurants. Not only have our diet become fattier and sweeter but also “super-sized” leading to obesity and weight-related diseases.
This invasion of low-cost, oversized, fatty, overly sweetened, nutrient deficient, and easily available, pre-prepared American fast food has inflated both our appetite and our body. Due to such unhealthy and harmful foods, our adults, youngsters and children alike have become afflicted with the disease of the swelling of the bulge and its cascade of related illnesses. Diabetes Type 2, once an adult problem, has recently become a child disorder as well. According to an old Arabic saying, “The stomach is the cause of ailment and diet is its best cure.”
Society should put a quick end to the spread of these kinds of food and obesity to minimize their adverse effects on health and their burden on the health care system. We should become more informed and aware of what enters our body. We should stop fast food in school. Parents and schools should cooperate in communicating to children the harmfulness of such foods and bad eating behaviors as well, by showing and offering alternative ways of healthy nutrition and lifestyle habits. With awareness, information and determination, our children’s health would be salvaged from overindulgence and abuse. What we teach them today shapes their health tomorrow.
(Mariam Alireza is a holistic science specialist. Send comments to [email protected].)