It is very important to eat healthy. This doesn’t mean that we can’t have some ice cream or a cookie here or there when we are craving it, but it is very beneficial to try to eat healthier most of the time. This not only helps our body physically, but it can help us mentally as well. Eating better can improve your mood and memory, as well as reducing stress which is a big part of being healthy.
While many of us try to make an effort to eat healthy, the companies who make our products are making this even harder for us. We may think that we are eating the right things, but hidden ingredients can be very dangerous. I would suggest reading food labels before buying something. I know this seems like a lot of work, but it’s worth it.
One ingredient that always comes to mind is aspartame, an artificial sweetener. This can be found in a lot of “healthier” drinks that have no sugar. It’s very appealing to consumers because it replaces sugar and has low calories. When someone sees a drink with very little to no calories and no sugar, they levitate towards it because it must be healthy, right? Wrong. For starters, some studies have found that artificial sweeteners, including aspartame, have actually led to weight gain, which is ironic because people think they are doing the opposite. These sweeteners also put you at risk for diabetes, heart disease and stroke. It has also been reported that these sweeteners could increase your appetite, leading to you consuming more calories than you typically would. Some believe that aspartame may also put you at risk for seizures, cancer, lupus, ADHD, and even more.
Soy products, like soy protein isolate, are other ingredients that you should keep an eye on when trying to eat healthy. This product is used as a plant based protein which is common in vegan and vegetarian foods, but in other foods as well. Many believe that soy can put you at risk of developing breast cancer. The reasoning behind this is that soy contains isoflavones, which work like the estrogen in our bodies. Many forms of breast cancer feed off of estrogen which helps them to grow, so many people worry that the isoflavones in soy may do the same thing. A couple people who are very close to me have had breast cancer or have the gene for breast cancer and their doctors advised them to strongly stay away from soy and other products with estrogen in them. Soy can also affect thyroid function by blocking the absorption of iodine. Studies have also shown that the isoflavones block the production of thyroid hormones (Groves, 2018). Soy is also very commonly genetically modified. In fact, over 90% of the soy in the United States is genetically modified. And many people believe that it is not safe for us to consume genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
There are many other dangerous ingredients that are hidden in “healthy” food as well. I would strongly suggest doing some research and looking out for specific ingredients when shopping. I know this seems like a lot of work, but it’s really not bad. Once you know what to look out for, it only takes a few seconds to can through the ingredient label to check what is in your food.
Sources
Groves, M. (2018, November 22). Is Soy Good or Bad for Your Health? Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/soy-good-or-bad#downsides.
Lillis, C. (n.d.). Aspartame side effects: The truth about the risks. Retrieved from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322266.php.
I think you do a great job raising many valid arguments about what foods are considered “healthy” and that many of these foods are actually unhealthy. Having said that, I have to disagree with you when it comes to artificial sweeteners such as aspartame. Since first appearing on the market, artificial sweeteners have been the focus on many studies which have claimed that they are unhealthy, however quite often, these experiments have been shown to use improper technique. For example, the study which showed that “sweet n low” caused cancer in rats was used to stop the sale of this sweetener for a number of years in the 1990s has been discredited due to the cancer being caused by the experimenter methods, as opposed to the artificial sweetener itself. I believe that many of these studies are funded by the sugar companies, which have a financial incentive to convince individuals that products containing fake sugar are less healthy than products containing sugar.
The sugar companies have already been shown time and time again to drum up fears about the health impact of other types of foods as a way of distracting from the fact that their own food is responsible for health risks. Take for instance the war on saturated fats that the sugar industry has been funding since the 1970s. Dietary fat, which is one of the most essential nutrients has been stripped out of countless foods, under the belief that is now scientifically shown to be false, that they directly result in fat gain, high choesterol, etc. Studies have routinely shown that diets high in saturated fat reduce LDL cholesterol (unhealthy) and raise HDL cholesterol (healthy). When fat is removed from products, they tend to not taste very good, as fat is where much of the flavor comes from. Accordingly, these companies increase the amount of sugar in the products to make up for the taste. Since this has become a popular and accepted idea- that dietary fat is evil, and products are made with increased sugar quantities, obesity and heart disease have become more prevalent than ever before, and numerous health issues that never existed in human history are now common, such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.