The Nourisher - Editor’s Blog

If you woke up this morning and ate what you considered to be a healthy breakfast: wheat toast, orange juice, and eggs cooked in vegetable oil, you’ve just succeeded in eating three of the five “health” foods to avoid. It can be frustrating to determine what truly is healthy with all of the new health claims coming out, not to mention the old, deep-seated claims that are just plain wrong but are so engrained in our heads that they’re hard to change. The following five foods are widely known as generally “healthy” foods, but as you’ll soon read, you’re much better off without them.

Wheat Bread

Since 1990, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines have recommended that Americans eat six to 11 servings of bread and other grain foods every day, and many consumers dutifully purchase wheat bread as opposed to white bread because they believe it is more nutritious. The American Academy of Pediatrics even says that ‘whole-wheat bread offers a nutritional advantage over white bread.’

While this may be true to some extent, wheat bread should not be considered a healthy or necessary part of the diet. Wheat is often contaminated with mycotoxins and no matter what the form, wheat, whole wheat, cracked wheat, sprouted wheat, and so on, they will all be capable of causing the same problems including:

• Celiac Disease
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Miscarriages
• Headaches
• Infertility
• Developmental Delay in Children
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Intolerance to wheat is far more common than doctors typically recognize. I was once fooled enough so that when I was in medical school nearly 25 years ago my nickname was “Dr. Fiber,” as I was always preaching the benefits of whole grains.

Little did I know that wheat, and nearly all other grains, rapidly convert to sugar and rapidly accelerate aging and chronic illness in most, although certainly not all of us.

Unless you are seriously underweight, most of us would best be served by limiting or avoiding wheat altogether. I was well over 40 years old before I realized this kernel of truth and I probably chopped a good 20 years off the end of the limit of my life span by not applying it earlier.

If you have a metabolic type that is carbohydrate oriented (this is only one-third of people) and you are not overweight and don’t have high cholesterol, high blood pressure or diabetes then grains are a possible option for you. But, rest assured that if you indulge in grains to excess you are heading for any number of diseases. I encourage you to read my new book to find out more about your metabolic type and why avoiding wheat will likely mean an increased level of health for you.

Vegetable Oil

Polyunsaturated oils, which include vegetable oils like corn, soy, safflower and canola , are the worst oils you can eat, as generally Americans’ intake of omega-6 fat from these vegetable oils is far too high.

Experts looking at the dietary ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, which are the healthy fats found in fish oil and cod liver oil , suggest that in early human history the ratio was about 1:1. Currently most Americans eat a dietary ratio that falls between 20:1 and 50:1. The optimal ratio is most likely closer to the original ratio of 1:1. For most of us this means greatly reducing the omega-6 fatty acids we consume and increasing the amount of omega-3 fatty acids.

Further, polyunsaturated oils are the worst oils to cook with because they tend to become easily oxidized or rancid when exposed to heat from cooking. This results in the formation of trans fatsand damaging free radicals.

Unfortunately, the truly healthy oil, coconut oil, is regarded as the €˜dangerous’ oil and vegetables oils are regarded as healthy, when it should be the other way around.

Soy

In recent years soy has emerged as a €˜near perfect’ food, with supporters claiming it can provide an ideal source of protein, lower cholesterol, protect against cancer and heart disease, reduce menopause symptoms, and prevent osteoporosis, among other things.

However, numerous studies have found that soy products may:

• Increase the risk of breast cancer in women, brain damage in both men and women, and abnormalities in infants
• Contribute to thyroid disorders, especially in women
• Promote kidney stones
• Weaken the immune system
• Cause severe, potentially fatal food allergies

Perhaps the most disturbing of soy’s ill effects on health has to do with its phytoestrogens that can mimic the effects of the female hormone estrogen. These phytoestrogens have been found to have adverse effects on various human tissues, and drinking even two glasses of soy milk daily for one month has enough of the chemical to alter a woman’s menstrual cycle.

Soy is particularly problematic for infants, and soy infant formulas should be avoided. It has been estimated that infants who are fed soy formula exclusively receive five birth control pills worth of estrogen every day.

Pasteurized Dairy

Despite the widespread notion that milk is healthy, drinking pasteurized milk is frequently associated with a worsening of health.

This is particularly sad because milk is one of the healthiest foods available prior to its being pasteurized. Raw dairy, as opposed to the pasteurized dairy that is sold in most grocery stores, is something I strongly advise nearly everyone to regularly consume. If you are a carb metabolic type then raw milk is typically preferable, while if you are a protein type raw cream is likely a better choice due to its higher fat content.

The pasteurization process creates many problems in milk. As Sally Fallon of the Weston Price Foundation states:

Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamin B12 and vitamin B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer. Calves fed pasteurized milk die before maturity. Raw milk sours naturally, but pasteurized milk turns putrid and processors must remove slime and pus from pasteurized milk by a process of centrifugal clarification. Inspection of dairy herds for disease is not required for pasteurized milk.

Although raw milk is not commercially available, I have found a truly superior source of “real” organic raw dairy: Organic Pastures Dairy Company. Never processed, never pasteurized and never homogenized, these raw dairy products are high in antioxidants, vitamins (including B-12), all 22 essential amino acids, natural enzymes, natural probiotics and good fatty acids. Also, none of the individually named cows are ever given antibiotics, hormones or GMOs–and only pasture, natural grains, and approved organic homeopathic methods are used to feed and care for the cows.

In addition, if you are in the Chicago area there is an Amish farmer who comes in regularly and has developed a legal herd share program, and you can purchase the raw milk through him. If you live in another area, Sally Fallon has compiled a Web site that provides further information about this important food source, including where you can purchase raw milk.

Orange Juice (and All Fruit Juice)

Fruit juice has about eight full teaspoons of sugar per eight-ounce glass. This sugar is typically a fruit sugar called fructose, which is every bit as dangerous as regular table sugar since it will also cause a major increase in insulin levels.

Further, many commercial orange juices are contaminated with mold from damaged fruit that are processed. So if you drink commercial orange juice regularly you will be exposed to these mold toxins.

This doesn’t mean that you should avoid fruit, just fruit juice. When the fruit is intact and whole, its fiber will somewhat moderate the release of fructose into the bloodstream as well as somewhat moderate insulin release. However, if you are overweight, have high blood pressure or high blood sugar, it would probably be wise to avoid most fruits until you have these problems under control.

This is especially true if you are a protein metabolic type. Carb types do far better with fruits, especially citrus fruits, in general.

By Dr. Joseph Mercola with Rachael Droege; from the free health & wellness e-newsletter at the world’s most visited natural/alternative health website, Mercola.com

About the Author...

In 1997 I started my web site, Mercola.com, that is now the most visited natural health site in the world. By 2006 we had over 800,000 subscribers and over 5 million page views every month. I created this site with no outside investors or advertising