Ahhhhh!!!! Don't get your nutrition info from companies trying to sell you something Mom!

The more I grow as a fitness and health professional the more I am enraged (yes, enraged) by the messages the public receives from the media and advertisements.  There is so much conflicting information out there that none of us stand a chance of knowing what is and what is not healthy.  Most of this conflicting info comes from advertisements for products the company is trying to get you to buy.  So moral of the story... if something is trying to be sold, the "credible" research it is boasting about is probably not that credible at all.

Exhibit A:  

Corn Sugar or Cane Sugar: Body Can't Tell The Difference

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA (okay you get the idea)- 

This drives me INSANE!!!  There IS a difference between High Fructose Corn Syrup and Cane Sugar.  HFCS is created in a lab.  There is nothing natural about it.  Fructose, although found in fruits and vegetables, is very dangerous in its unnatural forms and in high doses.  "A recent USDA report found that the average American eats 152 pounds of sugar each year, including almost 64 pounds of HFCS (Kresser, 2012)".  The problem with fructose is that the body does not treat it like natural sugar.  Rather than being delivered into the bloodstream and then taken into the cell with the help of the hormone insulin, fructose goes straight to the liver to be converted to fat (usually deposited around the mid-section).  The body treats fructose as if it were a toxin like alcohol.  AKA Your body treats it like poison because it IS in fact poison.  (Kresser, 2012)  So why is this important for preggos?  1) Whether you are preggo or not HFCS is BAD, poison, toxic for your body.  2) HFCS, and any sugar at that, crosses the placenta and enters your growing baby's body.  So not only are we poisoning ourselves, adding to our own midsection inches, and increasing our chance of developing diabetes (gestational and Type 2), obesity, heart disease, auto immune disorders, cancer, etc...... But we are ALSO poisoning our growing babies.  Enough said.

Hungry for more sugar education? Watch this:

Onto Exhibit B: 

Grain = Healthy - I call Bull Sh..!!!  

Ugh... this one is the worst I've seen thus far.  It truly plays to our "common sense" and to our own frustration with not knowing what is and what is not healthy.  They then insert their product at the end to help you come to the conclusion that their Grain is truly Great!  Oh they also have very tall, skinny model types telling you all of this... insert subliminal message of "eat this cereal and you will grow ten inches and drop 30lbs".

The next post I am going to write is about Grain and Soy (the two most toxic "health foods" out there).  I'll touch on grain just a little now.

Grain, like all living creatures, is equipped with a means for survival and reproduction.  Humans can run away from their predators, blueberries can be eaten and get their seeds deposited back into the earth in warm fertilizer to grow more blueberries, but grains can neither run nor be pooped out knowing that the next generation will live on.  When eaten they are destroyed.  Their plot against their predators?  Destroy the predator from the inside out.   They do this in multiple ways:  Upon consumption they produce toxins that damage the lining of the gut of whatever ate them.  These toxins then bind to the good nutrients we eat making them unavailable for our body to absorb.  Lastly they rip up our intestinal tract to leave lasting damage and make it harder for future nutrients (like protein) to get in.   Think of grain like a steel bristled grill brush scraping the insides of your intestines.  Yup.  Sounds fun!  But wait, I eat grain at every meal Cassandra and I feel fine?  I double dog dare you friend to take out all grain based products from your diet for a month.   30 days.  Thats all.  Then have a bowl of your favorite cereal.  The horrible pain that will ensue will show you just how much damage those toxins are doing to you.  Since most of us have eaten grain/flour based foods since infancy we do not realize the damage being done because we've always lived with it. 30 days.... I dare you.

Obviously this is dangerous for anyone and everyone, but it goes without saying that when growing a human your body and baby needs all the good nutrients it can get.  If our GI tract is damaged taking the time to put thought into what we eat for us and baby is a little silly since a lot of the good nutrients aren't able to pass through the damage and get into our systems.   Wait Cassandra!  Did you just tell me that since I don't want to give up my honey nut cheerios that I can eat crap all day because even if I ate the good stuff it wouldn't get in?  No friends, I am not saying that.  I am trying to make the point that this "health food" is not so healthy, and in the history of mankind has never been consumed in the amounts that our modern society consumes it (well maybe except for medieval times and I dont know about you but rickets, the plague, and God knows what else does not sound like a good time to relive in human history.  Their sickness was not about unsanitary conditions but mostly about a failure to thrive from the poor quality calories being consumed when replacing a hunter gatherer diet with the "civilized" farmers diet of that time.)

(On Guard!)

Modern food pyramid diets of 5-7 portions of "healthy" grains does not equal looking like a model in a field of wheat! It equals modern diseases in our later years.  So if you don't want a side of cancer with your Cheerios you might want to read more on this crazy Paleo thing we're all talking about!!

Don't listen to these commercials friends.  They are full of it.  They are sleezy car salesman dressed up like a handsome dad or mom.  The devil shows himself in the cover of beauty and pleasure.  Don't believe what he says!  (Yes I just called these companies the devil lol)

Here is a very pleasurable recipe that the devil has not touched:

Pineapple-Glazed Chicken Skewers - 

"Make It Paleo" Cookbook

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup pineapple diced
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 TBSP ginger, minced
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 TBSP cilantro minced (I didn't add this in)
• 3 chicken breasts
• 3 cups pineapple cut into chunks

PROCESS:

• Combine diced pineapple, olive oil, garlic, ginger, lemon juice, and salt in a small bowl
• Puree mixture in a blender or food processor
• Pour back into the small mixing bowl and stir in the minced cilantro
• Set mixture aside to use as a glaze during grilling
• Preheat grill to medium-high heat (we don't have a grill so I used a broiling pan and broiled the skewers in my oven)
• Skewer pieces of chicken and pineapple on metal or presoaked bamboo skewers
• Grill skewers for 12-15 minutes (or until chicken is done), turning every 4 minutes
• Each time you turn the skewer brush them with the pineapple glaze (I practically drowned my skewers in the glaze because I had so much of it!)

Be prepared for awesome in your mouth! Yummmm!



Kresser, C. (2012). 9 Steps to Perfect Health.