By: Dennys Passeto, CPT

You’re in the food store and get lost in all the claims about what is healthy and not for you. So you make your way to a vitamin shop or Whole Foods and try your luck there. But when you grab a bag of this, or a bar of that, and turn it to check out the label… you are just as lost. What IS all that stuff in there?

In today’s article I have chosen the top four unhealthy ingredients my clients ask me about most frequently. (The top healthy ingredients will be covered in (Part 2). I hope you will find this information helpful in your healthful shopping adventures!

MSG—These initials mean Monosodium Glutamate, and are the main flavor enhancer in your local Chinese take-out place. Like Mrs. Dash, MSG enhances flavor especially in frozen and processed foods… and causes people who are allergic to it to experience headaches, rashes and muscle pains. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics removed MSG from all products for infants under the age of one, after injections into lab animals showed nerve cell damage!

Despite the fact that MSG has been proven a poison substance, it is so widely used that you might not even think where it might be. Cans of tuna? You bet! Turkey breast cold cuts? Absolutely, in some brands! And the result: an increase in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, serious rise in cases of asthma, Parkinson’s disease, migraine headaches and heart trouble.

Bottom line: Stay away from MSG. Check the label of everything you buy and avoid the brands that include it. And when ordering food from a restaurant, they are obligated by law to NOT include MSG if you specifically tell them you are allergic. Sounds like a plan.

Maltodextrin—Maltodextrin is essentially a powder derived from potatoes or corn and when combined with other spices and things becomes a tasty coating for snack foods. This powder food additive is found in such things as flavored potato chips, pretzels and crackers.

While the FDA says this chemical is “safe,” it does not really count it as healthy or unhealthy. That is, the content amount found in food is so low that it barely counts. Yet, in large quantities it is not healthy. So what is “non toxic” in one bag of chips may not be so healthy when one eats several bags of chips, pretzels, crackers in the course of a week, month or year.

And while the maltodextrin processed in North America is derived from potato and corn, the Asian equivalent is manufactured from wheat and is thus not gluten free. This means that if you are prone to migraine headache, Candida or have Celiac disease… you should stay away from snacks imported from Asia.

Again, check the labels. If an item contains maltodextrin it will say so and if it contains the wheat-based form, this must also be noted on the package. In moderation, the sweet or savory aspect of this additive can be delightful. But over-consumption is unhealthy. Not just because it is a chemical, but because the foods it is used to flavor are, themselves, not on the diet plan of any serious fitness program!

High Fructose Corn Syrup—This sweetener has been called the main culprit in the rise in youth obesity in the United States… and later has been given a clean bill by the FDA. Talk about bi-polar! No wonder we don’t know what is going on with our health. Well, here’s the scoop…

High-fructose corn syrup is corn syrup that has undergone enzymatic processing to convert its glucose into fructose. This fructose has then been mixed with regular corn syrup, which is 100% glucose, and the result is a sweet liquid known as high-fructose.

This liquid is the sweetener found in just about every cold beverage in your local convenience store, including iced tea, sodas and energy drinks. Not only that, but it is also found in so-called healthy foods like tomato soup and yogurt, and less healthful items such as salad dressings and cookies.

Yes it’s true that the FDA did a 30 year study and found a correlation between HFCS and obesity, and that it is worse for your health than plain sugar. Yet the Corn Refiners Association has launched an aggressive advertising campaign to counter these criticisms, claiming that high fructose corn syrup “is natural” and “has the same natural sweeteners as table sugar

Well, if you have any question, just look to two of the largest-consumed beverages, Pepsi and Snapple. Both have ditched the nasty stuff and gone back to sweetening their drinks with plain old sugar. Stay away from the HFCS, it will make you fatter than sugar!

Partially Hydrogenated Oils—whatever you do, stay clear of hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils. They are unnatural and very unhealthy. You see the original oil is subjected to hydrogenation which changes its molecular structure. This allows the oil molecules to harden thus giving it a longer shelf life, which is why manufacturers like it. But the changed oils are actually closer to plastic than to oil, and the hydrogenation process kills the Omega 3 and 6 essential fatty acids, which are the healthy parts of the original oils!

What all this means is that the body does not get the desired anti-oxidant affect of consuming oils, and the new hydrogenated oils are then treated in the body as fatty foods that the bloodstream can’t process. The result is fat stored in the body. Excess storage of fat in the body and arterial plaque build-up, then, are the big issues with partially hydrogenated oils.

Avoid foods containing partially hydrogenated oils at all costs. Check the labels on spreads, crackers, cookies, cakes, and even some so-called fruit snacks.

The bottom line is to eat naturally, to eat fresh, and to always read the label. When in doubt, write down the ingredient and do an on-line search. You just might be surprised at what you find!

About the author:
Dennys Passeto is a Certified Personal Trainer and the owner of Achieve Fitness.  The top personal training company serving Maryland, Washington D.C. and Northern Virginia.  Mr. Passeto along with Achieve Fitness’ trainers have helped hundreds of clients reach their fitness goals.

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They are at it again…Trying to poison you and I while covering it up!

Have you seen the commercials lately by the High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) industry?

The one I saw was pretty clever.  It was a couple sitting at a park having a picnic.  When the girl was about to have a
swig of a typical artificially colored fruit flavored drink, the guy said “Don’t drink that, it has High Fructose Corn
Syrup!”.  She the asked “What’s bad about that?”.  He just starred blankly back at her with a stumped and puzzled look
on his face and said “I don’t know?!?!”

This is big business’ clever way calling us dumb.  They know that many people have heard from someone or somebody that
HFCS is bad for you but don’t know why.  So the industry logic is to try and play to that ignorance by saying if you don’t know why its bad, why would you stop consuming it.   This is clever reverse psychology and I’m sure it works on many people.  What this does is make me mad and want to inform as many people as I can of the dangers of HFCS.

As my own personal training clients know, I’ve advised for a long time to stay away from HFCS.  Here today, I’m going
to tell you why.  Let’s begin with what is HFCS…

HFCS is an essentially corn syrup(extracted from corn) turned into fructose(sugar) through a pretty complicated process involving fermentation, addition of fungus, genetically altered enzymes and altering its chemical structure.  I don’t know about you but I love a little fungus in my beverage.  Yuck

The reason HFCS is so appealing is that it is cheaper to produce than to grow sugar cane process it and transport it.  HFCS also has a longer shelf life than regular traditionally sweetned products.  It also has given government subsidised corn industry a new use for corn which had lost its appeal as the process of hydrogenation became more popular and the use for corn greatly diminished.  Hydrogenated Oils is something else that I’ll be covering in an upcoming post.

Why do you need to avoid it as a consumer?  There are several reasons.  First, the very corn in which they use for this process is different than the everyday corn you and I eat.  It’s genetically modified.  Some experts say as far as 80% of the foods we eat have been genetically modified so this isn’t surprising.  Why put something into your body that has undergone such a radical chemical alteration?  Furthermore, the very enzymes that are used to break down the corn starch are genetically modified to make them more stable.

Diabetic complications are increased due to the composition of the modified fructose in HFCS.  The pancreas have to work much harder to produce the necessary insulin to break down this altered form of Fructose.

The liver is also impacted greatly by ingestion of HFCS.  The rate at which your liver breaks down this sweetener is much faster than if it were in its natural form.  Because it’s broken down so much faster and society continues to be less and less active, it makes a very ood case as to why the general population continues to get fatter.

Many people are misguided because the word fructose is part of the name and listed in the ingredients. Fructose is the natural sugar found in fruit.  However, the two being compared here are hardly the same. The one in fruits is stored in the fiber and takes up to 40% longer or your liver to break down.  This allows it to slowly enter the bloodstream as opposed to a flood of HFCS which forces your liver work much harder and can cause damage, not unlike the type experienced by alcoholics.

Its scary to see so many parents buying soft drinks and juices for their kids lunches and snacks unknowingly feeding poison to their children.   Gatorade is an extremely popular sports drink among athletes and trainees that is produced with HFCS.  I recommend drinking Vitamin Water instead.

So how do you avoid it?  Read labels and stay away from processed foods.  Everything from Canned soup, to juice, to ketchup, pasta sauces, etc… all contain HFCS.  Buy ll-natural organic foods at places like Trader Joes and Whole Foods.  Even Giant Food has begun dedicating an isle to organic and natural foods Since doing their recent renovations.  Most other stores also carry an organic version of just about anything on their shelves.

As I’ve always said, everything you eat should have been hunted, plucked, or picked.  Whole clean foods is the objective here.  Is it more work, you betcha.  But wouldn’t you rather know you are giving your family the best possible cleanest food you possibly can?

So buyer beware, don’t let the industry fool you through heir advertising campaigns that this product is natural and safe.  It’s far from it.  They just know that this is a cash cow for them and they aren’t willing to give that up at the expense of your health.

Dennys Passeto, CPT
Work with the Top Personal Trainers in MD, DC, VA
www.achieve-fitness.com
1-888-872-7961

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