Striving4Zen

At seven cents per pound, hexane is currently the dominant extraction solvent for soy products. Whether you're eating Boca burgers, firm tofu, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, granola crumbs for texture, or Silk soy milk, hexane likely played a role in the extraction process. Hexane was formerly used as a cleaning agent for removing grease in the printing industry as well as a solvent for rubber cement, but now it's showing up in many so-called "natural" and even "made with organic" soy foods.

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Labels: Boca burgers, hexane, processed foods, soy milk, soybeans, toxic, toxins

Some of us seem to think that we can be healthy by simply eating healthy foods. The truth is, your health is determined by how well you digest the foods that you put into your body. In other words, you might be eating an unprocessed, whole food diet, but if your digestive passageway isn’t effectively breaking these foods down and absorbing nutrients, you are not giving yourself a chance to come close to your best health.

What does this have to do with farting? The amount you fart is one of the best indicators of how well you are digesting your food. Farting is in part due to rotting of incompletely digested foods in your digestive passageway. Farting in itself is actually helpful, as it represents unwanted gas leaving your body. In fact, if you have an urge to fart, be sure to do so. The point is, if you are farting a lot, then you probably have a lot of toxin formation occurring inside your gut from rotting of incompletely digested food, and some of these toxins are entering your blood stream and contributing to the development of long term disease. Farts that do not produce objectionable odor are usually pockets of air that you have swallowed.

So, what can you do to improve your digestion and prevent toxin formation from rotting of undigested food in your gut?

1. Chew your food until liquid. You don’t have teeth anywhere else in your digestive passageway. By chewing your food until liquid, you allow your digestive organs to do their jobs efficiently without the burden of having to break down larger chunks of food. If you don’t remember anything else from this newsletter, please remember this one point. It can make a huge difference in your level of health.

2. Consistently eat whole, unprocessed foods. An apple is better than apple juice. A bowl of oatmeal is better than a power bar. An organic egg is better than any egg substitute. And organic butter is much better than margarine. The closer your foods look like they can be found in a garden, in the wild, or on an organic farm, the greater chance your body has of efficiently digesting them.

3. Avoid foods that experience tells you no matter how well you chew, your body just says no. Based on your genetics and health status, there are foods that your body will digest beautifully, and there are foods that your body simply cannot break down. It’s your job to observe how you feel after each meal to identify these foods. It is important to note that as your health changes over time, your tolerance for different foods may also change, so you don’t need to write off a particular food forever if it isn’t working for you right now.

4. Don’t eat fruit for dessert. Fruits are extremely low in protein compared to all other foods, including vegetables. And all foods that have significant protein must spend about an hour to an hour and a half in your stomach, where the protein is broken down by acid produced by your stomach. If fruit gets caught up in your stomach because there are other foods churning there already, it is possible that some of the fruit will rot, resulting in gas and toxin formation. Try to eat fruit on an empty stomach, or about two hours after a big meal.

5. Take it easy for at least 30 minutes after a big meal. In order for your digestive organs to effectively break down food, they need to receive a large portion of your total blood volume after a big meal. If most of your blood is flowing to your muscles because you are running around, you’re not going to have enough available for your digestive organs to do good work.

Use the amount that you fart as a marker for your digestive strength and the health of your gut. By following the steps outlined above, you should see a dramatic reduction in gas production.

Source

Labels: digestion, farting, farts, fruit, healthy diet, processed foods, Whole Foods

The "unhealthiest" foods tend to be those that least resemble their original natural ingredients and those that have the most added refined and artificial additives. Prime examples are the so-called "white foods"-white sugar, white flour, and white fat, and the gamut of foods in which they are the principal ingredients. It's not that these foods are white in color-many of them are actually not. It's that these foods have had many of their natural components-including their natural colors-processed away. "White foods" is simply the shorthand label that we are using when we refer to these heavily processed, nutrient-depleted foods.

• "White sugar" includes refined sugar cane or sugar beets having virtually all B vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other essential nutrients removed. Corn syrup is also a "white sugar," made from processed cornstarch and essentially devoid of other nutrients.
• "White flour," analogously, is whole wheat flour minus its nutrient-packed wheat germ and fibrous bran. Nutritionally speaking, white flour is a ghost-like shadow of its original whole grain.
• "White fat" can include rendered animal lard, vegetable oils "hydrogenated" to make them hard at room temperature, and refined fats such as cottonseed oil. Hydrogenation is a chemical process that transforms natural fats into more saturated trans-fatty acids that do not occur naturally and which are strongly associated with cardiovascular disease.

Foods having "whites" as their primary ingredients are frighteningly ubiquitous! Examples include soft drinks, breads, hamburger and hotdog buns, crackers, pasta, pastries and pastry fillings, pies, cakes, frostings, margarine and bread spreads, jellies, sweets and candies, frozen dinners, pizzas, snack foods, doughnuts, candy bars, and cookies-all of which are common snack and convenience foods. Indeed, many of these combine all three whites together-white sugar, flour, and fat! Furthermore, these foods frequently contain artificial colors, artificial flavors, preservatives, texturizing and processing agents, and other additives that further detract from their nutritional stature and your health. These are among the foods that I would consider to be the unhealthiest and the ones that I would avoid.

Thanks again George!

Labels: healthy diet, junk food, processed foods, refined foods, sugar, white flour, Whole Foods

You really can fight wrinkles from the inside out. And there's a fruit that can lead the charge.

It's papaya. What makes papaya so perfect? Easy. Vitamin C. Papaya has loads of it, and getting lots of vitamin C may mean more youthful skin -- fewer wrinkles and less thinning and dryness. A recent study in women over 40 confirmed it.

The Mysteries of C

Vitamin C is a natural friend to skin. The nutrient is essential for making collagen, the protein fibers that give skin its strength and resiliency. And being a powerful antioxidant, C also disarms free radicals that would otherwise chip away and weaken collagen.

More Food for Your Face

A little extra vitamin C isn't all it takes to plump your complexion. Here are a few more food tips that can help keep your face fresh:

• Munch on walnuts. In the vitamin C study, researchers also noted that diets rich in linoleic acid -- an essential fatty acid in walnuts -- meant moister, plumper skin.
  
• Ease up on fats and refined carbs. Scientists found both were linked to aging skin. Discover the dark side of processed foods with this article.
  
• Think whole grains. The magnesium and B vitamins you get from them help with the regeneration of skin cells. Find out what foods are mostly whole grains.
  
• Keep the fruits and veggies coming. To stay smooth and healthy, your skin needs a whole slew of antioxidant-rich produce. Like this root vegetable.

Source

Labels: eating for good skin, magnesium, papaya, processed foods, skin care, Vitamin C, Walnuts, Whole grains

Schools in Wisconsin are showing kids the dangers of genetically engineered (GE) junk food with some unique science class experiments. Sister Luigi Frigo repeats the experiment every year in her second grade class in Cudahy.
Students feed one group of mice unprocessed whole foods. A second group of mice are given the same junk foods served at most schools. Within a couple of days, the behavior of the second group of mice develop erratic sleeping schedules and become lazy, nervous and even violent. It takes the mice about three weeks on unprocessed foods to return to normal. According to Frigo, the second graders tried to do the experiment again a few months later with the same mice, but the animals have already learned their lesson and refuse to eat the GE food.
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Labels: eating healthy, Obesity, processed foods, study, Whole Foods

April 1, 2008 -- Hold the hot dog - eating one sausage or three strips of bacon a day can raise your risk of bowel cancer, according to a British health expert.

Just 1.8 ounces of processed meat daily hikes the risk of getting bowel cancer by about 20 percent, according to Professor Martin Wiseman, medical and scientific adviser for the World Cancer Research Fund.

SOURCE

Labels: bacon, cancer, processed foods, study, toxic