Junk, Junk, All is Junk
Just about everyone these days thinks they know what junk food is. Usually they point the finger at fast food outlets. However, I can tell you that more junk food is sold in supermarkets and more junk food is eaten in homes than is ever purchased from take-way joints.
Even the supermarkets who pride themselves on the freshness of some of the food they sell, make a big share of their money from junk (and cigarettes and alcohol). Their aisles are full of it. Aisle after aisle of junk drink, processed flour in the form of bread, pasta, biscuits, cake and breakfast biscuits, side by side with chips, confectionery and chocolates.
Take a look at what fills up your average shopping trolley. If it’s in a cardboard box, plastic container, cellophane wrap or bottle it’s probably junk. And the junk food culture is so seductive that even people who can hardly raise the money to rub two sticks together, stuff their trolleys with the most expensive, manufactured food, in the main robbed of all it’s goodness. They’re left starving themselves with full bellies.
So what is junk food? How can you discern the difference between good food and junk food.
Junk Food Definition
1. Junk food is food that’s been through a manufacturing process.
It’s food that’s been through the mill, the oven or, in the case of the rissole, the piece of fish and the potato, the fat bath.
The food manufacturing companies, big and small love it. The more they can manufacture and sell the more money they make. The secret of sales success is to get some fat, flour and sugar, mix it up, and cook it.
The human species is genetically wired to love the taste of it and become addicted to it. But in the history of human nutrition it’s a very recent phenomenon and the human body is not yet adapted to living on it. The result, an epidemic of body system dysfunction.
If the nutritionists who concoct these health-destroying recipes were lawyers they’d be disbarred; if they were doctors they would be struck off, such is the enormity of the disservice they do to their community.
2. It’s carbohydrate-based food that contains over 250 calories (1000Kj)/100gms. Immediately that captures the garbohydrates; – bread, pasta, breakfast biscuits, sweet biscuits, dry biscuits, cake, chocolate, chips (any potato will provide the body with an unnecessary glucose dump), some ice cream and all confectionery and chocolate.
3. It’s processed food that comes out of the udder of members of the bovine family and designed for calves of that species and not the calves and adults of the human species.
4. It’s food that has been denatured and lacks living enzymes.
5. It’s food containing empty calories, that fill up the stomach but fail to nourish the cells of the body.
6. It’s food that’s loaded to the gills with food additives – preservatives, flavourings, colourings, emulsifiers, surfactants, thickeners … Just look on the side of the packet at what’s in banana cake or hot cross buns and you’ll probably die with your legs in the air!
7. It’s junk drink that contains bubbles, caffeine, alcohol, sugar and/or aspartame. Can anyone tell me why any food nutritionist working for any junk drink company would recommend the addition of caffeine to the product? So much for nutritionists!
8. It’s food that comes in fancy packets and wrappers, in bottles, cardboard boxes and plastic bags.
It’s food that is marketed to fools and children as being nutritious and wholesome
If you want to get fat; if you want to get high blood pressure, cardiac dysfunction, depression or diabetes, eat junk, lots of junk. And where do you buy it? From the Junk Food People.
In the long run you’re going to have to make up your own mind about what’s good for your body. The best way to do this is by experimenting on yourself. Go for a month without the junk foods, in particular products made from wheat and sugar – and see what happens to you. There’s a good chance you’ll feel better.
Is That A Fat Guts Or A Starch Guts?
It’s incongruous that whilst people report that they are eating less fat they’re getting fatter. The number of people who are 10 Kg fatter than they were 10 years ago is enormous. Ask any group. A sea of hands goes up. There’s something wrong with current eating habits.
What’s happened over the last 30 years is that the species that spent thousands of years learning how to adapt to scarcity hasn’t learnt how to live in harmony with affluence. We’re suffering from affluenza, which leads to dysfunction in all the body systems.
We eat too much for the level of energy we expend. In particular we eat too much high density carbohydrate (CHO) in the form of starch and sugar, singly or in combination. We eat too much of the wrong food at the wrong time (for both short and long periods). It’s too easy to eat too much high density food, which is why, if you want to slim down, I recommend you cut it out of your diet for a while.
We all know that if you want to get fat, eat lots of fat. What is less well known is that if you want to get fat eat lots of starch and sugar, particularly in combination with fat. As well as that, many people are being taken in by the low fat hoax, little realizing that the fat in the packaged food has often been replaced by refined sugar.
The Junk Pyramid
Remember the diet pyramid beloved of the dairy, grain and breakfast biscuit industries? It’s promoted in a myriad of forms in books, posters and particularly on the backs of packets of junk breakfast food. It receives the highest of endorsements from departments of health and nutrition professional bodies and health charities. When it comes to eating wisely in an affluent society it’s a limp and useless tool.
The experts say that it’s advisable to eat less from the top of the pyramid and more from the bottom. It sounds like good advice, except that for many people that advice has been translated into eating more of the high density garbohydrates (read flour-based products) and drinking more milk. Hence the epidemic of all manner of body system dysfunctions; headaches, tiredness, arthritis, asthma, crook guts, high blood pressure, adult onset diabetes, not to forget obesity.
Why the junk pyramid? Because it’s a model designed and promoted by food manufacturers, aimed at encouraging people to eat more high density garbohydrates and dairy products.
Have you ever heard of a gut or heart foundation receiving an indulgence from a bread or dairy company? Have you every heard of a dieticians organisation being sponsored by a company that makes biscuits and confectionery?
When it’s all boiled down, the diet pyramid has become the Junk Pyramid particularly in it’s encouragement of the milk and garbohydrate industries.