Happy New Year! My resolutions for you (4)
Health & Fitness By KEMI ILORI
Reduce the five white toxins
The issue of "white toxins" is an interesting new global phenomenon
for healthy living enthusiasts. Every year, many books are written about "white
toxins," especially in the western world. Most people use white toxins
to describe white flour products only, but more recently, it has been expanded
to include some other items in our diet.
This is the last in the series of resolution guides I have for health and fitness
in the New Year (should you want the four together, I can email them to you).
There are a lot of health improving practices I did not mention, which I hope
we all engage in.
White fat: For the informed, it may seem ridiculous that anybody would want
to eat white fat, but it is sold for cooking. White fat is also found in meat,
especially certain parts of it. It is said that the average American meat eater
puts over 50 pounds of fat (cholesterol) into their body per year! At the rate
we are going, our statistics may be getting close to that.
Fat clogs the arteries, making their passage narrow, thereby increasing blood
pressure which may ultimately cause heart disease and stroke. What makes it
worse is that most of the chemicals fed to agric animals are found in their
fat. Some of these chemicals include hormones, which are used to help the animals
grow big and be more productive, as well as antibiotics (these are to prevent
them from dying from disease). Humans ingest these chemicals secondarily and
that is why some of our kids mature so early and some men now develop breasts!
The high hormonal content of these fats also increase the risk of certain types
of cancer. Cancers implicated in ingesting a lot of meat include colon cancer,
breast cancer, prostrate cancer, etc. Meat also causes gout and arthritis and
a host of other physical problems.
My advice is that if you choose to eat meat, stick to lean meat. Adults do not
need to eat meat frequently, maybe once a week at most, but once a fortnight
(that is twice a month) is enough. There are other healthy sources of protein
and nutrients contained in meat. Women of child bearing age should also try
to eat liver at least once a month.
White flour products: Flour is a finely ground powder prepared from grain; although
flour can be made from a wide variety of plants, the vast majority is made from
wheat. Wheat has been described as the most cultivated food plant in the world,
followed by maize, then rice.
Wheat is actually a domesticated grass from the Triticum species. Flour is made
from the grain of wheat as we all probably know, but very few people know what
happens to the wheat to become flour. In the manufacture of flour, manufacturers
first remove.
the wheat seed’s bran, its six outer layers, and the germ (this is the
embryo of the seed, you must have observed the one in uncooked beans, that is
where it sprouts from when you attempt to plant it) which contains 76 per cent
of the vitamins and minerals. In all this process, 97 per cent of the fibre
is also lost. Some critics say that white flour is made by stripping wheat of
everything that is useful! What is left is then bleached, aged and preserved.
In enriched flour, some ‘synthetic’ nutrients are then added. Whole
wheat flour and other whole grain foods retain their bran, germ and nutrients.
Let us analyse the unhealthy properties of white flour from two perspectives.
First the removal of the fibre and nutrients in the wheat. Fibre is very important
for allowing easy passage in the colon, thus reducing the possibility of diseases
like, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Ulcerative colitis, bowel cancer, etc.
Fibre also reduces cholesterol (refer to my previous article on fibre). We are
also deprived of the nutrients in the germ of wheat, which includes vitamin
E; a powerful antioxidant, especially for our fat cells. The synthetic versions
used to replace these nutrients are coal-tar derived and suspect. Pigs fed large
amounts of synthetic B vitamins produced sterile offspring.
While these are bad effects of processing wheat, they are preferable to the
second effects which are following. The simple reason is that, if something
is missing, you can try to make up for it, e.g. you can add fibre to your food
by eating your bread with vegetables, like lettuce. Unfortunately, it is not
that simple.
The second issue with regards to the unhealthy properties of wheat is the bleaching
and other processes that help to make it the white flour, which is used for
bread, cake, pasta, etc. Bleaching agents and oxidizing agents are added to
wheat to make it white. This is usually in addition to other substances, like
anti-caking agents, preservatives, enhancers, etc, which help to improve its
appearance and durability. Alloxan is one of the bleaching agents commonly used
for bleaching flour.
Studies show that alloxan, the chemical that makes white flour look "clean"
and "beautiful," destroys the beta cells of the pancreas, thereby
predisposing frequent white flour product eaters to diabetes! A manufacturer
is not expected to disclose his bleaching agent (most bleaching agents are toxic
anyway). Scientists have known of the alloxan-diabetes connection for years;
in fact, researchers who are studying diabetes, commonly use the chemical to
induce diabetes in laboratory animals.
Unfortunately, most consumers are unaware of alloxan and its potentially fatal
link to diabetes because these facts are not well publicized by the food industry.
Studies show that you can reverse the effects of alloxan by supplementing your
diet with vitamin E, but the vitamin E had been removed even before the bleaching!
Another wonderful plant for reversing the effects of alloxan on the pancreas
is garlic. Researchers postulated that garlic may improve the insulin effect
by either increasing the pancreatic secretion of insulin or by releasing bound
insulin. If you must eat white flour products, keep it small and infrequent.
Also make sure that you have plenty of fibre and natural neutralizers like vitamin
E and garlic in your diet.
Dairy: I always say this and I will repeat it today, "our ancestors did
not milk cows!". We are told milk is the perfect food, and needed for calcium.
But we are not told that the pasteurizing of milk (heating it to temperatures
of 160 degrees or higher) changes the calcium to an inorganic form, which cannot
be assimilated by the body. If calcium is the excuse for taking milk, then we
don’t need it. Monkeys and Gorillas obtain all their calcium from nuts.
I remember distinctly, the case of a baby that was kidnapped in Uganda by Gorillas.
They fed and reared him until he was a young boy (can’t remember the age)
and recaptured from them. He was hale and hearty.
In fact, when villagers tried to retrieve him from them, he shined up a tree!
This shows he was extremely nimble and agile, just like the gorillas. How many
normal human children can shine up a tree? Dairy from cows usually contain all
the oestrogenic steroids used to breed them, antibiotic, etc. It is known that
nature, no other animal on earth pasteurizes its milk... and no animal drinks
the milk of another species, nor does it ever drink milk after the age of weaning.
Thank God for the baby friendly initiative for breast feeding mothers, but it
had always been there with us and it just a case of going back to the basics.
The other two whites are sugar and salt. In the case of salt, even a deaf man
must have read about it if he could not hear, so we all know the sodium story,
etc.
I presume there is no need to begin to sound like a broken record, so I will
not repeat it here. Most people also know about the unhealthy effects of white
sugar. The case of sugar is very much similar to flour in regards to the removing
of beneficial nutrients and bleaching to make it white. Sugar is so changed
and concentrated from its original plant form that it is literarily a drug.
Herbal products packaging warn you not too add sugar when taking them because
you are adding a chemical! In 2008, try to use natural cane sugar, brown sugar
or honey. Do not use chemical sweetening alternatives like aspartame!