Not only do they increase your risk of developing heart disease and 30 other health conditions and diseases, but they’re also behind the obesity epidemic.

In fact, I wrote about the research that confirmed it’s these foods, not lack of exercise — as previously thought — that’s fueling rising rates of obesity.

But what’s truly disturbing is their impact on reproductive and metabolic health…

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Weight gain is just the beginning

A 2025 study at the University of Copenhagen has confirmed that no matter how little of them you eat, ultra-processed foods lead to weight gain.

Researchers compared the health effects of an unprocessed vs. an ultra-processed diet on the same person, in order to get the most accurate results.

Forty-three men spent three weeks eating each of the two diets, with a cleansing period in between.

The unprocessed and ultra-processed diets had the same amount of calories, protein, carbs, and fats. But half the men were given an extra 500 calories per day.

Regardless of whether those extra 500 calories were involved, men on the ultra-processed diet gained about 1 kg (just over 2 pounds) more fat mass than those on the unprocessed diet.

But it doesn’t end there…

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“Our results prove that ultra-processed foods harm our reproductive and metabolic health, even if they’re not eaten in excess. This indicates that it is the processed nature of these foods that makes them harmful,” says Jessica Preston, lead author of the study.

Men on the ultra-processed diet showed:

• An increase in levels of phthalate cxxMINP, a hormone-disrupting chemical typically found in plastics.
• A decrease in testosterone and follicle-stimulating hormone, both essential for sperm production. In addition to affecting fertility, low sperm count impacts a man’s sex drive and can be a cause of erectile dysfunction.
• An increase in LDL (“bad” cholesterol) levels.
• Altered thyroid hormones.
• Altered markers of systemic inflammation and oxidative stress.

And in case you’ve forgotten, chronic inflammation causes the cellular damage behind a range of diseases from cancer to Parkinson’s disease to diabetes, not to mention an accelerated aging process that makes your body old before its time.

“We were shocked by how many body functions were disrupted by ultra-processed foods, even in healthy young men. The long-term implications are alarming and highlight the need to revise nutritional guidelines to better protect against chronic disease,” says the study’s senior author, Professor Romain Barrès.

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The choice is clear

I hope you don’t need any more convincing.

Whole foods are the best alternatives to ultra-processed foods. But for success, ease into eating more of them and fewer ultra-processed foods.

Ultra-processed foods are made to “hook” you, so don’t blame yourself if it’s hard to let them go. That being said, see about ditching the two ultra-processed foods considered the worst ASAP.

According to Heartfoundation.org, whole foods and minimally processed foods, like these, are what we all should be eating:

• Fresh, frozen and canned vegetables and fruit
• Dried, canned and frozen beans and legumes like lentils and chickpeas
• Whole grains like oats, brown rice, barley and quinoa
• Fresh and frozen poultry and meat
• Fresh, frozen and canned fish and seafood
• Milk and plain yoghurt (try sweetening with honey)
• Eggs
• Nuts and seeds.

An easy way to identify ultra-processed foods is that they are quick, easy, and require little to no preparation — the very definition of “convenience foods.”

They include foods like sweetened cereals, soda and white bread; frozen French fries, chicken nuggets and pizza; processed meats, like hot dogs and bacon; pre-packaged baked goods, like cookies and cakes; and microwaveable meals.

Make the choice today and start taking back your health and your longevity.

Sources:

Why ultra-processed diets make you gain fat even without extra calories — Science Daily

Effect of ultra-processed food consumption on male reproductive and metabolic health — Cell Metabolism

Here’s What Eating Processed Foods for Two Weeks Does to Your Body — Time

Five ways to eat less processed food — Heart Foundation

The post Ultra-processed foods: A metabolic and hormonal disaster for men appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

We spend half our lives dealing with the pain and hassle of a menstrual cycle, and just when that comes to an end — the celebration is cut short thanks to a whole new set of “gotchas.”

One of the worst, and sometimes most embarrassing, is bladder trouble.

You cough, sneeze, laugh or simply try to do something good for your body, like exercise, and your bladder betrays you faster than you can say “depends.”

Or you might be fine one second, but the next you have a sudden, intense urge to ‘go’ — followed by panic because a bathroom is nowhere in sight.

As many as 72% of us between the ages of 40 and 65 have these experiences — thanks to pelvic floor changes, overactive bladders or weak muscle control. We chalk it up to childbirth, aging and going through menopause.

But now, researchers in Finland say they’ve found one of the most surprising contributors to these problems — one that you could turn around with a few simple diet changes…

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The diet that leads to pelvic floor disorders

In researching the health and diet data of over 1,000 women between the ages of 47 and 55, the Finnish scientist found that pelvic floor disorders and poor nutrition go hand-in-hand.

As expected, they saw that rates of pelvic floor disorders increased as women reached menopause due to estrogen deprivation.

However, they found strong evidence that nutrition could have a significant effect on the mechanisms of pelvic floor disorders that lead to bladder leaks.

For example, higher consumption of highly processed ready-made foods and fast food increased the risk for experiencing stress incontinence (like when sneezing) and urge incontinence (that sudden urge to go NOW).

On the other hand, higher consumption of fruits and an overall higher-quality diet decreased the risk for stress incontinence.

Diet habits, like overeating and extreme dieting or alternating between the two behaviors, also seemed to exacerbate pelvic floor problems and carry a higher risk of bladder leaks.

Put simply, if you need help warding off or improving incontinence trouble in middle age, focus on eating a nutritious diet.

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The recipe for a lock-tight bladder

Diet as a tool to improve bladder function isn’t as far-fetched as it may seem…

Native Americans, for example, knew certain foods should be part of their daily diet, not just for nutrition, but as traditional medicine. One such food was pumpkin seed, revered for supporting bladder, kidney and digestive health.

They contain potassium, magnesium and zinc, which help calm and relax bladder muscles, reducing that desperate urgency to urinate. But what does the science say?

A 12-week study found that pumpkin seed oil extract significantly reduced overactive bladder symptoms. Other studies have shown it helps support prostate health and relieves BPH symptoms, like frequent nighttime urination.

In ancient China, healers used soybeans medicinally to support the kidneys and ease the afflictions of aging, such as hormonal changes.

Nowadays, we know how valuable soy is at supporting balanced hormones — and understand the roles of estrogen and testosterone for sustaining the strength of bladder muscles and the pelvic floor.

Soy contains phytoestrogens, plant-based compounds that have similar chemical structures to the hormone estrogen, which can also be found in flaxseeds and whole grains.

In a Korean study reported by the American Pharmacists Association, 120 women aged 35-70 years used a combo of pumpkin seed extract and soy, and reported a statistically significant improvement in daily urination, urgency and incontinence frequency compared with baseline. They also experienced fewer nighttime trips to the bathroom.

So if you need extra help taming your bladder, try to avoid the ultra-processed foods and snacks. Reach for pumpkin seed, flaxseed (great in yogurt) and whole grains. Your bladder will thank you.

Sources:

Disordered eating and certain foods linked to higher risk for urinary incontinence in middle-aged women – ScienceDaily

Prevalence Of Incontinence In Middle Age Women – National Association for Continence

The post How your diet can cause your bladder to leak appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But this belief about eggs has turned out to be much ado about nothing. In fact, research indicates that the opposite may be true — and that it’s another side on your breakfast plate that could be the real villain in the cholesterol war…

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The dietary paradox of the egg

In a world-first study, Australian researchers examined the independent effects of dietary cholesterol (like the kind in eggs) and saturated fat (like the kind in bacon and sausage) on LDL cholesterol. LDL is the “bad” kind of cholesterol that causes plaque buildup in the arteries.

The participants in the study were assigned to three different diets, each of which was followed for five weeks. The first was a diet high in cholesterol (660 mg/day) and low in saturated fat (6%) that included two eggs a day. The second was a low cholesterol (300 mg/day), high saturated fat (12%) diet without eggs. And the third was a diet high in cholesterol (600 mg/day) and saturated fat (12%), which included one egg a week.

What the researchers discovered put the lie to the egg’s bad reputation. By separating the effects of cholesterol and saturated fat, they found the high dietary cholesterol from eggs wasn’t the problem.

“Instead, it was the saturated fat that was the real driver of cholesterol elevation,” says lead researcher Jon Buckley, a professor at the University of South Australia.

That wasn’t all. The researchers discovered that eating two eggs a day, as long as it was part of a diet low in saturated fat, can actually reduce LDL cholesterol levels and lower the risk of heart disease.

Buckley says this evidence shows it’s time to rethink the egg’s bad reputation.

“Eggs have long been unfairly cracked by outdated dietary advice,” he says. “They’re unique – high in cholesterol, yes, but low in saturated fat. Yet it’s their cholesterol level that has often caused people to question their place in a healthy diet.”

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Hold the bacon

This is excellent news for people who love having eggs for breakfast, but it’s more bad news for those who prefer a side of bacon or sausage with their eggs.

These processed, fatty meats have already been linked to CVD and a host of other health problems, including cancer and a significantly higher risk of memory loss and dementia.

The bottom line: as delicious as these breakfast meats are, it’s best to skip them and take your eggs with a side of fruit or whole-grain toast.

What about having cheese with your omelet or scrambled eggs? Unfortunately, many cheeses are high in saturated fat, including cheddar (19%), American (13%) and Swiss (8%). The good news is that there are low-fat versions of these cheeses available, so use one of those, and you can enjoy your cheese omelet guilt-free.

Finally, make sure you cook your eggs in a heart-healthy, non-tropical oil like olive oil. The American Heart Association also recommends heart-healthy canola oil, but bear in mind this oil has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

Sources:

Eggs are off the hook—study reveals bacon’s the real heart risk — ScienceDaily

Impact of dietary cholesterol from eggs and saturated fat on LDL cholesterol levels: a randomized cross-over study — The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Which Cheeses Are Low in Fat and Cholesterol? — Verywell Health

The post The real cholesterol culprit cracked: It’s not eggs appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

It includes recommended amounts of fat, saturated fat, protein, carbohydrates, salt, and fiber, as well as recommendations on the intake of fruits, vegetables, grains, and protein sources.

In the United Kingdom, My Plate’s counterpart is known as The Eatwell Guide.

But there’s a catch with guides like these: they leave it up to us to decide where we get these dietary building blocks from. And the choices run the gamut, from processed, ultra-processed or minimally processed foods to whole foods.

This choice is significant if you’re trying to lose weight.

A British study has proven that one option is twice as effective as the other when it comes to meeting that goal. I’ll give you one guess…

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The foods that won’t help with weight loss

A clinical trial led by researchers at University College London and UCL Hospital found that people eating minimally processed foods lost twice as much weight as those on diets eating ultra-processed foods.

This real-world study is the longest experimental study of an ultra-processed diet to date.

In it, 55 adults were split into two groups. One group started with an eight-week diet of MPF, such as overnight oats or homemade spaghetti Bolognese. After a four-week ‘washout’ period during which participants went back to their regular diet, they switched to a diet of UPF, such as breakfast oat bars or a lasagna ready meal. The other group completed the diets in the opposite order. 

Both diets adhered to the Eatwell Guide in terms of intake of fat, protein, salt, fiber, etc., and both groups could eat as much as they wanted of fruits and vegetables.

At the end of the eight weeks, the MPF group lost twice as much body weight (2.06%) as the UPF group (1.05%).

And in case you’re thinking, “Oh, they probably lost muscle, not fat,” think again. The greater weight loss experienced on the MPF diet came from reductions in fat mass and total body water, with no changes in muscle mass.

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Minimally processed foods for the win

Before I get into how to help you determine the differences between UPF and MPF, I want to share some other interesting findings from this study…

If you’ve ever dieted to lose weight, you know cravings alone can sabotage your best efforts. But MPF actually squashed cravings.

The participants completed several questionnaires during the study. When all the results were tallied, there were significantly greater improvements in the number of cravings and ability to resist them (craving control) on the MPF diet than on the UPF diet.

Specifically, on the MPF diet, participants reported:

• A two-fold greater improvement in overall craving control;
• A four-fold greater improvement in craving control for savory food;
• And an almost two-fold greater improvement in resisting whichever food they most craved.

If you read my recent article on The Food That Won’t Let You Outrun Obesity, you may already know that UPF has the opposite effect. Researchers surmise that the energy density, nutrient composition and appearance of UPF disrupt hunger hormone signals and actually encourage over-eating.

But that’s not all…

UPF calories are absorbed into the body quickly, where they can be stored as fat. These foods lack fiber and contain additives that may disrupt the normal digestive processes. They also have an obesogenic effect: obesogens are chemicals that disrupt the endocrine system and lead to weight gain.

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Identifying MPF and UPF: Which is which

Food experts are still trying to classify the level of processing in foods so we can have an easier time understanding what we’re eating.

I have seen MPF described as foods that are cut, washed, peeled, shredded and packaged. That would describe a bag of salad, apple slices or chopped nuts.

I’ve also read that frozen or canned fruits and vegetables are considered minimally processed — as long as when you open the package, you recognize the food. Canned fruit should be packaged in natural juices, though, not syrup. And no breading on those vegetables.

The easiest way to recognize a UPF is to simply read the label. If you see ingredients listed that are hard to pronounce or require a Google search to know what they are, that’s a UPF. They also bear very little resemblance to real food.

The best rule of thumb? Include as many whole foods as possible. That means consuming foods that look like the real thing, versus a stick of fish. Following an eating plan like the Mediterranean diet is a great way to ensure your diet consists mainly of whole, unprocessed or minimally processed foods.

Sources:

This diet helped people lose twice as much weight, without eating less — Science Daily

Ultraprocessed or minimally processed diets following healthy dietary guidelines on weight and cardiometabolic health: a randomized, crossover trial — Nature Medicine

Effect of a high-fat Mediterranean diet on bodyweight and waist circumference: a prespecified secondary outcomes analysis of the PREDIMED randomised controlled trial — The Lancet

The post How to lose twice as much without eating less appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Most people know that when they’ve been eating poorly, there’s a good chance they’ll put on some weight.

No big deal. To outrun the effects of a bad diet and lose those extra pounds, just ramp up the exercise.

Burn those extra calories, and you can avoid gaining or take off any extra weight that may have come from your “cheat days,” as we used to call them.

But in reality, that turns out to be almost impossible. Here’s the reason for that..

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Lack of exercise is not the cause of obesity

Over the last century, obesity has become as common as the common cold and lots of research has looked in potential causes. For decades it’s centered around taking calories in and the expenditure of energy to burn those calories.

So it makes sense that physicians and fitness experts alike blame weight gain and obesity on our increasingly sedentary lifestyles. But that’s just not the case…

An international team of researchers compared the daily amount of calories burned by people from 34 different countries and cultures worldwide, including hunter-gatherers and farming populations with low obesity rates, as well as people in sedentary jobs in places like Europe and the U.S., where obesity is widespread.

Dr. Herman Pontzer, a professor of evolutionary biology and global health at Duke University, led the research. And he and his team have debunked the idea that living a sedentary lifestyle leads to obesity.

Participants in the worldwide study included more than 4,200 adult men and women who drank a special water containing isotopes. These isotopes, tracked in participants’ urine, allowed the scientists to get an exact read on how much energy the subjects used.

They measured energy expenditures not just from movement and exercise but from vital processes and functions the body performs — including the energy it takes to keep the heart beating or the nervous system functioning — just to stay alive.

Surprisingly, they found that people from populations with high obesity rates burned only slightly less energy than those from populations without an obesity problem.

Dr. Pontzer says that this fits with what we already know about how the body burns calories.

“Surprisingly, what we find is that actually, the total calories burned per day is really similar across these populations, even though the lifestyle and the activity levels are really different,” he says.

In other words, someone foraging for berries all day may burn the same amount of calories as someone at a desk all day. But why?

“So if we burn more of our energy every day on physical activity, on exercise, after a while our bodies will adjust and spend less energy on the other tasks that we sort of don’t notice going on in the background.”

This finding is strong evidence that obesity doesn’t occur from lack of physical activity. It’s because of food… one kind in particular.

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Ultra-processed foods are the culprit

“It’s 100% diet,” says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “And I think then the question is, what is it about the diet?”

Dr. Mozaffarian was not involved in the research, but has shared insights pointing out that the modern diet has become dominated by ultra-processed foods (UPF), and that these are the drivers of weight gain.

“For decades, we’ve been telling Americans that you’re lazy, it’s your fault, you’re not moving enough, you’re eating too much,” he says. “And I think what this study shows is that there’s a really complicated biology happening and that our food is driving this.”

The researchers of the study listed several ways, in addition to long shelf lives and increased availability, that UPF contributes to obesity, including:

• The hyperpalatability, energy density, nutrient composition and appearance of UPF might disrupt satiety signaling and encourage overconsumption. (Remember the adage, “you can eat just one”? UPF, from snacks to quick breakfast foods, to frozen pizzas and more, are designed to hook you and make you crave more.)
• Processing has also been shown to increase the percentage of calories consumed that are absorbed into the body rather than excreted. (UPF has low fiber content, is absorbed by the body quickly and has additives that potentially disrupt normal digestive processes.)
• They also found data that supports the obesogenic effects of UPF. (Obesogens are chemicals, often involved in ultra-processing and packaging, that can disrupt the endocrine system and lead to weight gain and obesity.)

Avoiding obesity isn’t the only reason to avoid UPF…

The more UPF in your diet, the higher your risk of dementia, colorectal cancer, and at least 30 other health conditions, ranging from diabetes to Crohn’s disease to asthma.

Make every effort to stick to a healthy, whole foods diet that includes plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and you’re well on your way to keeping control of your weight.

Of course, there are other good reasons to get regular exercise — but if losing weight is among your reasons, you’ve got to examine your diet and move away from UPF.

Sources:

You can’t outrun a bad diet. Food — not lack of exercise — fuels obesity, study finds — NPR

Energy expenditure and obesity across the economic spectrum — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

The post The food that won’t let you ‘outrun’ obesity appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

For that reason, anyone with MS is likely to make note of things that can trigger their flares, like:

• Stress
• Lack of sleep
• Infections (like a urinary tract infection)
• Increased body heat

It’s also not uncommon for certain foods to trigger MS flares. Typically, experts recommend avoiding saturated and trans fats, refined sugar and alcohol — all of which can contribute to inflammation. Dairy, gluten and salt are also suspect, though evidence is mixed regarding the connection between these foods and MS flares.

Within the scope of saturated fats are animal products like red meat and full-fat dairy. But many plant-based products contain saturated fat as well. Surprisingly, this is where we find a food trigger that is especially bad for people with MS…

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A not-so-benign oil

Palm oil is a vegetable oil made from the fruit of oil palm trees. It’s considered a high-yield/low-cost crop, so it’s used in more than half of processed and packaged foods — from pizza, donuts and chocolate to even deodorant, shampoo and toothpaste.

Previous research has looked at the toxic effect of a high-fat diet on the severity of MS symptoms. MS causes extensive damage to the myelin sheath that insulates and protects nerves throughout the body. Current MS treatments focus on controlling the immune system’s response.

However, the exact mechanisms that contribute to neurodegeneration in MS have remained poorly understood. That’s why a group of international researchers focused on how a diet rich in palm oil could impact neuronal health in MS.

They used the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) model of inflammatory demyelination. They found that a diet high in palm oil led to a more severe disease course in mice — and narrowed the reaction down to two enzymes present in neurons: ceramide synthase 5 and 6 (CerS5 and CerS6).

According to principal investigator Patrizia Casaccia of the City University of New York (CUNY), these enzymes convert palm oil into a toxic substance known as C16 ceramide, which is responsible for inflicting damage to the mitochondria. This damage then deprives the neurons of the energy they need to counteract inflammation in the brain.

Casaccia says the researchers subsequently explored whether inactivating these enzymes would be neuroprotective. They discovered that when they genetically deleted CerS5 and CerS6 in neurons, neurodegeneration was prevented in their experimental MS model. This was true even when the mice were fed a palm oil-rich diet.

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In short, the researchers have made a significant breakthrough by pinpointing a specific metabolic pathway through which dietary fats like palm oil can worsen MS symptoms. This knowledge empowers individuals with MS to make informed nutritional choices that can positively impact their health.

How to avoid palm oil

Hopefully, this research will expand to the development of MS therapies.

Right now, though, the best course of action for anyone with MS is just to obliterate palm oil from their diet.

But truthfully, anyone—period—may want to avoid palm oil…

Researchers in Spain discovered that a diet rich in palmitic acid triggers the spread of cancerous tumors. They found it makes these tumor cells more aggressive.

Of course, avoiding palm oil is not easily done. As noted earlier, palm oil is in hundreds of foods, making it a significant component of the Standard American Diet. The good news is the vast majority are prepackaged foods, so following a whole-food diet is the best course for eliminating palm oil.

It’s less likely that using personal care products containing palm oil has the same impact as ingesting foods made with palm oil. However, environmental reasons, specifically deforestation, have made palm oil-free alternatives more available — particularly oral care products such as toothpaste.

Sources:

New research identifies ways to protect neurons from the negative effect of high-fat diet on multiple sclerosis progression — ScienceDaily

Neuroprotective effect of neuron-specific deletion of the C16 ceramide synthetic enzymes in an animal model of multiple sclerosis — Glia

Managing Relapses in Multiple Sclerosis — National Multiple Sclerosis Society

Multiple sclerosis diet: Foods to eat and avoid — Multiple Sclerosis News Today

Worried About MS Flares? 4 Triggers That Can Worsen Your Symptoms — Everyday Health

8 things to know about palm oil — WWF-UK

The post Palm oil’s toxic trait that fuels MS appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Chronic inflammation increases cancer risk. But in the case of colorectal cancer, something else is happening that is both astounding and terrifying.

Researchers have uncovered some disturbing facts about how ultra-processed foods help to “feed” colon cancer…

“A wound that won’t heal”

Previous research from Tufts and Harvard Universities had already proven that men who live on ultra-processed foods are increasing their risk of colorectal cancer by nearly 30 percent.

And now we have a big clue how it works…

A new study suggests that ultra-processed foods and inflammatory seed oils used in packaged food products may contribute to chronic inflammation, fueling colorectal cancer.

“It is well known that patients with unhealthy diets have increased inflammation in their bodies,” said Dr. Timothy Yeatman, a renowned physician-scientist and professor of surgery in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and associate center director for Translational Research and Innovation at the TGH Cancer Institute.

“We now see this inflammation in the colon tumors themselves, and cancer is like a chronic wound that won’t heal — if your body is living off of daily ultra-processed foods, its ability to heal that wound decreases due to the inflammation and suppression of the immune system that ultimately allows the cancer to grow.”

When the researchers used advanced techniques to identify trace amounts of lipids in 162 tumor samples, they saw an excess number of molecules that promote inflammation and a shortage of those that promote healing.

Dr. Yeatman added, “A human’s immune system can be extremely powerful and drastically impact the tumor microenvironment, which is great if harnessed correctly for health and wellness,” he says, “but not if it’s suppressed by inflammatory lipids from processed foods.”

Eating to prevent colon cancer

The colon is the “last stop” in your digestive system, so it stands to reason that what you put in your mouth will affect the health of your colon.

“Our bodies are designed to actively resolve inflammation through bioactive lipid compounds derived from the healthy fats, like avocados, that we consume,” said Ganesh Halade, associate professor in the USF Health Heart Institute and a member of the Cancer Biology Program at TGH Cancer Institute.

“Bioactive lipids are very small molecules derived from the foods that we eat and, if the molecules are coming from processed food products, they directly imbalance the immune system and drive chronic inflammation.”

So, the first place to start is to eat more of those healthy fats and ditch the bad ones when you eat fewer processed foods. Healthier fats also include omega-3s from fatty fish.

In fact, Dr. Yeatman’s team saw promise in early trials using specialized derivatives of fish oil to address inflammation at its root cause.

The next step is removing bad oils from your diet…

Seed oils were particularly mentioned for fueling cancer — so that’s the ingredient you to avoid. Seed oils include a group known as the “hateful eight”:

• Canola oil (aka rapeseed oil).
• Corn oil.
• Cottonseed.
• Grapeseed oil.
• Soybean oil.
• Sunflower oil.
• Safflower oil.
• Rice bran oil
• Peanut oil.

According to nutrition experts at the Cleveland Clinic, seed oils have high levels of omega-6 fats, which can lead to inflammation. Everything that’s unhealthy about seed oils is compounded when they are used in processed foods.

Sources:

Ultra-processed foods may drive colorectal cancer risk, study finds — Science Daily

Integration of lipidomics with targeted, single cell, and spatial transcriptomics defines an unresolved pro-inflammatory state in colon cancer — BMJ

Seed Oils: Are They Actually Toxic? — Cleveland Clinic

The post The processed food ingredient found in cancer tumors appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And that’s not even mentioning the number of diets out there. Mediterranean, green Mediterranean, keto, vegan, paleo, DASH… each has benefits and downsides. How am I supposed to choose?

I guess it all depends on what health impact I’m looking for. My goal is to choose a style of eating that minimizes my risk of chronic disease, so any diet that can help with that is one I’m interested in.

That’s why a recent study exploring a new eating style caught my attention. Yes, it’s yet another diet to add to the pile — but this one has some exciting benefits that can happen fast….

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The benefits of the NiMe diet

One thing most healthy diets have in common is their emphasis on avoiding “industrialized” or processed foods that are associated with bad health and early death.

Industrialized diets have contributed to a significant rise in chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes and heart disease in Westernized countries.

An international team of researchers decided to develop a diet based on the eating habits of non-industrialized societies. They focused on members of rural Papua New Guinea communities because they have a specific gut bacteria, L. reuteri, that people from industrialized societies lack.

In the study, participants followed the NiMe (Non-industrialised Microbiome Restore) diet and supplemented L. reuteri.

NiMe has a plant-based focus, primarily comprised of vegetables, legumes and other whole-plant foods. However, it is not vegetarian, as it includes one small serving of animal protein daily: salmon, chicken or pork. NiMe excludes dairy, beef and wheat because they aren’t part of the traditional foods consumed by rural Papua New Guineans.

NiMe was also very low in processed foods, which are high in sugar and saturated fat, and very high in fiber. In fact, fiber content was 22 grams per 1,000 calories, which exceeds current dietary recommendations.

The findings were impressive. In just three weeks, the diet slashed conditions you may recognize as symptoms of metabolic syndrome:

• Promoted weight loss;
• Lowered bad cholesterol by 17 percent;
• Reduced blood sugar by 6 percent;
• Slashed C-reactive protein by 14 percent (a marker of inflammation and heart disease).

These improvements were linked to beneficial changes in the gut microbiome. Specifically, the NiMe diet enhanced the short-term persistence of L. reuteri in the gut and reduced pro-inflammatory bacteria and bacterial genes that degrade the gut’s mucus layer.

Even though participants did not consume fewer calories on the NiMe diet, they still lost weight, and the diet alone led to considerable cardiometabolic benefits.

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“Industrialization has drastically impacted our gut microbiome, likely increasing the risk of chronic diseases,” says Jens Walter, a professor and leading scientist at University College Cork in Ireland. “To counter this, we developed a diet that mimics traditional, non-industrialized dietary habits and is compatible with our understanding on diet-microbiome interactions.”

In previous research, Walter’s team found that people in rural Papua New Guinea have a much more diverse microbiome rich in bacteria that thrive from dietary fiber and low in levels of pro-inflammatory bacteria linked to a Western diet. The researchers used this information to design the NiMe diet.

Recipes for a better gut microbiome

According to Paul Ross, a professor and director of APC Microbiome Ireland, the study illustrates how the gut microbiome can be targeted through specific diets to improve health and reduce disease risk. “These findings could shape future dietary guidelines and inspire the development of new food products and ingredients, as well as therapeutics, which target the microbiome,” Ross says.

The NiMe diet, with its plant-based focus, is surprisingly simple, and researchers have made recipes available on their Instagram (@nimediet) and Facebook pages. They also plan to make an online cookbook available as well. Most of the recipes use ingredients that are readily found in Western grocery stores.

If you’re looking to boost your gut levels of L. reuteri, consider adding probiotic supplements containing the bacterium to your diet. Combining that with the NiMe diet could be a powerful step towards protecting your body from chronic disease.

The post NiMe: The good gut diet that improves health fast appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Sadly, they are not the exception.

The number of people in their fifties and younger who are falling victim to gastrointestinal (GI) cancer, particularly bowel cancer, has increased dramatically over the past few decades.

Two large studies, however, indicate simple changes can help any of us avoid becoming another statistic…

Deadly diets fuel GI cancers

Gastrointestinal (GI) cancers, also considered digestive cancers, are responsible for one in every three cancer deaths worldwide. GI cancers occur anywhere in the digestive system, from the throat to the stomach, pancreas, intestines, rectum and anus.

At Flinders University in Australia, epidemiologist Zegeye Abebe and his colleagues analyzed 28 studies on the relationship between dietary patterns and GI cancers.

Collectively, the studies identified many direct links between poor diet choices and digestive cancers.

According to senior author Dr. Yohannes Melaku from Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute (FHMRI), “Unhealthy dietary patterns, marked by high consumption of red and processed meats, fast foods, refined grains, alcohol and sugary beverages, present a worrying relationship with an increased risk of GI cancers.”

But there’s a way to fix that…

When the team analyzed data from 97,561 people, they found that those who ate a diet high in fiber and unsaturated fats were less likely to develop colorectal cancer.

Dr. Melaku added, “Notably, we found that high-fiber foods such as fruits and vegetables promote healthy gut bacteria that can reduce inflammation. “

Inflammation: A driver of disease

Foods like sugary drinks, processed foods, and red meat are strong contributors to insulin resistance, which in turn makes fat cells release pro-inflammatory cytokines, which signal the immune system to activate an inflammatory response.

It’s a deadly chain reaction that disrupts the gut microbiome as well, allowing harmful bacteria to facilitate a pro-cancer environment, including E. coli, known to affect tumor formation.

Your diet can determine whether inflammation takes control of your body and contributes to cancer risk or not. Your diet can also create a healthy microbiome all along your digestive tract.

So, where should you start?

Fiber, fiber, fiber. We can’t stress this enough. Getting enough fiber in your diet every day is crucial. There are so many foods that are high in fiber, including:

• Chickpeas
• Lentils
• Oatmeal
• Apples
• Pears
• Almonds
• Broccoli
• Avocado
• Black beans
• Raspberries
• Whole grains

Antioxidants. A diet rich in antioxidant-rich foods will neutralize free radicals and prevent cancer-causing inflammation. Some antioxidants with anti-inflammatory properties include:

• Vitamin C: Found in citrus fruits, broccoli, and strawberries 
• Vitamin E: Present in vegetable oils, nuts, and seeds 
• Beta-carotene: Found in carrots, sweet potatoes, and spinach 
• Quercetin: Abundant in berries, onions, and grapes 
• Curcumin: The active compound in turmeric

Avoid processed foods like the plague! Researchers at Tufts and Harvard Universities found that men who indulged in ultra-processed foods were at a 29 percent higher risk of colorectal cancer.

Ultra-processed foods include:

• Sugary drinks
• Ready-to-eat foods
• Processed meats (bacon, etc.)
• Margarine
• Instant soups
• Packaged cookies

If you’re craving sweets, you’re better off opting for dark chocolate, fruit (or fruit dipped in dark chocolate!), applesauce, dates or frozen banana bits.

Making a few conscious changes to your diet can keep you from becoming a cancer statistic.

Sources:

Deadly diets driving digestive diseases — Flinders University News

Association of dietary patterns derived by reduced-rank regression with colorectal cancer risk and mortality — European Journal of Nutrition

Global trend in incidence, death, burden and risk factors of early-onset cancer from 1990 to 2019 — BMJ Oncology

The post Your diet and the inflammatory risk of GI cancer appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Yet, many of the choices we make each day actually accelerate aging, including choices like skipping out on exercise and not getting enough sleep.

However, as bad as these are, when it comes to sending our biological clocks into overdrive, the foods we eat could be the worst offenders.

That’s because according to a massive research study out of Italy, eating a certain type of food can make you biologically older than your actual chronological age.

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Anything but natural

The study compared food frequency questionnaires of over 22,000 participants to over thirty different blood biomarkers that measure biological age. Unlike chronological age which is calculated exclusively by the date of your birth, biological age reflects the actual conditions inside your body, including those of your organs, tissues and systems.

Basically, biological aging is your body’s “internal clock”, which can tick faster or slower than the years marked on the calendar, because it reflects the true state of your health — and whether it’s sped up your internal clock.

Specifically, the researchers set out to determine how each participant’s consumption of ultra-processed foods affected their biological aging.

So what are ultra-processed foods?

The easiest way to think of them is as foods that are made in part or entirely with substances you wouldn’t normally find in your kitchen. This could be things like hydrolysed proteins, maltodextrins, hydrogenated fats, as well as dyes, preservatives, anticaking agents, flavor enhancers and artificial sweeteners.

Examples of ultra-processed foods include obvious ones like packaged snacks and sugary drinks. But they can also be foods that seem harmless like the sandwich bread you buy at the grocery store, meat alternatives, and even fruit yogurts and some breakfast cereals.

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Aging accelerated

Unfortunately, these foods it turns out that when it comes to health and longevity, these foods are anything but harmless…

In fact, the study showed that people who ate high levels of ultra-processed foods experienced a significant acceleration of their biological aging.

“Our data show that a high consumption of ultra-processed foods not only has a negative impact on health in general, but could also accelerate aging itself, suggesting a connection that goes beyond the poor nutritional quality of these foods,” said lead researcher, Simona Esposito.

Although this makes it clear that ultra-processed foods and healthy aging simply don’t go together, the exact mechanisms of why these foods are so harmful to our health aren’t quite as clear.

However, nutritional epidemiologist, Marialaura Bonaccio, explains it this way, “Besides being nutritionally inadequate, being rich in sugars, salt and saturated or trans fats, these foods undergo intense industrial processing that actually alters their food matrix, with the consequent loss of nutrients and fiber. This can have important consequences for a series of physiological functions, including glucose metabolism, and the composition and functionality of the gut microbiota. Also, these products are often wrapped in plastic packaging, thus becoming vehicles of substances toxic to the body”.

In other words, these foods, which are anything but natural, are made worse by the toxic packaging they come in, setting off a cascade of health problems in our bodies and accelerating the ticking of our biological clocks.

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Choices for healthier aging

The good news?

It’s not that hard to avoid the foods that accelerate aging.

Foods to skip include:

• White foods – White breads, pastries, pasta, rice and sugar should be a hard pass.
• Sandwich and breakfast meats – Ultra-processed meats are not typically found in the butcher section of the grocery store. They look very different from their original meat source and include lunch meat, hotdogs, bacon, sausage, jerky, canned meat and any other meat that has been processed to change its shape, flavor and freshness.
• Sweetened beverages – Cut out sugar-sweetened or artificially sweetened beverages, including soda, energy drinks, sweet tea and fruit juice.
• Packaged, ready-to-eat foods – Packaged snacks and ready-to-eat meals are loaded with unnatural ingredients and wrapped in plastics that can leach into your body.

And if you really want to turn back the clock, try these six secrets to exceptional aging that studies have proven work.

Sources:

High consumption of ultra-processed foods linked to accelerated biological aging — EurekAlert!

The post Foods that send aging into overdrive appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Sandwiched between expected words like “beef” and “cheese,” you’ll likely see a long list of unfamiliar words that defy pronunciation. These are all chemical additives of some kind.

For products that are supposed to be food, there isn’t a lot of “food” in them!

We’ve sounded the alarm before about these “ultra-processed” foods and the additives they contain. Studies indicate some may trigger inflammatory bowel disease, dementia and metabolic syndrome, a group of symptoms that include obesity, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.

Now we’re finding a specific type of additive is a potential cause of a common health problem on the rise…

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Watch out for emulsifiers

Emulsifiers are chemicals added to food to help blend oil and water, which separate under normal circumstances. Emulsifiers help keep ultra-processed foods smooth, soft and creamy and extend their shelf life. Foods that contain emulsifiers include mayonnaise, ice cream, peanut butter, margarine, processed meats and bread.

As foods containing emulsifiers have become staples in Western diets, scientists have begun examining the impact these chemicals are having on people’s health.

Researchers from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) team analyzed data from an ongoing national survey, the French NutriNet-Santé cohort. They examined the dietary entries of 104,139 adults who were an average of 42.7 years old most of whom (79 percent) were women.

Over the 14-year study time frame, 1,059 cases of type 2 diabetes were diagnosed among the participants. The team compared these cases to the diets of the participants using a model that accounted for other diabetes risk factors, including age, weight and family history.

After an average follow-up of seven years, the researchers found chronic intake of the following emulsifiers was linked with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes:

• Carrageenans: 3 percent increased risk per increment of 100 mg per day
• Gum arabic: 3 percent increased risk per increment of 1,000 mg per day
• Mono- and diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids: 4 percent increased risk per increment of 100 mg per day
• Sodium citrate: 4 percent increased risk per increment of 500 mg per day
• Xanthan gum: 8 percent increased risk per increment of 500 mg per day
• Guar gum: 11 percent increased risk per increment of 500 mg per day
• Tripotassium phosphate: 15 percent increased risk per increment of 500 mg per day

The study had limitations, such as no causational proof and under-representation of men. Still, the authors say their findings are robust and add to a growing body of evidence that ultra-processed foods raise type 2 diabetes risk, and that regulations around the use of these additives should be re-evaluated.

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Where you’ll find emulsifiers

If you eat primarily processed or especially ultraprocessed food chances are you could easily meet or exceed the increments listed above.

For example in the Western diet, the average daily intake of carrageenan is estimated around 250 mg/day.

It’s found in ice cream, pudding, sandwich meats, soymilk, yogurt, infant formula, dietetic beverages, canned soups and broths, low-fat salad dressings, frozen pizza, cottage cheese, sour cream and more.

I couldn’t find details about just how plentiful emulsifiers are in the US food market, but we know they are. But in the U.K., they report that 37.5 percent to as much as 51.7 percent of food products contained them. Emulsifiers were found in 95 percent of pastries, buns and cakes.

So when you cake, stick to food that looks like it’s original source or look for less processed foods.

Sources:

Food Emulsifiers Linked to Increased Type 2 Diabetes Risk — Technology Networks

Food additive emulsifiers and the risk of type 2 diabetes: analysis of data from the NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort study — The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology

Expert reaction to study looking at emulsifiers and type 2 diabetes — Science Media Centre

The post 7 food additives that can trigger type 2 diabetes appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

So it’s not surprising that these foods, which make up a chunk of the standard American diet, are fueling the growing diabetes epidemic.

However, what may surprise you is just how little of them you can consume to dramatically raise your risk of blood sugar problems.

Luckily, the same research reveals you can beat back this risk without completely overhauling your diet…

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Ultra-processed: a recipe for blood sugar problems

After University College London researchers compared the consumption of UPF to the health outcomes of close to 312,000 people over nearly 11 years, the results were clear…

Every 10 percent increase in the amount of UPF in a person’s diet is linked with a 17 percent increase in type 2 diabetes risk.

And four types of ultra-processed foods were found to be the worst contributors. They include:

• Savory snacks (think salty chips, cheese-filled pretzels, etc)
• Animal-based products like processed meats (includes luncheon meats)
• Ready meals (especially the kind you don’t refrigerate. Imaging the additives to make that possible!)
• Sugar-sweetened and artificially-sweetened beverages (this includes juices)

These foods undergo extensive “manufacturing.” In that process, any ingredients that start as recognizable foods are processed to such a state they become unrecognizable. Nutrition gets tossed in the process and additives (emulsifiers, stabilizers and gelling agents) specifically designed to change taste and texture and increase shelf life take their place.

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Take it down a notch and reduce your risks

The researchers say that while eating UPFs increases the risk of blood sugar problems, this risk can be lowered simply by eating foods that take the level of processing down a notch.

Foods designated as “processed foods” (PF) fit that bill. They undergo a minimum amount of processing and include foods like canned fruits and vegetables, packaged bread, cheese slices or cheese spreads. The researchers believe substituting just 10 percent of UPFs with 10 percent of PFs reduced diabetes risk by 18 percent.

Even better, you can ease into it. While you work on ditching the 4 worst UPF offenders, enjoying a breakfast biscuit and jelly or bowl of cereal is OK and may even be beneficial.

Even though also considered UPFs, breads, biscuits and breakfast cereals, sweets and desserts and, of course, plant-based alternatives, were all associated with a lower incidence of type 2 diabetes.

There was another surprise in the study, this time in the processed foods category, that also may have lowered diabetes risk: consumption of beer and wine.

This isn’t an endorsement (alcohol has links to other diseases), but an explanation…

In their study data, which was gathered from individuals from eight European countries, 30-50 percent of the processed food intake in the study came from beer and wine, which has been associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes in previous research.

Also included on the healthier end of the spectrum are artisanal breads, preserved fruits and vegetables and salted nuts.

So if your focus is keeping your blood sugar in check, this research has now given you a powerful way to make that happen — without feeling like you have to deprive yourself or start growing your own food.

Sources:

Replacing ultra-processed foods in diet reduces type 2 diabetes risk – Science Daily

The post How to eat processed food and not get diabetes appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Whether I succeed at that or not, at least I’ve got breakfast under my belt.

And truth be told, it’s not a chore. Five out of seven days a week, I’m more than happy with berries and yogurt, scrambled eggs, a banana and greens smoothie or a big bowl of oatmeal.

But on weekends when the family is all around, that’s when sausage and bacon tempt my weak spot.

Yes, I know processed meats don’t do my heart health or blood sugar any favors. That’s why I limit them. But it turns out those tempting meats could be even worse than I thought, and here’s why I’m working on giving them up entirely…

According to research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, every time we eat them, we’re accelerating the rate at which our brains age — and significantly raising risks for memory loss and dementia.

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Processed meat hastens cognitive decline

Harvard researchers followed 130,000 participants over an average of 43 years. To say this was no flash-in-the-pan study may be an understatement.

They determined that people who ate approximately two servings of processed red meat a week had a significant 14 percent higher risk of dementia compared to those who ate less bacon, sausage and other processed meats — like hot dogs.

For reference, a serving was considered just two slices of bacon, one hot dog, or 2 ounces of sausage, salami, bologna or similar processed meats.

Even worse, every additional daily serving of processed red meat was associated with an extra 1.61 years of cognitive aging and 1.69 years of verbal memory loss.

To turn the tide in the opposite direction, all you need to do is substitute a daily serving of bacon, or the like, with a serving of nuts or legumes — such as a tablespoon of peanut butter, a handful of nuts or a helping of beans at lunch or dinner.

Simple switches like those led to a 20 percent lower risk of developing dementia and 1.37 fewer years of brain aging.

The math makes sense for your brain

The good news is that this threat to your brain health is one we can control. If we can skip processed red meats, holding onto a healthy functioning brain into old age can become a reality.

But avoiding delicious bacon and eating more almonds, walnuts, kidney beans, black-eyed peas, chickpeas and lima beans is easier said than done. That’s why I don’t put all my eggs — or bacon, actually — in one basket…

My favorite brain-supporting nutrient is phosphatidylserine (PS for short), and no matter how healthy I eat on any given day — I take it daily to nourish my brain cells.

PS is a fatty substance that covers cell membranes in the body and is especially abundant in the neurons of your brain — for good reason: It’s a key building block in creating, maintaining and repairing brain cells.

Although the body manufactures some PS on its own, our primary sources of PS are dietary (organ meats, fatty fish, soybeans) or supplemental. This is especially important, as the body produces less of this vital nutrient with age.

Phosphatidylserine has a mountain of research behind it, including one where it was shown to increase memory retention during delayed verbal recall — the kind of memory test where a person must repeat a sequence of words an hour or more after hearing them.

This type of verbal recall is one of the first memory abilities to be lost in the early stages of cognitive decline — and one of the problems observed by Harvard researchers in people eating processed meat in their study.

If you plan to keep bacon or sausage on the breakfast table, or hot dogs and salami around for lunch or dinner, keep PS on your bedside table.

Sources:

Dementia Risk Linked With Processed Red Meat — MEDPAGETODAY

The post Ditch these foods found to accelerate brain aging appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

It has that reputation because it often has no obvious symptoms. But all the while, beneath the surface, it’s damaging blood vessels, causing heart disease and raising the risk of heart attack and stroke.

However, it seems like there’s a new threat that may be just as pervasive and sneaky, making up 60 percent of the average American adult’s diet.

From fizzy drinks to cereals and packaged snacks to processed meat — ultra-processed foods are industrially made, using ingredients not normally found in a domestic kitchen and not previously encountered by human physiology.

Not only have these foods been linked to cancer, heart disease and 30 other conditions, but they’re cutting life expectancy short — causing experts who authored a commentary published in The American Journal of Medicine to suggest they may indeed be “the new silent killer.”

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Unnatural digestion makes a body sick

Ultra-processed foods barely resemble real food. The process itself strips away healthy nutrients, then packs in additives — and not just oil, fat, added sugar, starch and sodium.

They use emulsifiers such as carrageenan, mono- and diglycerides, carboxymethylcellulose, polysorbate and soy lecithin, and various other unpronounceable ingredients that lengthen shelf life, stabilize and enhance flavors and textures.

Our bodies realize these products are not real food — and it’s most obvious in how we digest them…

When we eat whole foods, including fruits, vegetables and meat, they are digested slowly. The big benefit here is that we absorb fewer calories and experience lower glycemic and triglyceride loads.

But the digestion of ultra-processed foods is the exact opposite — and how they lead to weight gain and metabolic disease…

According to the authors, one plausible mechanism to explain the hazards is that ultra-processed foods contain emulsifiers and other additives that the mammalian gastrointestinal tract mostly does not digest. They may act as a food source for our microbiota, and as such may be creating a dysbiotic microbiome that can, in the right host, promote disease.

That’s harmful enough, but Allison H. Ferris, M.D., senior author, an associate professor and chair, Department of Medicine, and director of the internal medicine residency program at FAU Schmidt College of Medicine, stated “… even if the troublesome additives were removed from the ultra-processed food, there would still be concern for an over-consumption of these products possibly leading to obesity, diabetes and heart disease.”

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The long-term results of eating ultra-processed foods

Although the scientists say that more research is needed to confirm their biggest fears, they point out that there has been a significant increase in colorectal cancer in the U.S., especially in young adults who shouldn’t have to worry about the disease.

And if we’re wise, we don’t need to wait for some official warning to come down from the powers that be. We all know how long it took before the dangers of tobacco were taken seriously enough to require warning labels on cigarette packs or “no smoking” to be considered a must to avoid not just lung cancer but heart disease.

The time to stop including these ultra-processed ‘silent killers’ in your diet is now.

So instead of picking up that frozen dinner, box of cereal, hot dogs, sandwich meat or any host of foods that are convenient but dangerous, it’s time for all of us to go back to how things used to be done to decide what we should eat for dinner.

It’s time to get back to whole foods and cooking them at home. Reach for blood pressure-lowering spices and the safe salt alternative to make your homecooked meals just as tasty and satisfying.

Sources:

Could ultra-processed foods be the new ‘silent’ killer? – EurekAlert!

The post Move over high blood pressure: There’s a new ‘silent killer’ appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Studies show that even a small amount of red meat in your diet increases your odds of getting heart disease or cancer.

And research ties eating red meat to premature aging and a higher risk for diverticulitis.

Of course, there’s that 30-year study that named the two worst ultraprocessed foods for your health — and yes, one of them was processed meat.

So, say you get the message loud and clear — and are ready to reduce these types of meat in your diet. What changes could you expect to see? How would your health improve? What diseases could be avoided?

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A range of health benefits by reducing meat

A study from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland has looked at what can happen when you eliminate red and processed meats from your diet.

And the results will make you want to start making some changes right now if these meats make up a good portion of your diet.  

Professor Lindsay Jaacks and his team used data from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) national health survey to create a simulated, representative sample of the US adult population.

Using this “micro-simulation,” they estimated how the health of our population would improve if we reduced the amount of processed and red meat we eat — the first time anyone has looked at the multiple health benefits this can bring.

Here’s what they found:

Reducing consumption of both types of meat by 30 percent resulted in:

• 1,073,400 fewer diabetes cases;
• 382,400 fewer cardiovascular disease cases;  
• and 84,400 fewer colorectal cancer cases.

Cutting red meat intake alone by 30 percent — the equivalent of eating around one less quarter-pound beef burger a week — resulted in:

• More than 732,000 fewer diabetes cases;
• 291,500 fewer cardiovascular disease cases;
• and 32,200 fewer colorectal cancer cases.

According to the researchers, the finding that more disease cases were prevented by reducing red meat compared to processed meat is partly due to the average daily intake of red meat being higher than processed meat

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Small changes = big benefits

Like any habit you want to break, eating less processed and red meat won’t happen overnight.

But isn’t reducing your risk of diabetes, heart disease or cancer worth giving up one burger a week? And coming up with a better lunch option than luncheon meat or sausage for breakfast?

There are a few ways to ease into it…

Consider meatless Mondays. Try a fish dinner instead. Choose chicken another day of the week.

But don’t just get hung up on what you’re giving up. Think “more!” Add more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, eggs, seeds and legumes to your routine.

Before you know it, you’ll have adopted what I like to call an “eat more, live better” food style. Instead of starting a new diet, which can be intimidating, you pledge to gradually change your “eating style,” and that’s a recipe for success.

Again, you can start slow. Instead of bacon or sausage with your eggs for breakfast, try some of these healthful options:

• Yogurt, fruit and nuts
• Spinach, cheese and scrambled egg in a whole-grain tortilla
• Cottage cheese, fruit and chia seeds
• Salmon lox and cream cheese on a whole-grain bagel
• A smoothie with protein powder
• Whole-grain toast with almond butter
• Tofu scramble

Sources:

Cuts to processed meat intake bring a range of health benefits — Eureka Alert

Estimated effects of reductions in processed meat consumption and unprocessed red meat consumption on occurrences of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, colorectal cancer, and mortality in the USA: a microsimulation study — The Lancet Planetary Health

Too much red meat and too few vegetables may increase your body’s biological age — Medical Express

The post The changes that happen when you eat less red and processed meat appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Medications we take, stress from the day, pain, bathroom trips, too much screen time, daytime napping and irregular sleep habits can add up to sleepless nights.

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Researchers are onto a strong connection between chronic insomnia and a particular “food group.” If they make up a large part of your diet, getting the valuable sleep you need may be as easy as giving them up…

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The rise of fake food

Within the last decade, the proliferation of “fake food” has gotten so out of hand that the United Nations began applying the NOVA system of food classification to keep it all straight.

The NOVA system separates foods into four classifications: unprocessed or minimally processed, culinary ingredients (like olive oil), and two more: processed and ultra-processed foods.

Processed foods, by definition, are any “raw agricultural commodities that have been washed, cleaned, milled, cut, chopped, heated, pasteurized, blanched, cooked, canned, frozen, dried, dehydrated, mixed or packaged” — like a can of vegetables.

But ultra-processed foods are products that have gone through so much processing that they no longer bear much resemblance to real food. If you read the labels on these foods, you’ll see multiple unrecognizable ingredients.

Things like chicken nuggets, frozen pizza, microwaveable meals, and chips… even some cereals and packaged baked goods fall into this category.

Ultra-processed foods have been linked to a host of health conditions including dementia, depression and anxiety, and hypertension, bowel disease and a range of cancers.

And evidence says they’re stealing our sleep too…

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Ultra-processed foods’ connection to chronic insomnia

A group of French and American researchers recently looked at the possible connection between chronic insomnia and the consumption of ultra-processed foods.

“At a time when more and more foods are highly processed and sleep disturbances are rampant, it is important to evaluate whether diet could contribute to adverse or good quality sleep,” says Marie-Pierre St-Onge, a nutrition and sleep scientist at Columbia University.

St-Onge and her colleagues looked at data collected on 38,570 adults as part of the NutriNet Health Study, a study that focused on connections between nutrition and disease.

While St. Onge and her colleagues did not establish a causal relationship between ultra-processed foods and insomnia, they did find a statistically significant association between higher consumption of ultra-processed foods and increased chronic insomnia risk.

It’s important to point out that this is not the first time these foods have been associated with stealing sleep…

A Columbia University study demonstrated that postmenopausal women who ate the most refined carbohydrates — particularly added sugars — were 16 percent more likely to develop insomnia than those who ate the least. And if any food “group” contains a bevy of refined carbs and added sugars, it’s the ultra-processed one.

By the way, that same study found women who ate more vegetables, fiber and whole fruit (not juice) were about 14 percent less likely to lie awake at night.

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Beat insomnia the easy way

If you’re having trouble sleeping, it’s clear that sticking to “real” food could help eliminate one thing that’s likely to be causing it.

But of course, kicking the ultra-processed food habit is not easy. So start slow if you can’t go cold turkey, by ditching the two foods a 30-year study found to be the worst ones you could eat.

Then start adding in more of the good stuff. If eating fresh fruits and vegetables seems difficult at first, consider green powder mixes. They mix with water and many also contain fruit and fiber.

Steer clear of sleeping pills if you can. They come with some nasty side effects and aren’t guaranteed to work for everyone.

Instead, try the bedtime routine of a toddler and these other sleep-inducing tips.

Sources:

Chronic Insomnia Linked to Ultra-Processed Foods, Study Finds — Science Alert

The association between ultra-processed food consumption and chronic insomnia in the NutriNet-Santé Study — Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

One in four Americans develop insomnia each year: 75 percent of those with insomnia recover — Science Daily

Mediterranean diet pattern and sleep duration and insomnia symptoms in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis — Sleep

The post Are these foods behind your chronic insomnia? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And it truly is SAD. It’s packed with convenient food products that may be tasty but damage our health with every bite.

That’s because ultra-processed food and drinks bear little resemblance to real food and are chock-full of harmful additives banned in other countries, artificial and low-calorie sweeteners tied to blood clots and copious amounts of added sugars linked to 45 health conditions.

Unfortunately, those aren’t the only dangers that come with feasting on high-fat (saturated fats), sugary foods.

According to researchers at the University of Southern California, the evidence is piling up that junk food can cause lasting damage to your brain…

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It can start early

Past studies have shown that eating an unhealthy diet can increase a person’s risk of Alzheimer’s disease later in life. Additionally, researchers have found that in patients with Alzheimer’s, a neurotransmitter involved in memory and learning — known as acetylcholine — gets depleted.

The California researchers suspected that diet could be a culprit. But what they discovered was worse than they expected…

The damage to the brain’s levels of acetylcholine could begin much sooner than anyone thought.

The scientists fed one group of rats a junk food diet during the time in their life that parallels human adolescence. It’s a time when the brain is undergoing dramatic levels of development and therefore could be more open to damage.

For comparison, another group of rats was given a healthy diet to eat instead.

The rats that ate the junk food lost out in a big way: being raised on a diet similar to our SAD diet, they failed memory tests and were unable to identify new objects in a scene they had explored days earlier.

And those memory problems stuck around even after they had been switched to a healthy diet for 30 days (which would be the same as a human reaching adulthood).

The junk food diet also resulted in:

• Reduced levels of a protein that transports acetylcholine in the hippocampus (the brain region that consolidates memories and spatial information)
• Impaired acetylcholine signaling in rats that had problems with the memory tests

As lead researcher, Anna Hayes explains, “Acetylcholine signaling is a mechanism to help them encode and remember those events, analogous to ‘episodic memory’ in humans that allows us to remember events from our past. That signal appears to not be happening in the animals that grew up eating the fatty, sugary diet.”

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Diet isn’t the only threat to acetylcholine

The good news is that you’re never too old to change your diet and save your brain.

Although the junk food you ate in your younger years may be showing up as memory problems now, you don’t have to simply accept them.

In fact, researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that the Mediterranean diet could make the brain work better with age. We know that it contains brain-supporting nutrition that’s been found to cross the blood-brain barrier and has been detected in the blood work of super-agers.

And plenty of research into healthy aging confirms nootropics can help our brains operate like younger ones.

But — and this is a big deal — bad food isn’t the only threat to your brain’s acetylcholine…

Many common medications, including those used to treat colds, bladder leaks, Parkinson’s and more interfere with how it works in your body. At least three recent studies point to a strong connection between these medications, considered anticholinergics, and cognitive impairment, including Alzheimer’s.

So ditch them (talk to your doctor first if prescribed) and start eating better — for your brain’s sake.

Sources:

Too Much Junk Food Could Cause Lasting Damage to The Brain — Science Alert

The post Food and drugs that harm your ‘memory’ transmitter appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Yet, it seems that almost every other week we’re hearing more about how bad these foods are for our health — and how they can shorten our lifespans.

I get it. I’m sure you get it, too. Ultraprocessed foods are, as they say, “of the devil.” Eating these foods has been associated with an early risk of death. Period.

But avoiding these foods is no easy task. They fill the grocery store shelves and, let’s face it, make life easier when putting food on the table.

Finally, some researchers have taken a different approach…

They’ve taken a 30-year look at ultra-processed foods and their health impacts — and have identified those that can do us the most harm.

At least this gives us a starting point to begin removing the most dangerous foods from our diets…

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The two worst offenders

An international team of researchers analyzed data from more than 100,000 health professionals in the United States with no history of cancer, cardiovascular disease or diabetes. The participants provided information on their health and lifestyle habits every two years for 32 years, and every four years they completed a detailed food questionnaire.

The group eating the least ultraprocessed food consumed an average of three servings a day, while the group eating the most averaged seven servings a day.

According to the results, those who ate the most ultraprocessed food had a 4 percent higher risk of death from any cause, including a 9 percent higher risk of neurodegenerative death.

But here’s where the really helpful information comes in…

Different ultraprocessed foods demonstrated different impacts. The researchers note that processed meat and sweetened beverages, whether sugar is used or artificial sweeteners, showed a higher correlation with these negative outcomes than other ultraprocessed food categories.

Lead study author Dr. Mingyang Song, associate professor of clinical epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says he wouldn’t necessarily advise a full-scale rejection of all ultraprocessed foods.

“Cereals, whole grain breads, for example, they are also considered ultraprocessed food, but they contain various beneficial nutrients like fiber, vitamins and minerals,” he said in an interview with CNN.

“On the other hand, I do think people should try to avoid or limit the consumption of certain ultraprocessed foods, such as processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages and also potentially artificially sweetened beverages.”

He adds that researchers also found the most important factor to reducing risk of death is overall diet quality.

“If people maintain a generally healthy diet, I don’t think they need to be scared or freaked out. The overall dietary pattern is still the predominant factor determining the health outcomes.”

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Making smart food choices less challenging

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines ultraprocessed foods at those containing ingredients “never or rarely used in kitchens or classes of additives whose function is to make the final product palatable or more appealing.”

A big clue to identifying those ingredients is that most of them are almost unpronounceable. That makes them easy to find if you’re a food label reader.

But thanks to this recent research, getting started on the worst offenders — processed meat and sugar-sweetened or artificially sweetened beverages — may be much less challenging…

Ultraprocessed meats are not typically found in the butcher section of the grocery store. They look very different from their original meat source and include lunch meat, hotdogs, bacon, sausage, jerky, canned meat and any other meat that has been processed to change its shape, flavor and freshness.

Cutting out sugar-sweetened or artificially sweetened beverages may be hard on your habit if you are used to consuming them, but otherwise easy to avoid. Skipping soda, energy drinks, sweet tea and fruit juice is as simple as no longer buying them at a store.

If you make your own tea at home, for example, at least you can have much more control over the amount of real sugar you might add, versus the massive amount a store-bought brand will contain. Same for fruit juice that can be made at home with the help of a juicer or blender and is naturally sweet.

Be especially wary of artificial sweeteners which are coming under fire for links to cancer, and even low-calorie sweeteners made from naturally-occurring sugar alcohols have the potential to cause blood clots.

Be sure to take what Dr. Song says about a healthy diet to heart. By far one diet continually comes out on top for promoting health — and being easy to follow and stick to. That would be the Mediterranean diet.

Sources:

Here are the ultraprocessed foods you most need to avoid, according to a 30-year study — CNN

Association of ultra-processed food consumption with all cause and cause specific mortality: population based cohort study — The BMJ

Ultra-processed foods, diet quality, and health using the NOVA classification system — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

The post The 2 worst ultraprocessed foods you should ditch now appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

There’s SO much research proving that these foods cause cancer and heart disease and that they fuel metabolic syndrome, obesity and diabetes.

But despite the evidence, many of us still haven’t changed our eating habits.

In fact, 60 to 90 percent of the standard American diet consists of these highly processed foods.

Their growing link to disease means it’s time to get serious about what we eat…

Digging for the truth about ultra-processed foods

A meta-analysis is a statistical procedure that integrates the results of several independent studies. It aims to come up with even more precise results that can then be applied to real-life decisions.

An international group of researchers recently conducted a review of 45 meta-analyses that showed a connection between ultra-processed foods and adverse health outcomes.

In other words, their study drilled down even deeper and found even more reasons to stop eating these “fake foods.”

What did they find?

An outrageous association between not only ultra-processed foods and all causes of mortality — but between these foods and 30 health conditions, including:

• Breast cancer
• Colorectal cancer
• Pancreatic cancer
• Adverse sleep outcomes
• Anxiety
• Asthma
• Hypertension
• Crohn’s disease
• Obesity
• Metabolic syndrome
• Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)
• Hyperglycemia

They reported a 50% increased risk of deaths related to cardiovascular disease, a 12% higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and a 48% to 53% higher risk of anxiety and mental disorders.

The researchers believe their findings suggest that ultra-processed foods could be harmful to numerous body systems, highlighting the need for urgent action to reduce our consumption.

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How to avoid ultra-processed foods

First, it’s important to understand exactly which foods fall into this category.

The United Nations uses the NOVA food classification system, which divides foods into four groups:

• Unprocessed or minimally processed – dried, freeze-dried roasted or boiled food in its original state
• Processed culinary ingredients – for example, sugar from sugar cane, salt from sea water or maple syrup from trees
• Processed foods – canned fruit in sugar, salt-added canned vegetables or smoked meats
• Ultra–processed foods – foods that go through so much processing that they bear little resemblance to real food. They usually have unrecognizable ingredients on their labels and include foods like cereals, chicken nuggets, frozen pizza, soda, chips, sweet or salty snacks, packaged baked goods, microwaveable frozen meals and instant soups and sauces.

If you’re an ultra-processed food “junkie,” here are 7 ways to develop changes to your diet that will last.

1. Start slowly. If you eat a lot of highly processed foods, try substituting one or two things per day. Fruit for chips. Carrots and dip for cookies. Go for small wins.

2. Drink more water. This is important for so many reasons! Not only will it fill you up and make you less likely to eat snacks, it will keep you hydrated and start flushing some of the toxins from your system.
3. Choose whole grains. Instead of white rice, try brown. Whole wheat bread is a hearty, tasty substitute for white.
4. Limit or avoid processed meats. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified processed meat as a definite carcinogen. These include bacon, sandwich meat, hot dogs and sausage.
5. Try homemade. Granola, salad dressing, even potato chips made in your own kitchen are often more delicious than those loaded with chemicals.
6. If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. This one is pretty simple. If you don’t know what an ingredient is, it’s not something you should be eating.
7. Plan ahead. When you start your clean eating effort, you may find you’re still reaching for tasty, unhealthy snacks, especially when you’re in a hurry.
   Take a weekend or a day to stock up on healthy quick snacks: cut veggies and hummus, fruit, yogurt, homemade chips or granola.

An easy way to hit most of these marks is to choose a healthy diet, like the Mediterranean diet. There are a few variations of the diet, depending on other health goals. For instance, the Green Mediterranean has been found not only to reduce disease risk but double fat loss.

Sources:

Ultra-processed foods linked to heart disease, cancer, and 30 other health conditions — Medical News Today

Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses — BMJ

Meta-analysis in medical research — Hippokratia

The post The diet linked to cancer, heart disease and 30 other conditions appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Once they’ve undergone processing, they bear little resemblance to their original form. Some ultra-processed foods include soft drinks, pastries, packaged meals, fast foods and snacks like chips and cookies.

These foods are unhealthy as a rule. But what really makes them dangerous are chemicals known as phthalates.

They seep into these foods from the wrapping and packaging and end up in the bloodstream where they can drive heart disease, bring on early menopause, lower thyroid  and testosterone levels and raise risk for type 2 diabetes.

But there’s one group of people for whom phthalates carry double the danger…

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Eating for two means sharing the danger

When a pregnant woman consumes foods containing phthalates, not only does the chemical end up in their bloodstream — it makes its way through the placenta and into the fetal bloodstream.

In other words, not only is mom-to-be now at risk — so is her unborn child.

Those were the findings when researchers analyzed data from the Conditions Affecting Neurocognitive Development and Learning in Early Childhood (CANDLE) research cohort, made up of 1,031 socioeconomically diverse pregnant individuals in Memphis, Tenn., enrolled between 2006 and 2011. Phthalate levels were measured in urine samples collected during the second trimester of pregnancy.

Once in the fetal bloodstream, phthalates can cause oxidative stress and an inflammatory cascade within the fetus. Previous research has indicated that phthalate exposure during pregnancy can increase the risk of low birth weight, preterm birth, asthma and disorders such as autism and ADHD. 

On average, 38.6 percent of the women’s diets were composed of ultra-processed foods. That’s more than a third. Any additional 10 percent increment was associated with a 13 percent higher concentration of di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, one of the most common and harmful phthalates.

By contrast, diets high in vegetables, fruits, yogurt, fish and nuts were linked with lower urinary concentrations of this and other phthalates.

Some women in the study may have been more vulnerable to ultra-processed foods due to financial hardships and living in “food deserts” where access to healthier, fresh foods is difficult.

According to the researchers, regulation is needed to prevent phthalate contamination in foods.

“We don’t blame the pregnant person here,” says lead author Brennan Baker, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington School of Medicine.  “We need to call out manufacturers and legislators to offer replacements, and ones that may not be even more harmful.”

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How to best dodge phthalates

Is there any way for pregnant women to minimize their consumption of phthalates?

According to senior author Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, a UW Medicine pediatrician and researcher at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, pregnant women should try to avoid ultra-processed food as much as they can, and seek out fruits, vegetables and lean meats instead.

But be wary of the packaging even these healthy foods come in, like plastic containers.

When you absolutely can’t avoid plastic packaging, take a look at the plastic number. Plastics numbered 3 and 7 are more likely to contain harmful chemicals like phthalates, whereas plastics 1, 2 and 5 are safer.

For people who aren’t pregnant, I’d suggest detoxing or chelation to help cut down on the chemical load. But during pregnancy that may not be a good idea.

However, adding healthy foods is. It turns out that certain healthy vegetables can bind to chemicals and help remove them from the body. Such foods include broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, arugula and dark leafy greens like kale.

Sources:

Pregnant women should avoid ultra-processed, fast foods — EurekAlert!

Ultra-processed and fast food consumption, exposure to phthalates during pregnancy, and socioeconomic disparities in phthalate exposures — Environment International

Pregnancy nutrition: Foods to avoid during pregnancy — Mayo Clinic

The post The double danger moms face from ultra-processed foods appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Add it up, and we’re consuming a staggering 60 pounds of sugar a year. That’s the equivalent of lining 12 five-pound bags of sugar up on your counter and digging in.

Clearly, given the rising rates of diabetes and obesity, we’re eating way too much sugar. And unless you’re a stickler for avoiding processed foods, cutting down on added sugars can seem almost impossible.

But to help you understand just how imperative it is to try — and how much is too much — researchers reviewed existing data and came to a daunting conclusion…

Excess sugar intake has been linked to no less than 45 serious health conditions, including stroke, heart disease and cancer…

Six is the magic number

In what’s called an umbrella review — involving 73 meta-analyses and 8,500 articles — researchers found significant harmful associations between the consumption of added sugars and the following health outcomes:

• 18 endocrine or metabolic outcomes including diabetes, obesity and gout
• 10 cardiovascular outcomes including high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke
• 7 cancer outcomes including breast, prostate and pancreatic cancer
• 10 other outcomes including tooth decay, asthma, depression and death.

Though the strength of the evidence varied, with some of the analyses considered stronger than others, the review authors suggested that people try to limit the amount of added sugar they consume daily to six teaspoons —  and only consume one or fewer sugar-sweetened beverages a week.

To come to these conclusions, the researchers combined these findings with guidance from the World Health Organization, World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research.

Check those food labels

When it comes to avoiding added sugar, label reading is your friend. But first, it’s helpful to know how many grams of sugar are in the recommended six teaspoons. The answer: between 24 and 25 grams.

One thing I’ve noticed about labeling is they now break out the amount of added sugars in the products you buy. For instance, the frozen pad Thai dinner I have in my freezer right now has 18 grams of sugar total, with 13 grams of that being added sugar. But the frozen cheese enchilada dinner only has 6 grams of sugar, zero of which is added sugar.

That’s because some ingredients contain natural sugars. But the amount of sugar identified on the label as “added” is additional sugar added during food processing — and this is the number we need to cut down on.

As always, your diet should include as many whole, unprocessed foods as possible. But if you’re busy and need to fall back on some prepackaged meals, make sure to check that label and go for the meals that have little to no added sugars.

As far as “natural” sweeteners go, remember that the body responds to honey, coconut sugar, agave, maple syrup or turbinado sugar the same way it would regular sugar. And I’d stay away from stevia as well. Unless it is 100% pure stevia extract, it contains erythritol, which is tied to increased blood clotting. Erythritol is used in many low-fat or no-fat processed foods.

Sources:

Limit added sugar to six teaspoons a day to improve health, urge experts — EurekAlert!

Consuming over 6 teaspoons of added sugar a day linked to stroke, depression, asthma — Medical News Today

Dietary sugar consumption and health: umbrella review — The BMJ

How much sugar is too much? — American Heart Association

The post Stroke, cancer and 43 other conditions linked to sugar appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

We’re not just talking about canned or frozen foods that have been minimally altered by removal of inedible parts, drying, crushing, roasting, boiling, freezing or pasteurization, to make them safe to store and eat later.

Ultra-processed foods are made up from substances extracted from foods, such as fats, starches, added sugars and hydrogenated fats. They’re filled with additives we can’t pronounce, including emulsifiers that make them artificially smooth and creamy, not to mention artificial colors, flavors and stabilizers.

It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote here about the strong correlation between these foods and both obesity and cancer.

But if you need another reason to avoid this fake food, here’s some news about what it does to your ability to control overeating…

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Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Astrocytes are star-shaped cells in the brain that express receptors for hormones and metabolic factors — including ghrelin, which signals hunger, and its counterpart, leptin, which signals fullness.

In tests on rats, scientists found that after longer periods of being fed a diet high in fat and calories, the signaling pathway between the brain and the gut apparently gets disrupted, no longer regulating calorie consumption.

“Over time, astrocytes seem to desensitize to the high-fat food,” says Kirsteen Browning, a professor of neural and behavioral science at Penn State College of Medicine.

“We have yet to find out whether the loss of astrocyte activity and the signaling mechanism is the cause of overeating or that it occurs in response to the overeating”

But they did find out how much ultra-processed food it would take before the astrocyte signaling pathway malfunctioned…

They found that only 10 to 14 days on an ultra-processed diet was enough to make astrocytes lose their ability to regulate calorie intake.

Not only that, but this also disrupts signaling to the stomach and delays how the stomach empties.

As mentioned above, we still aren’t sure whether eating too much fat makes astrocytes stop regulating intake, or whether astrocytes stop functioning and cause overeating.

Either way, it appears that about a week of frozen pizzas, chicken nuggets and other ultra-processed favorites seems to be enough to convince your brain that it should just keep eating more of the stuff.

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Gaining control back

Regardless of whether too much fat from processed foods or an astrocyte dysfunction is to blame, ultimately the brain’s ability to regulate hunger hormones becomes dismantled.

Leptin is made by fat cells. The more body fat someone has, the more leptin they have in their bloodstream. So you’d think the signals would come through loud and clear to stop taking in more calories.

But according to obesity expert Mary Dallman, Ph.D., from the University of California at San Francisco, obese people may build up resistance to the appetite-suppressing effects of leptin.

It likely starts when the astrocytes, as the current study has shown, become desensitized.

If you think about it, this is similar to what happens in the case of insulin resistance. With every spike in blood sugar, the pancreas pumps out more insulin to convert that to energy and get it into cells. But when sugar spike after sugar spike keeps coming, the cells stop responding — becoming resistant to all the insulin the pancreas is releasing to keep up.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about how to stop dieting and eat more to live better. And it sounds like that could be the best way to avoid the destruction of our hunger hormones by ultra-processed food. The secret starts, of course with ditching the ultra-processed foods and eating the right stuff. Read how, here.

Sources:

Why a high fat diet could reduce the brain’s ability to regulate food intake The Physiological Society

High-Fat Diets May Break The Brain’s Ability to Regulate Calories Science Alert

The post How ultra-processed foods destroy your hunger hormones appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

It’s a no-brainer that eating anything that barely resembles real food and bears a list of unpronounceable ingredients could be remotely healthy.

So it probably doesn’t surprise you to hear that these so-called foods have been linked to everything from dementia to weight gain.

They’ve even been shown to shorten your telomeres — the caps on your DNA strands that keep your chromosomes stable — and trigger aging.

But they’ve become so ingrained in the Standard American Diet (SAD) for so long, many of us still consume these low-cost, zero-nutrition foods on a daily basis.

Well, now there’s one more warning about the health dangers of eating ultra-processed foods that men especially should heed…

Ultra-processed foods trade convenience for cancer

That was the conclusion of a team of researchers from Tufts and Harvard Universities, who found that men who consumed high rates of ultra-processed foods were at a whopping 29 percent higher risk of developing colorectal cancer.

But what made the researchers focus on the relationship between pre-packaged, artificially-flavored foods and colon cancer in the first place?

According to Lu Wang, the study’s lead author, “Processed meats, most of which fall into the category of ultra-processed foods, are a strong risk factor for colorectal cancer.”

But they’re not the only contributor…

“Ultra-processed foods are also high in added sugars and low in fiber, which contribute to weight gain and obesity, and obesity is an established risk factor for colorectal cancer.”

So, they set out to analyze the dietary intake of 200,000 participants, comparing it to the rate at which they ended up with colon cancer.

And while the study didn’t find an association between eating an ultra-processed diet and colorectal cancer in women — for men, the results were frightening…

The strongest association between colorectal cancer and ultra-processed foods in men came from meat, poultry, or fish-based ready-to-eat products.

However, those ultra-processed meats weren’t the only offenders…

They found that men who consumed more sugar-sweetened beverages, including sodas, fruit juices and sugary, milk-based beverages were also more likely to end up with colorectal cancer.

You may remember that just one sugar-sweetened beverage a day was linked to an increase in liver cancer for women recently.

Ultra-processed foods and the gut microbiome

So why are ultra-processed foods so dangerous?

Well, according to the researchers, it’s likely that these food are disruptive to the gut microbiome.  They are full of additives that promote inflammation and can contain microparticles of toxic contaminates from food packaging.

For women, ultra-processed dairy foods, like yogurt, may have counteracted the harmful impacts of other types of ultra-processed foods that otherwise should have increased their risks as well. Yogurt contains probiotics which promote a balanced gut microbiome.

In a previous study looking at colorectal cancers, researchers found that probiotics plus prebiotics and a diet rich in fiber lowered cancer risks and slowed cancer growth when it did occur.

Prebiotics are probiotics’ underrated cousin and could be especially beneficial to men trying to cut down on ultra-processed foods.

That’s because a previous study demonstrated prebiotics not only dramatically increase the number of a bacterium that’s particularly good for the microbiome, Bifidobacterium — but also helped participants cut down on foods containing sugar and carbs, which sounds like most ultra-processed foods.

So, if you want to avoid colorectal cancer, it seems it’s time to seriously cut back on ultra-processed foods, like hot dogs, sandwich meats and sodas, and eat more of the good stuff for your gut.

Sources:

New Study Links Ultra-Processed Foods and Colorectal Cancer in Men – Tufts Now

The post Foods that raise men’s colorectal cancer risk appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But it’s late. You’ve had a busy day, and you’re too tired to cook. And that burger, fries and soda combo is quick, easy and tasty. So you hit the drive-thru and promise yourself you’ll do better tomorrow.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

More than a third of Americans, or about 84.8 million, eat fast food on any given day. And while that percentage does decrease with age, nearly a quarter of adults age 60 and older are still consuming fast food on a given day.

And this addiction to convenience doesn’t stop at the drive-thru. Many Americans have pantries and refrigerators at home that are bursting with ultra-processed foods high in added sugar, fat and salt and low in protein and fiber.

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Some of these ultra-processed foods, like soft drinks, salty and sugary snacks, ice cream, sausage, ketchup, mayonnaise, deep-fried chicken and flavored cereals, are clearly bad for you. But even items like yogurt, canned baked beans and tomatoes, packaged guacamole, hummus and bread aren’t as benign as they appear because of the processing they’re subjected to.

For the past several years, scientists have been examining the health impact of these ultra-processed foods. So far, studies have linked a diet that’s heavy in ultra-processed foods with insulin resistance, obesity and cellular damage.

And consuming ultra-processed foods may not be good for your brain, either. A team of Chinese researchers recently examined data from the UK Biobank health information database to determine whether eating ultra-processed foods could lead to dementia. And what they found is alarming…

Ultra-processed foods on the brain

The researchers selected 72,083 people from the UK Biobank for their study. Participants were aged 55 and older and had no dementia at the beginning of the study, which followed them for an average of 10 years. By study’s end, 518 of the participants had been diagnosed with dementia.

During the study, participants filled out at least two questionnaires recording the food and drink they had consumed the previous day. The researchers identified how much of that food and drink was ultra-processed by calculating the grams per day. Then, they compared that measurement to the grams per day of other foods to determine what percentage of each participant’s diet was made up of ultra-processed items.

Once that percentage was calculated, participants were divided into four equal groups ranging from the lowest percentage of ultra-processed foods to the highest. Ultra-processed foods made up an average of 9 percent of the daily diet of people in the lowest group, or an average of 225 grams a day. In the highest group, the average daily percentage of ultra-processed foods was 28 percent, or an average of 814 grams per day.

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For comparison, one serving of items like pizza or fish sticks equaled 150 grams.

The main food group contributing to high ultra-processed food intake was beverages, followed by sugary products and ultra-processed dairy.

In the lowest-consumption group, 105 of the 18,021 people developed dementia, compared to 150 of the 18,021 people in the highest-consumption group.

The research team adjusted for age, gender, family history of dementia and heart disease and other factors that could affect risk of dementia. After taking all that into account, they found that for every 10 percent increase in daily consumption of ultra-processed foods, people had a 25 percent increase in dementia risk.

The researchers also used study data to project what would happen if a person swapped 10 percent of the ultra-processed foods they consumed with unprocessed or minimally processed foods like fresh fruit, vegetables, legumes, milk and meat. According to their findings, this substitution was associated with a 19 percent reduction in dementia risk.

Study author Dr. Huiping Li of Tianjin Medical University in China says results also indicate that substituting 50 grams of ultra-processed foods for 50 grams of unprocessed or minimally processed foods can lower dementia risk by 3 percent. For instance, an individual could swap out a chocolate bar for half an apple, or a couple of fish sticks for a bowl of bran cereal.

“It’s encouraging to know that small and manageable changes in diet may make a difference in a person’s risk of dementia,” Li says.

It’s important to note the study didn’t prove that ultra-processed foods cause dementia; it only shows an association. Further research is needed to confirm the findings.

Li also observes that in addition to added fat, salt and sugar, ultra-processed foods may contain food additives or molecules from packaging or that are produced during heating. These additives and molecules have been shown in other studies to have negative effects on thinking and memory skills, he says.

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What exactly qualifies as “ultra-processed”?

If you’re like me, you may be confused by the inclusion of seemingly healthy products like hummus, canned tomatoes, avocado-rich guacamole and yogurt in the “ultra-processed” category (except we know that the addition of lots of sugar or salt is problematic). That’s because nutrition science is still figuring all this out.

Dr. Maura Walker of Boston University notes that nutrition research now faces the challenge of categorizing foods as unprocessed, minimally processed, processed and ultra-processed. “For example, foods like soup would be classified differently if canned versus homemade,” she says.

“Plus, the level of processing is not always aligned with diet quality,” Walker adds. “Plant-based burgers that qualify as high quality may also be ultra-processed. As we aim to understand better the complexities of dietary intake, we must also consider that more high-quality dietary assessments may be required.”

Until then, the best rule of thumb is to include as many whole foods as possible. That means consuming foods that look like the real thing, versus a stick of fish — foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains, beans and legumes, fresh meat, poultry, fish and dairy. Following an eating plan like the Mediterranean diet is a great way to ensure your diet consists mostly of whole, unprocessed or minimally processed foods.

Sources:

Eating More Ultra-Processed Foods Associated With Increased Risk Of Dementia — American Academy of Neurology

Association of Ultraprocessed Food Consumption With Risk of Dementia — Neurology

Fast Food Statistics — The Barbecue Lab

The post Ultra-processed foods: The more you eat, the higher your dementia risk appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

It’s been found to be effective at everything from overcoming weight problems to reducing the risk of diabetes.

A plant-based diet has even been found to help guard against cancer.

So if you’re a woman, wanting to prevent breast cancer, taking your diet plant-based is the way to go, right?

Well, not so fast…

It turns out that not all plant-based diets are equal when it comes to warding off breast cancer.

It’s all about choices

While the ability of plant-based diets to keep cancer at bay has garnered a lot of press over the last few years, few of the studies that have made headlines have focused on the quality of the food choices in the diet.

In other words, there are lots of foods that can be considered plant-based, but are they really good for you?

For example, you can eat plant-based and choose between fresh veggies or a bag of chips. But you can’t expect the two to have the same effect on your health.

So scientists at Paris-Saclay University in France decided to dig deeper into how much making the right plant-based choices matter.

The team followed 65,574 postmenopausal women in France from 1993 to 2014, using self-reported food questionnaires to classify them into groups based on their adherence to a mostly plant or animal diet.

It’s important to note that the plant-based diets did not exclude meat. They simply consisted of more plant than animal products. (In fact, past research has shown that consuming white meats, like chicken, actually lowers your breast cancer risk.)

From there, the researchers grouped the women based on how healthy their plant-based diets really were.

And the results were clear…

Healthy plant-based and not so much

If you want to avoid breast cancer, a plant-based diet alone isn’t enough. You have to make good choices within that diet…

“Results suggest that the best plant-based diet for breast cancer prevention could be a healthy plant-based diet comprising fruit, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes,” said Sanam Shah, MBBS, FCPS, MPH, the lead author of new study.

The worst?

“In contrast, an unhealthy plant-based diet comprising higher intakes of primarily processed products of plant origin, such as refined grains, fruit juices, sweets, desserts, and potatoes, would be worse for breast cancer prevention.”

In other words, women who ate their ideal of a healthier plant-based diet, focusing on whole plant foods, had a 14 percent lower risk than average of developing breast cancer.

But those who ate refined or processed plant-based products (think ultra-processed plant-based burgers), and foods high in sugars and carbs, had a whopping 20 percent greater risk of developing the disease.

The researchers also suggested avoiding nutritional deficiencies in iron, zinc, calcium, and vitamin B12.

They made no mention of vitamin D, though studies have shown it can make an impact on the reduction of some cancers up to 38 percent.

Sources:

For Cancer Prevention, Not All Plant-Based Diets Are Equal – Medscape

The post Only one type of plant-based diet decreases breast cancer risk appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Normally, your body prefers to use blood sugar, also called glucose, for energy. However, during ketosis, your body gets more of its energy from ketones, which are produced from fat. This is how a ketogenic diet results in weight loss.

But research has established other benefits of a ketogenic diet. It can help control acne and lower the risk of cancer and heart disease and has been shown to help control epileptic seizures.

A recent study has found that following a ketogenic diet could also bring relief from chronic pain.

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A ketogenic diet can reduce chronic pain

Three researchers from the School of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney ran a  trial to evaluate the effects of a ketogenic diet on pain and quality of life reported by patients with chronic pain.

They already knew that a diet that restricts or eliminates ultra-processed foods can help manage pain, and wanted to see whether a whole foods ketogenic diet could offer even greater relief.

People who live with chronic musculoskeletal pain were the subjects of this study. This is the kind of pain experienced with arthritis, fibromyalgia or tendinitis.

For the first three weeks of this 12-week trial, all subjects ate a diet that was free of ultra-processed foods.

Then, in the fourth week and beyond, subjects were randomly divided into two groups. One group continued with the initial minimally processed, whole-food diet, while the other ate a whole-food/well-formulated diet (WFKD).

At the end of the 12 weeks, all subjects were evaluated for average reported pain, quality of life and diet satisfaction, as well as depression, anxiety and quality of sleep.

While average weekly pain improved for both groups, the subjects who ate the WFKD diet showed a significantly greater reduction in pain.

But the WFKD group also showed improvements in depression and anxiety, as well as inflammation.

Both groups reported a significant reduction in pain was still reported at a three-month follow-up.

The researchers concluded that “the implementation of a whole-food diet that restricts ultra-processed foods is a valid pain management tool; however, a low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet (whole food/well-formulated ketogenic diet, or WFKD) may have potentially greater pain reduction, weight loss and mood improvements.”

In other words, eliminating processed foods is a good way to control pain, but a ketogenic diet is possibly even more effective, and can also improve mood and assist in weight loss.

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Things to know before “going keto”

When you go on a ketogenic diet for weight loss, you will lose belly fat first. This visceral fat is the most dangerous kind – it sends your risk of heart disease way up.

In fact, the ketogenic diet is effective at reducing the collection of “symptoms” that make up metabolic syndrome: high blood pressure, high fasting blood sugars levels, high triglycerides. It raises your HDL (“good” cholesterol) levels, and shaves off belly fat, as mentioned.

One caution: if you have diabetes, going keto could force your body into diabetic ketoacidosis, and you’ll have to test your blood sugar often.

But diabetic or not, when starting a completely new eating plan, it’s always a good idea to check with your doctor before beginning.

Sources:

Effects of a Low-Carbohydrate Ketogenic Diet on Reported Pain, Blood Biomarkers and Quality of Life in Patients with Chronic Pain: A Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial — Pain Medicine

What’s a ketogenic diet? — Web MD

10 Health Benefits of Low-Carb and Ketogenic Diets — Healthline

The post Chronic pain: How the Keto diet can help appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

After all, while we know that switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet can help lessen greenhouse emissions, embracing those dietary restrictions may not be realistic or even healthful for everyone.

In fact, studies have found that vegans face three common deficiencies that can lead to weak bones. And both vegans and vegetarians may live with a higher risk of stroke.

Luckily, you don’t have to go full vegan to eat in a way that supports the health of our environment.

That’s because researchers from the American Chemical Society have honed in on three ways that Americans can not only reduce the carbon footprint of their food choices — without making drastic dietary changes — but can also do their health a big favor at the same time…

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Big changes, minimal effort

You see, getting food from the farms that grow it to each of our plates contributes to a sizeable portion of global greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions result from growing, rearing, farming, processing, transporting, storing, cooking and disposing of the food you eat — and that contributes to your carbon footprint.

Some of the biggest offenders are animals since they’re just not that efficient at converting the plants they eat into energy.

This means that meat and dairy products result in higher emissions and have a larger carbon footprint than fruit, vegetables and grains.

It’s a fact that has led past researchers to simply recommend cutting out meat. But as we talked about, that’s a recommendation that many of us just can’t get behind due to either our food preferences or health issues.

So to find a better way to protect the environment each time we buy food, the ACS researchers analyzed the actual groceries purchased by over 57,000 U.S. households over a one-year period.

From that, they were able to identify the hotspots of carbon emissions and recommend simple changes that don’t mean giving up that juicy steak.

All in all, the team found that a full 71 percent of us could take steps to decrease our food carbon footprint, simply by following these three suggestions:

1. Cutting out foods with high caloric content and low nutritional values (like ultra-processed foods) would result in a 29% reduction of the total potential emissions, while also potentially improving health outcomes. Here’s some guicance on selecting food based on nutrient density.
2. Buy less savory bakery products and ready-made foods. This recommendation is based on the fact that while these foods have a relatively small carbon footprint, we tend to eat a lot of them, which can add up to significant emissions.
3. If you have a small household of just one or two people, buy less food in bulk quantities, since you probably find yourself throwing out far too much food.

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Good for the environment, good for your health

It’s easy to see how simply employing one or all of those recommendations won’t just reduce emissions and your food’s carbon footprint, but can also improve your health.

Those high-calorie, low-nutrition foods tend to be packed with sugar, which is linked to everything from high cholesterol to cancer.

And of course, cutting back on baked goods can offer numerous benefits that allow you to conquer many common health conditions.

Finally, by avoiding ready-made foods and eating freshly prepared meals at home, you can avoid the dangers found in food packagings, such as lurking perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals.

So overall, it’s a win-win for you and the planet.

And when it comes to your wallet, you’ll find these recommendations can also help you eat healthy without breaking the bank (click to see all 8 recommendations).

Sources:

Three ways to reduce the carbon footprint of food purchased by US households — ScienceDaily

The post 3 ways to improve your carbon footprint and your health appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

That’s the advice you’ll get from your doctor.

And it’s true!

However, what exactly is heart-healthy?

Is it only eating certain types of foods and eliminating others? Or is there a way to get to that elusive heart-healthy status while still enjoying the dietary splurges, such as eating out, that bring a smile to your face?

Luckily, the American Heart Association has the answer with 10 steps that can keep your heart at its best, lowering your risk of heart disease and stroke, without feeling deprived.

Rethinking the focus on individual foods

In fact, according to the American Heart Association team, focusing on individual foods isn’t the best way to level up your heart health.

Instead, you should think of caring for your heart in terms of your overall dietary pattern.

Basically, rather than looking at individual foods as either good or bad, you simply need to work towards balance and variety in your nutrition, while working to make better choices.

And this includes when you eat out, which the researchers say is not something you have to give up.

“You can absolutely adapt a heart-healthy diet to different lifestyles, including one that incorporates eating out at restaurants. It might take a little planning, however, after the first few times it can become routine,” says Professor Alice Lichtenstein, the director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition team at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.

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The rules at a glance

The 10 steps they say you should follow are:

1. Balance food and calorie intake with physical activity to maintain a healthy weight.
2. Choose a wide variety and eat plenty of fruits and vegetables to get a full range of nutrients from food rather than supplements;
3. Choose whole grains and other foods made up mostly of whole grains;
4. Include healthy sources of lean and/or high-fiber protein such as plant proteins (nuts and legumes), fish or seafood, low fat or non-fat dairy, lean cuts of meat and limit red meat and processed meats;
5. Use liquid non-tropical plant oils such as olive or sunflower oils;
6. Choose minimally processed foods rather than ultra-processed foods as much as possible;
7. Minimize intake of beverages and foods with added sugars;
8. Choose or prepare foods with little or no salt;
9. Limit alcohol consumption; if you don’t drink, do not start; and
10. Apply this guidance no matter where food is prepared or consumed.

Common sense steps to a healthy heart!

Sources:

New look at nutrition research identifies 10 features of a heart-healthy eating pattern – American Heart Association

The post 10 steps to simplify living heart healthy appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But my worst dietary vice is processed meat. Time and again my EHO colleagues and I have written about how products like bacon, sausage and deli meats have been linked with health issues such as asthma, cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline and diabetes.

Yet when I go out to breakfast or lunch, my order almost always includes a hefty portion of bacon. If you put an appetizer plate in front of me, I tend to go straight for the cured meats and sausages. These are rare occasions, but I still feel guilty because I know even a little processed meat is bad for my health.

If you’re like me and would love to indulge more often in processed meat without worrying about its dangers, then I have exciting news for you — researchers may have found a way for us to safely put bacon and sausage back on our plates…

Japanese knotweed as a nitrite alternative

Nitrites are the preservatives in processed meats responsible for most of the foods’ negative health impacts.

But let me this out of the way before we go on about that: Don’t confuse nitrite preservatives with something called the dietary nitrate-nitrite-nitric oxide pathway — a natural occurrence in the human body that turns nitrates found naturally in some vegetables (especially root vegetables, like beets) to nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a gas molecule that promotes artery health.

Nitrite preservatives are considered carcinogenic compounds. To develop new meat processing technologies that could replace nitrites with natural, safer compounds, the European Union co-founded the PHYTOME project, and, thankfully, those scientists are onto something…

They processed red meat using a mixture of fruits and plants added to sausages and hams including rosemary, green tea and resveratrol extract taken from Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum), to preserve the meats.

Next, they tested the PHYTOME meats alongside conventionally processed red meat products with normal nitrite levels to see if the substitutes would have a positive impact on health. Both were also tested against unprocessed chicken and turkey.

Results showed the participants consuming the PHYTOME processed meat products had significantly lower levels of disease-causing N-nitroso compounds (NOCs) in the colon than those eating products processed solely with nitrites. And their levels of NOCs were comparable to those of the people who ate the minimally processed white meats.

Gunter Kuhnle, professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Reading, says the findings show that using natural additives in processed red meat reduces the creation of NOCs.

“Surprisingly, the natural additives seemed to have some protective effects even when the red meat still contained nitrite,” he says. “This suggests that natural additives could be used to reduce some of the potentially harmful effects of nitrite, even in foods where it is not possible to take out nitrite preservatives altogether.”

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Potentially safer ways to eat processed meat

More research will probably follow before we may see processed meats produced with these natural additives.

But, all three of the natural compounds included in the PHYTOME meats have been the subjects of numerous studies exposing various health benefits, aside from their potential to neutralize nitrites’ ill effects.

For instance, resveratrol can help reduce inflammation and promote heart and nervous system health. It also has positive effects on blood clots and blood vessels, testosterone levels, as well as LDL, the “bad” form of cholesterol.

Interestingly, many resveratrol supplements are sourced from Japanese knotweed. You may want to select one of those if you’re looking to protect your body from the effects of processed meat consumption.

Rosemary has been used for centuries in natural medicine and can help boost brain function, stimulate hair regrowth, ease arthritis pain and control cough and allergies. And green tea is loaded with antioxidants that can help lower your risk of diabetes and obesity and protect the brain from age-related diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

So, the next time I decide to have a side of bacon with my eggs at breakfast, I’ll substitute green tea for my morning coffee, add some rosemary to my breakfast potatoes and make sure to take my resveratrol supplement with my meal.

Sources:

Japanese Knotweed Extract Could Cut Cancer Risk of Processed Meat — University of Reading

Replacement of Nitrite in Meat Products by Natural Bioactive Compounds Results in Reduced Exposure to N-Nitroso Compounds: The PHYTOME Project — Molecular Nutrition & Food Research

The post Can’t quit bacon? These plants might protect you appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Researchers sought to answer that question in a recent study. And what they found was that certain fatty acids play a significant role in making different types of pain both better and worse, depending on which you consume…

Omega-6 fatty acids may increase pain

A research team led by the University of Texas Health Science Center (UT Health) at San Antonio determined the high-fat diet typical of many Western cultures can raise the risk of painful disorders such as neuropathy that are common in people with conditions like diabetes or obesity.

What was really interesting was the discovery that changes in diet may significantly reduce — or even reverse — pain from conditions causing inflammatory pain, such as arthritis, trauma or surgery, or neuropathic pain associated with diabetes. This finding could lead to a treatment plan for chronic-pain patients that involves a simple diet modification or the development of drugs that block the release of specific fatty acids in the body.

Chronic pain is a distressingly common and complex problem with a significant effect on both individuals and society as a whole. The increasing prominence of pain and pain-related diseases is a leading cause of disability globally.

While pain is often the result of injury or disease, it is now considered a separate condition on its own, rather than a symptom of other health issues. Scientists are working hard to develop a better understanding of the many factors contributing to chronic pain — not just the physical, but the social, biological and psychological. This is necessary to develop more effective treatment plans and prevention strategies.

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In the UT Health study, the researchers used mice and humans to study the role of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in pain conditions. They specifically focused on omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs. Omega-6 lipids are mainly found in foods with vegetable oils, including fast foods, processed snacks, cakes and fatty and cured meats.

Results showed a Western diet high in omega-6 PUFAs was a significant risk factor for both inflammatory and neuropathic pain. And according to the study, lowering omega-6 consumption and increasing omega-3 lipids in the diet greatly reduced these inflammatory and neuropathic pain conditions.

When looking specifically at neuropathy, the researchers demonstrated that skin levels of omega-6 lipids in patients with type 2 diabetic neuropathic pain were elevated in those reporting higher pain levels and the need for analgesic drugs to relieve them.

“This paper is a high-profile contribution for a huge unmet translational need as there are no treatments altering the nature of this neurological disease [neuropathy],” says Dr. José Cavazos, professor of neurology, assistant dean and director of the South Texas Medical Scientist Training Program at UT Health San Antonio.

The study could serve as a foundation for new clinical trials and ultimately provide new paths for neuropathy treatment.

Steps toward a pain-free diet

If you suffer from chronic inflammatory or neuropathic pain, you can try making the following changes to your diet to help ease your pain.

First, ditch foods fried in or containing vegetable oils. In addition to raising your pain levels, these foods carry other health risks, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, brain abnormalities and a shorter lifespan. Even a modest serving of these foods can carry risks, so it’s just best to avoid them completely.

Next, eat more foods containing omega-3 fatty acids to your diet. We’ve written extensively about how omega-3s help maintain a healthy heart, brain and eyes, among other benefits. Make sure you’re eating at least a couple of servings of omega-3-rich fish like salmon every week. If you’re not a big fan of fish, you can try eating flaxseeds, walnuts, chia or hemp seeds or soybeans. Also, certain grass-fed meats, as well as omega-3-enriched chicken and eggs, are some other good dietary options.

Finally, there are other foods you can try that may help relieve inflammatory pain. For instance, eating foods rich in vitamin K, including spinach, broccoli, kale and collard greens, can help your body better repair its bones and cartilage, which helps to relieve osteoarthritis pain. Also, eating more fiber has been found to help with arthritis-related joint pain and may help ease inflammation overall.

Sources:

Western high-fat diet can cause chronic pain, according to groundbreaking paper by UT Health San Antonio-led team — UT Health San Antonio

Elevated dietary ω-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids induce reversible peripheral nerve dysfunction that exacerbates comorbid pain conditions — Nature Metabolism

Chronic pain: a review of its epidemiology and associated factors in population-based studies — British Journal of Anaesthesia

The post Chronic pain? It could be what you’re eating appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

They sponsored a study that performed an analysis of data on over 30,000 American adults and found that those who skip breakfast are missing out on valuable nutrition they aren’t able to make up for with other foods they eat throughout the day.

Do you skip breakfast? You should be concerned then, but not for the reasons they bring forward…

Why breakfast foods? Breakfast foods are fortified with nutrition — vitamins, minerals, etc. — required for good health. They’re fortified because the Standard American Diet is severely lacking in nutrients that promote good health and prevent disease.

They cite the fact that, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest dietary guidelines, calcium, potassium, fiber and vitamin D are considered “dietary components of public health concern” for the general U.S. population.

This is true, despite the conflicting reports you’ll see, like this one from the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, suggesting that evidence is inconclusive for the use of most vitamins and minerals supplements to help prevent disease.

But it’s nothing new to see two government agencies talking out of both sides of their mouth. Or anyone connected to the food industry trying to convince you that your health is in their best interest, so you’ll buy more cereal to drown with their milk.

The problem with relying on fortified foods

Altogether the study found that people who skipped breakfast were falling short on fiber, copper, magnesium and zinc. But for folate, calcium, iron and vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, C and D, the loss of nutrients was more pronounced and breakfast skippers were nowhere near even the bottom threshold of what they needed.

That’s a real problem — but it’s a problem that can be compounded by relying on common fortified breakfast foods for vitally important nutrition.

Why? Refined grains and sugar.

Cereals, breakfast bars, flavored quick oats and other common processed breakfast foods not only contain loads of sugar but because they are processed foods, the grains in them are refined grains — not whole grains.

Refined grains and sugar significantly raise your risk for cardiovascular disease.

The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, has been analyzing the diets of 137,130 participants in 21 countries. Over 16 years of analysis of this data, the researchers found intake of refined grains and added sugars has increased significantly.

Fortified with vitamins or not, they found eating refined grains was associated with:

• a 47 percent higher risk of stroke;
• a 33 percent higher risk of heart disease;
• and a 27 percent higher risk of early death.  
• Higher intake of refined grains also was linked with higher systolic blood pressure.

But whole grains are a totally different story. Tufts researchers found that study participants who replaced refined grains with whole grains increased their metabolic rate, had a surge in healthy gut bacteria, saw a modest boost in their T-cells and had more frequent and efficient bowel movements.

All this may explain why whole grains have been found in previous studies to reduce the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. 

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Fortified influence

You can’t cut corners in food processing, use cheap ingredients, extract the nutritious parts of foods and expect that throwing in a few synthetic vitamins and minerals will make up for the damage. Because the effects of refined grains and sugar in these foods can bring your health down as fast as any vitamin deficiency.

I get that the idea of fortifying foods was meant to reduce nutritional deficiencies. But it also leaves out an entire swath of us… me included.

Wheat flour has become the holy grail of food fortification and it fits perfectly with the food industry’s breakfast model. But if you are gluten-sensitive like me, you’d be left out anyway — not to mention those suffering from celiac.

So don’t be fooled by these kinds of reports — and the influence behind them… starting with the idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

That saying actually originated from a marketing campaign for Grape Nuts. It was so successful that cereals — and that phrase — are forever ingrained into our health ideal.

Ditch the cereals and instead try whole-grain toast, eggs and your favorite fruit, or oatmeal sweetened with fresh fruit. My favorite way to start the day is with a powdered greens smoothie with lots of my favorite berries thrown in — and a banana for good measure.

But striving for good nutrition shouldn’t stop there. Make it a part of every meal.

Fortify yourself

Do not be fooled by reports that want to steer you away from supplementing your vitamins, minerals and other compounds that we’re learning can improve health and longevity. The one thing that is of merit from the breakfast study, and many other studies on the state of nutrition, is that an awful lot of us are not getting adequate nutrition from the foods we eat.

So why do organizations keep funding studies that tell you that supplementing nutrition isn’t necessary? For starters, the pharmaceutical companies would make much less money. If vitamin D and krill oil ease your knee pain, you won’t need a prescription pain reliever. And you’ll get added health benefits from those supplements you won’t get from that medication. Always look to see where the financial funding for any study is coming from.

Only in rare cases can you over supplement. If you buy nutritional supplements, shop from a credible producer of quality products and follow the recommendations on the bottle. If you take any medications regularly, let your physician know what supplements you take.

And lastly, don’t be fooled by so-called health foods. They, too, are often made with refined grains and loads of sugar. Compare Honey Nut Cheerios (9 grams of sugar per serving) to a well-known organic cereal that contains 14 grams per serving).  

Remember, if it comes in a box, it’s not going to give you the benefits of real, whole foods whether you eat it at breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Sources:

Those breakfast foods are fortified for a reason — EurekAlert

USPSTF Still Not Swayed on Vitamins to Prevent Heart Disease, Cancer — MEDPAGETODAY

The post How fortified foods and the breakfast myth make us sick appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And according to a brand new study, you could be one of them if you continue to eat this meat…

A powerful link between processed meat and cognitive decline

The study, by scientists from the Nutritional Epidemiology Group at the University of Leeds, followed up on data from almost 500,000 participants.

Their goal? To determine if the link between meat consumption and dementia found in previous studies was accurate — first of all — and if so, were certain types of meats riskier than others.

All of the participants were between the ages of 40 and 69 and were asked to provide information on how often they consumed different types of meat, and how frequently. Their health status was then followed over a four-year period, so that the research team could monitor their risk levels of ending up with any type of dementia, including Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia.

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And the news is not good for any processed meat-eaters out there.

That’s because while the study determined that eating unprocessed red meat, like that juicy steak, or tasty pork or veal, may actually have a protective effect, processed meats, such as bacon, sausage and luncheon meat should be labeled with the warning, “Dementia Danger Ahead!”

Crazy, right?

For years we’ve been told how bad eating red meat is for us, but the study found that in truth, eating 50 grams a day of it actually lowers your dementia risk by 19 percent. Now granted, that’s not much red meat — only a bit less than 2 ounces — but it’s also almost a 20 percent reduction in your risk level.

On the other hand, the results showed that eating only 25 grams of processed meat (the same amount you would get in a single, thin slice of bacon) raises your dementia risk by a whopping 44 percent.

When asked about the clear link the study demonstrated between processed meats and dementia, lead researcher Huifeng Zhang, a Ph.D. student from Leeds’ School of Food Science and Nutrition, had this to say:

“Worldwide, the prevalence of dementia is increasing and diet as a modifiable factor could play a role. Our research adds to the growing body of evidence linking processed meat consumption to increased risk of a range of non-transmissible diseases.” 

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Other diseases linked to processed meats

Okay, did you catch that last part — the part that says processed meats are linked to a range of diseases?

That parts incredibly important because this is not the first, second or even third study to link processed meats, like your breakfast bacon, to skyrocketing disease risks:

• A long-term study of over 164,000 people, named PURE, found that approximately two serving a week of processed meats was enough to raise the risk of major heart disease and death.
• The American Institute for Cancer Research reported that “For processed meat, every 50 grams (about one hot dog or two slices of ham) eaten daily raises the risk of colorectal cancer by 16 percent.”
• Research from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) found that eating processed meats led to a 19 percent increased risk of diabetes.
• A 2019 study found that processed meat intake was associated with a higher risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in middle-aged women, especially in presence of other high-risk lifestyle factors, such as smoking and an unhealthy diet.

Basically, study after study has proven that when it comes to processed meats, there’s only risk, not benefits to your health. This makes them a hard pass.

Sources:

Eating processed meat could increase dementia risk, researchers say — ScienceDaily

Diet high in processed meats could shorten your life — UPI

Processed meat linked to higher risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease — EurekAlert!

Processed Meat and Cancer — American Institute for Cancer Research

Eating processed meats, but not unprocessed red meats, may raise risk of heart disease and diabetes — Harvard T.H. Chan

Processed Meat Intake and Risk of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease among Middle-aged Women – NIH

The post Is bacon worth a 44 percent increase in dementia risk? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And some of the worst offenders affect the small arteries and blood vessels but cause big health problems — including kidney damage.

So why are we getting sicker?

Well, it could have a lot to do with the time we spend sitting.

But there’s a very good chance it’s the processed, heat-treated food that’s playing a bigger part in destroying your kidney health…

Getting more than you bargained for

You may not realize it, but all those processed foods we’re addicted to, like hot dogs, bacon, potato chips, and those pre-packaged baked goods, are “heat-treated foods.”

This means that they’re cooked or processed at high temperatures to boost their flavor and aroma and, of course, keep you coming back for more.

Unfortunately, heat-treating food doesn’t just produce products that are tasty and smell great, it also causes the formation of compounds known as advanced glycation endproducts or AGEs. AGEs are generated from a combination of amino acids and reduced sugars.

And while they don’t sound so bad when you put it that way, they’ve been increasingly recognized in the scientific and medical communities as potentially dangerous.

So each time you eat processed foods, you’re also getting a side of AGEs that could be playing havoc on your health.

Processed foods act like an invader

And that’s exactly what a new study, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, set out to prove.

The researchers spent 24 weeks feeding rats either heat-treated chow (to simulate the processed foods humans eat) or unbaked rodent chow. Then they measured the amount of albumin (a protein that is responsible for helping keep fluid in the bloodstream) in their urine.

And after just six months on a processed food diet, the rats experienced a rate of albumin leakage — an indication of kidney damage — five times higher than rats that ate non-heat treated food.

So why do those AGEs in processed foods damage the kidneys?

Well, according to the researchers, eating a heat-treated diet resulted in increases in a level of a protein known as complement component C3.

This is a protein that’s part of your innate immune system that goes into action when your body senses an invading pathogen or an injury to your vital tissues.

In other words, your body considers those AGEs to be dangerous invaders and goes into hyperdrive. The result is kidney damage!

Two steps to protecting your kidneys

Clearly, your body doesn’t like heat-treated, processed foods.

So the first step to guarding the health of your renal system and warding off chronic kidney disease is to cut out as many of these foods as possible, and instead eat a whole-food-based diet.

Next, think about supporting your microcirculation that affects the smallest blood vessels, the lymphatic capillaries and collecting ducts. Given the kidneys’ role in maintaining fluid homeostasis in the body, the lymphatic system and all its tiny vessels and capillaries are critical in this process.

In my years of natural health research, the best dietary way to support circulatory health, whether it’s these microvessels or the large arteries that pump blood through your heart, is beet juice. That’s of course because it’s an excellent source of nitric oxide, which I’ve written about before.

Nitric oxide acts as a vasodilator (helping arteries relax to open wide for better flow) and also supports the health of the lining of the arteries.

The researchers also suggested that it would be helpful to “support growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut and protect from inflammation.”

Sources:

Diets high in heat-treated foods increase risk of chronic kidney disease, rat study shows — EurekAlert!

Heart Disease and Cancer Deaths — Trends and Projections in the United States, 1969–2020 — CDC

U.S. Heart Failure Rates on the Rise — WebMD

National Diabetes Statistics Report, 2020 — CDC

The post What processed foods are doing to your kidneys appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

You might think that’s an exaggeration, but food researchers have found actual evidence that highly processed foods are indeed addictive, acting on our brains much like drugs or alcohol do.

If you were in the clutches of drugs or alcohol, you’d want out. It’s time to think about foods that are bringing your health down the same way. Foods that are engineered to addict you. Here’s insight into how it happens and how to help yourself break the away…

Processed foods are designed to ‘hook’ us

Dr. Ashley Gearhardt is a clinical psychologist and associate professor in the psychology department at the University of Michigan. She helped develop the Yale Food Addiction Scale.

The Food Scale is used to determine whether a person shows signs of addictive behavior toward food.

“People don’t experience an addictive behavioral response to naturally occurring foods that are good for our health, like strawberries,” says Dr. Gearhardt.

She says that highly processed foods are engineered to create addictive behavior, much like we experience with alcohol or cigarettes.

In the case of addictive foods, this means that we keep eating them, even as we watch our weight rise, and even after we develop health problems associated with it, including diabetes, sleep apnea, and fatty liver disease.

Research shows these foods are addictive

In a study involving more than 500 people, Dr. Gearhardt and her colleagues found that certain foods were especially likely to cause addictive behaviors including intense cravings and a loss of control.

They also observed an inability to cut back, even after experiencing harmful consequences.

In the case of foods, this addictive behavior means that we keep eating them, even as we watch our weight rise, and even after we develop health problems associated with it, including diabetes, sleep apnea, and fatty liver disease.

At the top of the list were pizza, chocolate, potato chips, ice cream, french fries and cheeseburgers.

All are low in fiber and water, which would slow their absorption into the bloodstream, and high in processed ingredients that absorb quickly and light up the reward centers of the brain. 

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You can break the junk food ‘habit’

The good news is that you are not helpless against addiction to processed foods.

There are steps you can take to keep from getting hooked on those drug-like foods.

• Know your triggers. When are you most likely to dive into junk food? After a long, hard day of work? After a fight with your spouse? Or just when you’re overtired?
• Know your foods of choice. When you do eat compulsively, what do you eat? It’s different for everyone. The most addictive food groups are sugar, fat, flour, wheat, salt, and artificial sweeteners, so your triggers probably fall in one or more of these categories.
• Replace junk foods with foods you enjoy. We’re not talking about broccoli here unless it’s a food you really love, and don’t struggle with. Instead of filling a bowl with potato chips, for example, fill it with nuts or raisins.
• Plan ahead. Don’t let yourself get hungry to the point where you’ll reach for anything, because it’s likely you’ll grab the addictive food over the healthy one. Prepare healthy snacks ahead of time, and keep them handy.
• Learn to tolerate cravings. Cravings are usually intense for only the first ten minutes or so. If you can wait it out that long, chances are you’ll forget about it.

Feel free to see how you score on the Yale Food Addiction Scale. At the link, you’ll find instructions on taking the questionnaire and how to use the information.

Sources:

Unhealthy Foods Aren’t Just Bad For You, They May Also Be Addictive — NY Times

The genetic trait that makes you susceptible to unhealthy food cravings — USA Today

The concept of “food addiction” helps inform the understanding of overeating and obesity: YES — American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Which Foods May Be Addictive? The Roles of Processing, Fat Content, and Glycemic Load — PLoS One

How to Break the Junk Food Habit — Medical Express

Yale Food Addiction Scale

The post Where do you fall on the food addiction scale? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

It’s been less clear whether eating refined grains impacts your cardiovascular disease, with study results up until now having shown mixed results. However, a global team of researchers recently was able to make a direct connection between consuming refined grains and an increased risk for heart attack, stroke and early death…

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Refined grains significantly raise cardiovascular disease risks

A recent study discovered that a diet heavy on refined grains, such as those found in white bread and many baked goods, can elevate your risk of major cardiovascular disease, stroke and death.

Researchers looked at data from The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, which has been analyzing the diets of 137,130 participants in 21 countries spanning a wide range of incomes and backgrounds. When examining the PURE data, researchers made sure to exclude anyone with baseline cardiovascular disease. Over 16 years of analysis of this data, the researchers found intake of refined grains and added sugars has increased significantly.

The study grouped grains into three groups: refined grains, whole grains and white rice. The researchers defined refined grains as wheat grain products or flours that have had the bran and germ removed, thus rendering them low in fiber. The refined grains category included goods made with refined white flour, such as white bread, pasta and noodles, breakfast cereals, crackers and bakery products containing refined grains. Whole grains included whole grain flours such as wheat, rye and buckwheat and intact or cracked whole grains like bulgur, steel cut oats and barley.

The results? Eating more than seven servings of refined grains per day was associated with:

• a 47 percent higher risk of stroke;
• a 33 percent higher risk of heart disease;
• and a 27 percent higher risk of early death.  
• Higher intake of refined grains also was linked with higher systolic blood pressure.

Consuming whole grains or white rice produced no significant negative health effects, the study found. Also, including sodium and saturated fat intake in the data models didn’t change the results for any type of grain.

Now, seven servings might seem like a lot, but when you consider these foods include white bread, pasta/noodles, breakfast cereals, crackers, and bakery products/desserts containing refined grains, you can see how they add up fast.

“This study reaffirms previous work indicating a healthy diet includes limiting overly processed and refined foods,” says Simon Fraser University professor Scott Lear, an author of the study.

Refined grains and whole grains are complete opposites

The researchers observed that while no standard global definition for whole grains exists, most whole grains contain things like dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other plant compounds such as lignans and phytosterols. These biological compounds may affect cardiovascular risk by changing glucose homeostasis, lipids and lipoproteins and endothelial function, among other mechanisms.

But refined grains go through a process that strips most of that away, and that cheats your body of heart-friendly nutrients, including compounds called betaines. Previous research has found that when you eat whole grains, the levels of betaines in your body increase. One, in particular, called 5-aminovaleric acid betaine, or 5-AVAB, has been shown to be heart-protective.

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Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland discovered that eating whole grains causes 5-AVAB to build up in your heart tissue which helps to shift your cardiac metabolism, delivering that protective effect for your heart. In fact, the research team said that 5-AVAB works similarly to a prescription drug used to treat heart disease at a cellular level.

Another betaine compound, pipecolic acid betaine, actually helps to control blood sugar.

Essentially, eating whole grains does exactly the opposite of what eating refined grains does! So, now that you have more incentive to switch to whole grains, it may not be as hard as you think…

Rather than eating cereal grains and refined wheat products, researchers suggest eating whole grain foods like brown rice and barley. It can be tricky choosing whole grain products, especially bread. To keep from getting duped by deceptive labeling, follow these tips outlined by my colleague Jenny Smiechowski.

As we’ve noted in the past, it’s best if you completely avoid all processed “white” foods. However, if you absolutely must have that slice of bread or piece of pastry, try to make it an occasional treat and opt for those made with whole-grain flours.

Sources:

New study shows these surprising food sources are more likely to cause heart disease — Simon Fraser University

Associations of cereal grains intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality across 21 countries in Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology study: prospective cohort study — The BMJ

5 Reasons to Skip White Bread For Good — Everyday Health

Perspective: Refined Grains and Health: Genuine Risk, or Guilt by Association? — Advances in Nutrition

The post How refined grains stack your odds of heart attack and stroke appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And you think, “Today, I’ve got to stretch.”

But what if those aching, irritated muscles have less to do with what you’re doing each day and more to do with what you’re eating?

That’s the conclusion of a brand-new study from researchers in Tarragona, Spain.

The food that makes your body hurt

It’s no secret that the rates of overweight and obese people are skyrocketing across the country and the globe. In fact, over the last four decades, the level of world obesity has tripled. And experts say that by 2030, more than 38 percent of the world’s adults will be overweight and a whopping 20 percent will be obese.

And of course, carrying too much weight has long been associated with a higher risk of developing chronic health problems like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and, yes… musculoskeletal pain.

But while most studies have focused on the load those extra pounds put on your body as a cause of that pain, those Spanish researchers weren’t so sure.

In fact, they theorized that both muscle pain and obesity have a common source that kicks it all off — ultra-processed foods.

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Rising inflammatory molecules

To test their theory, the researcher fed mice a diet rich in either fats or sugars from those foods (think sweets, pastries and more) for a full six weeks. They then measured the number of adipocytes — fat cells — in the muscles of the mice as well as inflammation levels.

And what they discovered was pretty scary.

The team found that any diet rich in ultra-processed foods — whether from sugars or fats — led to an increase in the number of inflammatory molecules throughout the organism. And as inflammation went up, so did the mice’s excitability of the muscle nerves.

This phenomenon is known as musculoskeletal neurotransmission, and it causes pain! According to the researchers, it lasted for weeks, even after the diets had been stopped.

Avoiding ultra-processed foods and the inflammation they cause

This means that the muscle pain you’ve been living with could be due to the foods you choose to eat each day.

“Foods” to watch out for are ones that fall into that dangerous group of ultra-processed foods — made mostly from substances extracted from foods like unhealthy fats, starches, hydrogenated fats, added sugar, modified starch and other compounds, including artificial flavors, colors or emulsifiers.

These include:

• Soft drinks
• Packaged salty snacks
• Cookies
• Cakes
• Processed meats
• Chicken nuggets
• Powdered and packaged instant soups

Basically, if you would think of it as a “convenience food,” it’s one that could be causing your muscle pain. So, ditch them fast.

One thing that might make your transition easier is supplementing vitamin D if you’re not already. Not only does the sunshine tamp down inflammation, but it affects the body’s inflammation response in a way that lowers the sensation of pain. Studies have also identified vitamin D as beneficial to people trying to lose weight.

Sources:

A diet rich in ultra-processed fats and sugars increases the possibility of muscle pain — EurekAlert!

The post Living with muscle pain? Look at what you’re eating appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Ultra-processed foods are bad for you.

They contain unpronounceable ingredients, are heavy on fats and sugars, and bear no resemblance to any food our ancestors ate.

They cause heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer.

We’re talking hot dogs, chicken nuggets, sweetened breakfast cereals, and artificially flavored cheese crackers.

Compare those with fresh chicken, whole grain cereal and fresh fruits and vegetables, and there’s really no argument.

And yet, researchers still feel the need to study the deadly results of a diet based on ultra-processed foods, probably because we don’t seem to be eating any less of them. They’re still flying off the shelves.

Here’s some of the latest research aimed at convincing us to change our ways before it’s too late…

Full of fat, and so easy to chew!

One study was published in May of this year. It was conducted by a group of researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Twenty healthy adults lived for a month in a lab. All their meals and snacks were prepared for them. Two meal plans were prepared: either highly processed, or unprocessed.

Each subject ate one of these food plans for two weeks, then switched to the other. Ultra-processed foods were things like bagels, canned ravioli, and diet lemonade, while the unprocessed diet included things like salads, scrambled eggs, oatmeal, and nuts.

Although the diets were matched for things like sugar, salt and fat, eating an ultra-processed diet resulted in consuming more calories and gaining more weight and body fat.

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This was not a surprise. Nor was the fact that people tended to eat faster when consuming ultra-processed foods, which may have contributed to their weight gain.

But if subjects were not responding to the salt and sugar content, then why would they eat these foods more quickly?

Kevin Hall, one of the study’s lead researchers, offers this explanation:

“Ultra-processed food tends to be softer, which makes it easier to chew and swallow. One of the theories is that if you’re eating more quickly, you’re not giving your gut enough time to signal to your brain that you’ve had enough calories and that you’re full and to stop eating. By the time the brain gets that signal, it’s too late — you’ve already overeaten.”

So, it might not be just the caloric content of ultra-processed foods that causes weight gain, but how easy they are to eat… and eat… and eat.

Risk of early death and heart disease

The Nutrinet Sante study is the first study of its kind. From 2009 to 2017, it used a dedicated website to gather health data on a large population of adults (over 100,000), with the aim of making connections between dietary habits and major health outcomes.

At the start of the study, all volunteers completed five questionnaires related to health, lifestyle factors and diet. Every six months, they were also asked to share their dietary records.

The researchers first categorized participants’ reported food and beverage intake into the four NOVA food groups, and then averaged each person’s dietary intakes.

The NOVA system separates foods in terms of how processed or “clean” they are.

The scope of this study makes the findings hard to ignore:

• On average, 17.6% of men’s overall diets consisted of heavily processed foods, with 17.3% for women.
• Each 10% increase in the percentage of ultra-processed foods people ate was associated with a 12%, 13%, and 11% increase in the rates of overall cardiovascular, coronary heart and cerebrovascular disease, respectively.
• And, a diet of unprocessed foods was linked to a lower risk of these diseases.

Need we say more?

Sources:

1. Here’s What Eating Processed Foods for Two Weeks Does to Your Body — Time
2. Ultra-processed foods are easy, cheap and could be killing you — CNN
3. Ultra-processed food and adverse health outcomes — BMJ
4. The Nutrinet-Santé Study: a web-based prospective study on the relationship between nutrition and health and determinants of dietary patterns and nutritional status — BMC Public Health

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But oh, it tastes like it is! From donuts and cookies to chips, popcorn, and French fries, it’s easy to understand why so many of us are absolutely addicted.

And, even though you know it’s bad for your waistline and can lead to chronic diseases like diabetes, it’s easy to write off those risks and make just one more trip through the drive-thru or one more pass down the snack aisle.

Unfortunately, new research has shown that you may be risking far more than weight gain and blood sugar problems when you reach for that brown bag filled with salty goodness or that pint of your favorite ice cream.

In fact, according to a study by the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research, you could be significantly upping your risk of cancer…

How does your diet stack up?

The researchers performed an epic study to determine how much impact the nutritional content of your diet plays in whether or not you end up with cancer down the road.

They analyzed the food intake data from 471,495 adults and followed up with them for over 15 years to determine who became a victim of the disease.

And, they found that the people who regularly ate healthier food choices were far less likely to suffer from cancer while the more junk food people ate, the higher the likelihood they would end up with cancer of the:

1. Colon-rectum
2. Upper digestive tract and stomach
3. Lung (for men)
4. Liver and postmenopausal breast for women

Now, let’s just take a look at that list for second…

The top five deadliest cancers you could end up with are lung, breast, colorectal, pancreatic, prostate… and just eating junk food increases your risk for three of them!

I don’t know about you but that makes me want to skip my traditional Saturday morning donut run.

Kicking the junk food habit

But, how do you give up all the tasty treats you love so much?

Well, the first thing you need to know is that eating junk food makes you crave it more.

One reason is that most of them contain Butylated Hydroxytoluene (BHT) — an additive to keep fats and oils from going rancid that prevents your stomach from telling your brain it’s full, sending your appetite into overdrive.

It’s a vicious circle. Give yourself grace if you slip but do your best to cut out the bad stuff as completely and quickly as possible so that you don’t get sucked back in.

One of the most effective ways to kick your junk food addiction is to replace your bad habits with a better one.

Love pasta but don’t know when to say when? Try replacing it with a healthier option of brown rice.

Find yourself reaching for a bag of chips when you’re watching TV at night? Try your hand at making your own homemade baked veggie chips. Slice paper-thin wedges of your favorite vegetables, drizzle and toss in olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt and bake in your oven.

Sources:

1. Eating foods with low nutritional quality ratings linked to cancer risk in large European cohort — PLOS
2. Top 5 Deadliest Cancers — WebMD

The post 4 cancers you can get from the junk food aisle appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But it’s not just the sugar and fat that you need to be concerned about. No, the enemy is even more sneaky than that.

If you read your product labels (which we hope you do), things like ‘sucrose,’ ‘fructose’ and ‘hydrogenated fat’ are fairly easy to identify. But what about all the other ingredients… the ones we can barely pronounce that are lurking in those bags and boxes of fake food lining the supermarket shelves?

It’s really gotten out of hand. So much so, that the United Nations has added a frightening term to the dictionary of fake food. It’s a term you’ll want to get to know, so you can eliminate it from your diet completely…

Separating healthy from unhealthy

All foods sold commercially are processed to a degree. Even picking, washing and bagging apples, qualifies as food processing.

But some products you find at the grocery store undergo processing to the extreme — and that’s where the term ultra-processed comes in…

In order to better understand food processing to know which foods contribute to health and well-being — and which are downright unhealthy — the United Nations applies the NOVA system of food classification, developed at the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil.

The NOVA system separates foods into four groups:

• Unprocessed or minimally processed. This group includes dried, freeze-dried, roasted or boiled food in its original state. Preparation can include removal of inedible parts, fermentation, and other non-chemical changes.
• Processed culinary ingredients. Examples of this are sugar from beets or cane, salt from sea water, oils from crushed olives, and maple syrup from trees.
• Processed foods. Canned fruit in sugar, salt-added canned vegetables, smoked meats, and salted or sugared nuts fall into this category.
• Ultra-processed foods. These are foods that go through so much processing, they bear little resemblance to real food. They’re the ones with strings of unrecognizable ingredients on the label. They include cereals, chicken nuggets, frozen pizzas, soda, chips, sweet or salty snacks, packaged baked goods, microwaveable frozen meals and instant soups and sauces.

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Even worse than processed food

French researcher Mathilde Touvier suspected there was a strong link between eating ultra-processed food and cancer risk. She used the NOVA system in a cohort study that confirmed her suspicions.

The study looked at almost 150,000 French adults and their eating habits. From May 2009 to January 2017, the study followed volunteer subjects who completed dietary records every six months.

When food intake was classified using the NOVA system, Touvier saw startling results: a 10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed foods in a person’s diet was correlated with a 12% higher risk of cancer.

In particular, eating processed food regularly, especially sugary foods, was linked to an 11% increase in the odds of getting breast cancer.

Based on analysis, the increased cancer risk seems to be driven by food additives, rather than by fat, carbohydrate or sugar consumption.

And not all processed foods appeared equally harmful. According to the research, drinks, sugary products, fats and sauces were most strongly associated with greater cancer risk.

How to avoid ultra-processed food

Let’s be clear about something: ultra-processed foods are made to be tasty. They’re full of stuff that kills you, but makes you want more of them. Kicking the habit will take some planning.

But there’s no better time than now to get started. The United Nations has declared the years 2016-2025 as the Decade of Nutrition. Here’s how you can participate and develop lasting changes to your diet…

1. Start slowly. If you eat a lot of highly processed foods, try substituting one or two things per day. Fruit for chips. Carrots and dip for cookies. Go for small wins.
2. Drink more water. This is important for so many reasons! Not only will it fill you up and make you less likely to eat snacks, it will keep you hydrated and start flushing some of the toxins from your system.
3. Choose whole grains. Instead of white rice, try brown. Whole wheat bread is a hearty, tasty substitute for white.
4. Limit or avoid processed meats. Bacon, ham, hot dogs and sausage are highly processed, and contain nitrites that are associated with allergic reactions, digestive disturbances and respiratory problems.
5. Try homemade. Granola, salad dressing, even potato chips made in your own kitchen are often more delicious than those loaded with chemicals.
6. If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. This one is pretty simple. If you don’t know what an ingredient is, it’s not something you should be eating.
7. Plan ahead. When you start your clean eating effort, you may find you’re still reaching for the tasty, unhealthy snacks, especially when you’re in a hurry.
   Take a weekend or a day to stock up on healthy quick snacks: cut veggies and hummus, fruit, yogurt, homemade chips or granola.

The post Which processed food puts you at highest risk for cancer? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

It’s triggered by something in your environment or lifestyle that your body perceives as a threat — like junk, processed and fast food.

These foods are setting off inflammation alarm bells in your body like crazy. And your body is responding to them as if they’re dangerous pathogens. It’s sending out immune cells and activating an inflammation response hoping to rid itself of these foreign food items.

Need proof?

Check out how the body responds to fast food…

Your body doesn’t stand a chance against a fast food infection

A study from researchers at the University of Bonn found that the immune system reacts the same way toward fast food as it does toward bacterial infections.

In their study, researchers put mice on a diet that mimics fast food for a month. The diet was high in unhealthy fats, high in sugar and low in fiber.

After eating this way for a month, mice developed a substantial inflammation response throughout their bodies. They had an increase in immune cells like granulocytes (white blood cells your body releases to fight bacterial infections) and monocytes (white blood cells that kill microorganisms). Researchers said the immune response was similar to how the body responds to a bacterial infection.

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Researchers also found that eating an unhealthy diet changed mice on a genetic level. It changed genes in their progenitor cells (similar to stem cells), which impacted these cells’ ability to reproduce and grow. Once mice returned back to their regular diet, their inflammation response went away. But their genetic reprogramming stuck around.

Researchers also examined blood cells from 120 people and identified a component in immune cells that recognizes unhealthy food when you eat it and stages an attack. It’s a danger sensor called an inflammasome. Inflammasomes send signals between cells when they sense harmful substances, like fast food. These signals tell cells to go into inflammation mode.

Researchers say these inflammasomes trigger genetic changes too. And over time, they reprogram genes to initiate a strong inflammatory response to smaller and smaller stimuli. That means the more fast food you eat, the more likely you are to end up with an immune system that’s gone rogue.

Eat foods that squash inflammation, not support it

If you’ve stopped eating healthy, it’s best to get back on track now before chronic inflammation gets a stronghold in your body. And when you’re tempted to go back to eating poorly, just ask yourself…

Would you intentionally infect your body with a dangerous bacteria?

Of course not! So why would you eat food that’s just as hard on your body?

Give your body a break and eat foods that are easy on your immune system and inflammation response — so your body can reserve these helpful tools for when it really needs them.

Anti-inflammatory diets, like the Mediterranean diet, make your immune system’s job easier, because they don’t include Franken foods that cause your immune system to react unnecessarily. But really, any diet that includes lots of whole foods (fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, fish, high quality meat, etc.) and avoids processed and sugary foods should do the trick.

The post The food as bad for you as a bacterial infection appeared first on Easy Health Options®.