What Exactly Are You Eating?
At present, people’s diet frequently lacks nutrients as compared to that of our ancestors. They often rely on instant meals and cheap snacks. Many foods are now processed, manufactured, and genetically re-engineered – which make it harmful and create an acidic environment in the body. An acidic body is an ideal place for diseases to thrive.
Consuming harmful acid-forming foods slashes a few hours off your life.
Acid-Forming Foods And Why Are They Bad
For your body to operate effectively and remain disease-free it must have a pH of 7.4 (slightly alkaline). The pH scale is the one that measures acidity: 0 is a highly acidic, pH 14 is a strong alkaline, whilst pH 7 is neutral.
The acidity of our blood can be changed depending on the food we eat – it can either be acid-forming or alkaline-forming. However, some foods like lemons are very acidic but have an alkalizing effect on the blood.
Contributing to the acidic environment of the body are acid forming-foods, lack of exercise, the build-up of toxins, and stress. Your body neutralizes this acidic environment by using alkaline minerals. Without this alkalizing minerals, acid builds up.
An acidic environment in the body causes serious, and in extreme cases, life-threatening health problems such as:
- Tumor cells, virus, and many bacteria thrive in an acidic environment
- Acid-forming foods are neutralized by the body by taking magnesium and calcium from your teeth, muscles, and bones, which can eventually lead to osteoporosis.
- Detoxification is less efficient which leads to toxin build-up
- Acidic blood is thicker and slower moving, thus less effective at taking nutrients and oxygen to cells as well as in removing toxins.
- Poor absorption – as an acidic environment decreases the body’s ability to absorb vitamins and minerals.
- Production of energy in our cells is reduced, thereby causing fatigue.
- Lessens the body’s ability to repair damaged cells.
Examples Of Acid-Forming Foods
Soda & Carbonated Drinks
Aside from being loaded with harmful artificial food coloring, flavorings, and preservatives, a can of soda contains up to 150 empty calories, 15 teaspoons of sugar, 30 to 55 mg of caffeine and zero nutritional value.
Some of these drinks are marketed as energy drinks and gives an instant short-term energy boost, making you crave for more once the initial kick wears-off. Some are also disguised as diet sodas with added aspartame, a dangerous sweetener which is associated in many health issues such as brain damage, ringing ears, heart palpitations, diabetes, emotional disorders, and shortness of breath.
High sugar content in sodas causes tooth decay and suppress the appetite for nutritious foods, thereby resulting in nutritional deficiency.
Pasteurization, UHT and Dairy Products
Pasteurization is a process wherein the food is heated at a high temperature in order to kill microbes and allow it to keep for a longer period without going off. Likewise, UHT or ultra-high temperature heat foods to an even higher temperature yet for only a shorter period of time.
Both these processes of dairy products destroy enzymes, proteins, beneficial bacteria. Aside from these, it also reduces the food’s vitamin content, destroys vitamins B6 and B12 and promotes pathogens causing the milk or food to lost its beneficial properties and cannot be assimilated by the body. In the long run, it will weaken the immune system, causing allergies and other health problems such as asthma, skin rash, chest infections, nasal congestion, increased risk of heart disease, higher blood cholesterol, and stroke.
Fried Foods
Heated oils are acid-forming in the body. Oxidant-causing cancer is produced when you are frying at high temperature.
According to studies, a cancer-causing substance known as acrylamide is found in foods that are cooked at high temperature (French fries and potato chips are one of them).
Acrylamide is produced when foods are cooked, processed, browned or burnt using high heat. These methods include microwaving, baking, barbecuing and frying.
Manufactured Table Salt
Your body needs organic sodium. However, refined table salt, sodium chloride, is an inorganic compound that is toxic and causes the body to retain fluid.
Refined salt is highly acidic and this thickens and stiffens arteries which increases the risks for heart attack and strokes., It also accelerates the rate of renal function deterioration and draws calcium from your bone, which might further lead to thinning and fracturing of your bones or to early osteoporosis.
Meat Products
Unless you choose organic meat, there are a number of problems with eating too much meat. Most commercially produced meat today was given multiple hormone treatments and antibiotics to make the animals grow faster, to increase milk production and to make their meat more tender.
Hormones found in meat are estrogen-dominant and have been linked to endometriosis, breast cancer, fibroids, and ovarian and cervical cancer in women. While in men, the common symptoms are prostate and testicular cancer, impotence, breast enlargement, and loss of libido.
Those antibiotics found in non-organic meat can enter the body. Some of the diseases liked to meat are cancer of the stomach and colon, digestive and heart disease.
White Flour Products
White flour is manufactured from whole grain wheat. The bran and germ are removed and discarded. Then, it is bleached with a deadly chemical called “alloxan“, which also destroys the beta-cells of the pancreas, a cause of type 2 diabetes. Aside from this, carcinogenic vitamins are also added and sold to the public as “enriched” flour.
Whiter flour makes your blood sugar rise, has little to no nutritional value, and hard to chew and very low in fiber- which puts pressure on the digestive system. One of the direct outcomes of white flour consumption is an intestinal infection.
