9 Worst Foods to Eat and Healthy Substitutes

You feel  like healthy eating gets more complicated every day? I hear you. Paleo, vegan, keto, low-carb, high-fat, organic, and the endless list of dietary terms can make it very difficult. The article below lays the basis of the worst foods for your health, along with the foundational principles of a healing diet to support optimal wellness in the body.  Some of these worst foods may come as a surprise because they are marketed by the media as healthy, but you will come to find out why you will want to avoid them!

Here is the list of the 9 Worst Foods:

1. Table Salt
2. Vegetable Oils
3. Soy
4. Processed Meats
5. Microwaved Popcorn
6. Non-Organic Produce
7. Artificial Sweeteners
8. Margarine
9. Canned Tomatoes

Quick Note: While it is important to know which of the worst foods to avoid, it is never a good idea to be fixated on what you cannot eat. Once you understand the foods to avoid, keep a mental note. Take to heart the healing diet nutrition principles and begin incorporating them into your life.
By doing so, you will begin to naturally avoid the worst foods for your health. Instead of feeling limited to a narrow selection of foods, you will experience liberation knowing that the foods that you are eating are adding to your vitality every day!

Table Salt

Commercial Table salt is nothing like the natural salts our bodies have been receiving for thousands of years. Naturally occurring salts from the earth contain sodium along with over 80 different trace minerals, all of which play an important role in the body.
Commercial table salt is a chemically synthesized sodium chloride along with other nasty additives that prevent it from clumping together. Additionally, these salts often contain things like aluminum and fluoride which I would never recommend putting into your body.

Alternative: Natural Salts
When it comes to salt, try consuming generous amounts on your food. This is because the sodium and other trace minerals play a vital role as electrolytes that ensure your nervous system is working efficiently. Celtic Gray, Real Salt and Herbamare are great sources of quality salts.

Vegetable Oil

There are two important concepts to understand when it comes to fat consumption. Having a healthy Omega-3:Omega-6 ratio is important for controlling inflammation in the body and regulating metabolism. Also, your brain and the myelin that surrounds your nerves is primarily made of fats.
Consuming highly processed vegetable oils contributes to disease by neglecting both of these important concepts. Vegetable oils are very high in omega-6 fats while also being highly damaged during processing. This leaves you with an elevation in inflammation and subpar building materials for your brain and peripheral nervous system!

Alternative: Organic Virgin Coconut Oil
Coconut oil is a great source of healthy saturated fat that is safe for cooking up to 350 degrees F which is where it hits its smoke point.  Coconut oil has a remarkable stability and along with extra virgin olive oil, butter, ghee and beef tallow handles heat quite well.

Un-fermented Soy Products

Over the years, soy has become a hot topic as a healthy vs unhealthy food. You do not want this stuff in your diet. Here's why:

• High Amounts of Phytic Acids and Lectins: Soy contains these chemicals as natural defenses from animals that try to consume them. Phytic Acid binds up minerals, lowering the nutrition you absorb from your meals. Lectins can be extremely damaging to the lining of the gut.
• GMO & Glyphosate: The vast majority of soy in our food supply is genetically modified, containing high amounts of the infamous herbicide glyphosate. Glyphosate is another compound that destroys the health of your gut while draining vital nutrients as your body tries to neutralize it.
• Hormones: Soy has mild-estrogenic effects that may be harmful to someone who already has sex hormone imbalance.

Soy products have made their way into many processed foods on the market so it is important to read your labels. Especially look out for things like 'soy protein isolate' as it is a very concentrated form of soy that may have exaggerated health effects.

Alternative: Fermented Soy
Soy can be tolerable and even nutritious in its fermented form. This includes things like ORGANIC miso, natto, and tempeh. The fermentation process deactivates a large amount of the phytic acid and lectins which allows you to readily absorb the nutrients.

Processed Meat

The types of meat you eat are extremely important. Many people believe that simply buying the leanest meats is the healthiest option. The truth is, most of the meat produced today is simply unacceptable.
You want to avoid highly processed meats like deli meats, cured meats, and any kind of meat that comes from poor living conditions. Unless the package states that it is organic and ideally pasture-raised, you will probably want to steer clear of it.

Alternatives: Pasture-Raised/Wild-Caught
You want your meat to come from animals that have been raised humanely, in pastures, and fed the diet they are meant to eat. For beef and lamb this would be grass, for poultry, this would be things like bugs, seeds, berries and things that can be foraged in a natural environment.
As a result these meats are more nutritious and contain a more favorable omega-3:Omega-6 ratios.

Microwaved Popcorn

Microwave popcorn is no good for a few reasons. First it is typically GMO corn, which will almost always contain glyphosate. Next, many brands utilize an artificial flavoring called diacetyl that is an alternative to butter. Diacetyl has been linked to respiratory disorders.
Finally, corn is a common food sensitivity with many that can cause inflammation in the gut.  Traditional microwaved popcorn is truly one of the worst foods you could possibly consume.

Alternative: Sprouted Pumpkin Seeds
If you must have popcorn, your best bet would be to either hot-air pop it or in a pot with coconut oil. Toss it up with some grass-fed butter or coconut oil and a high quality sea salt.

Non-Organic Produce

Glyphosate needs to be mentioned here again. Try avoiding glyphosate at all cost, as well as all other pesticides.
These are toxic to the human body, leaching minerals from the body and damaging the lining of your gut. Glyphosate consumption has been linked to many forms of cancer and neurodegenerative disease conditions. It is virtually impossible to avoid exposure to these chemicals all together, but you want to do your best where choice is available to reduce your exposure to these toxins.

Alternative: Organic Produce
You can either go all organic or, if you are sticking to a budget, follow the clean 15 & dirty dozen guidelines released by the EWG. Buy organic for the dirty dozen foods while the clean 15 are relatively safe to purchase conventional.

Artificial Sweeteners

Artificial sweeteners and flavor enhancers include aspartame, acefultame potassium, monosodium glutamate, sucralose and many others. They allow us to make food taste amazing without needing to add salt or sugar. The downside is that these compounds have a neurotoxic effect on the brain and break down into nasty chemicals once they are digested.
The constituents of aspartame, for example, have been shown to increase chances of mood disorders, overstimulate neuronal cells in the brain, and increase chances of brain-related cancers.

Alternative: Natural Sweeteners
One of the primary draws of artificial sweeteners is that they do not have any calories or sugar. If this is your motivation for using these products, stevia and monk fruit are great natural alternatives that will not have any negative impact on your blood sugar.
Other healthier options are organic coconut palm sugar or organic raw honey. While these will still create a rise in blood sugar, they have a relatively low glycemic index. Only use these on occasion.

Margarine

Margarine, like artificial sweeteners, is one of the more deceptive products to ever hit grocery store shelves. It is often marketed as a heart healthy alternative to butter. This is supposedly because it contains “heart healthy” vegetable oils and does not contain any saturated fat or cholesterol.
Although marketed as healthy, margarine is actually a toxic mixture of inflammatory, GMO, oils and artificial additives. You want to instead eat fats that increase your Omega-3:Omega-6 ratio while providing healthy saturated fats for brain and nervous system health. Margarine is definitely one of the worst foods you can consume!

Alternative: Grass-fed Butter
While many alternatives could fall here, in terms of the health effects mentioned above, butter provides a very complete nutrition profile. Butter from grass-fed cows is naturally high in Omega-3 fatty acids as well as important saturated fats and dietary cholesterol that are key for brain health and formation of sex hormones. Other great options include: Organic Coconut Oil, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Animal Fats (Lard/Tallow), Omega-3 rich fish, and avocado oil. As a general rule, fats that are solid at room temperature are suitable for cooking, while those that are liquid at room temperature are better suited as dressings after cooking.

Canned Tomatoes

Chemicals from plastics are a disaster to healthy hormone balance. For men and women, frequent exposure to chemicals leached from plastics can cause an elevation in estrogen that has many negative health effects. One of the major offendors is the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA).
What many people don’t realize is that BPA is often used in canned goods to protect the inside of the can from deteriorating. Combining a BPA lining with an acidic food such as tomatoes causes large amounts of BPA to leach out of the can. This means consuming canned tomatoes exposes your body to a massive amount of BPA.

Alternative: Fresh Tomatoes
You may be able to find canned tomatoes in BPA free cans or even alternative packaging. However, it is probably ideal to buy fresh organic tomatoes from your local health foods store or farmers market.
You can also get tomato sauces and diced tomatoes in glass jars and this is perfectly acceptable as the glass doesn't have chemicals that leach into the tomatoes.  Many brands offer tomatoes and tomato sauces in glass jars these days.

If you need any help with these suggestions or if you'd like to review your current lifestyle, please reach out. We can help you modify and adjust in a way that makes sense for your lifestyle - nothing cooky-cutter here.

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