5 Health Damaging Foods To Avoid For Life

 Image by Daniela Vladimirova

By Carrie Wojciechowski, Contributing Writer

The food that you put into your body has a major impact on ones overall health and wellness. We all know some things are not good for us, however, we might not know just how bad they really are. Here are five foods that you are best off avoiding for the rest of your life.

Corn-fed beef

Cows were born to eat grass, not grains. But farmers today feed their animals corn and soybeans! The reason they do this is it fattens up the  animals faster for slaughter.  The problem is, we”re not getting the Zinc, B Vitamins, Beta-Carotene, Vitamin E, Omega 3″s, Magnesium, Calcium and Potassium when we eat them because they”re not eating what they should be eating! That”s a lot of nutrition that we”re not getting! A study done by the USDA and researchers from Clemson University found that grass-fed beef is also lower in saturated fats that have been linked to heart disease.

The other problem is that soy is estrogenic. It affects the cows hormones, which will affect your hormone balance when you eat it. Having too much estrogen in the body (men or women) can cause weight gain, hair growth where it doesn”t belong, and cancer. It all comes back to quality over quantity. We need to respect that cows are herbivores, and that we”ll all be a lot healthier if we minimize our red meat intake, and make sure that it”s good quality beef.

Grass-fed beef is more expensive, but you”re getting way more bang for your buck from a nutrition standpoint.

Microwave popcorn

There are chemicals, one of which is called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), in the lining of these super convenient microwaveable bags, that are part of a class of compounds that may be linked to infertility, according to a recent study from UCLA. When tested on animals, the chemicals caused liver, testicular, and pancreatic cancer. Microwaving causes the chemicals to vaporize–and migrate into your popcorn! These chemicals store themselves in your body for years and accumulate until they casino online reach unhealthy levels and cause cell damage and mutation.

Try making popcorn the old fashioned way: in a skillet or pot, or in an air popper, add some real butter and a seasoning of your choice and you”ve got yourself a relatively healthy snack!

Non-organic potatoes

Root vegetables (carrots, beets, potatoes) absorb herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that wind up in the soil. Potatoes are treated with fungicides during growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting. Then after they”re dug up, the potatoes are treated AGAIN to prevent them from sprouting. We”re trying to keep a potato from doing what it”s naturally supposed to do! Try this: buy a non-organic potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won”t casino most likely. Organic potatoes sprout within a couple days of bringing them home.

Buy organic potatoes. Washing isn”t good enough if you”re trying to remove chemicals that have been absorbed into the potato.

Farmed Salmon

Nature didn”t intend for fish to be crammed into metal pens and fed soy and corn. And as a result of these drastic changes in living conditions, farmed salmon is lower in vitamin D (which everyone is deficient in these days!). These fish are in a confined space together, and when one gets sick, they all get sick. So the fish farmers give them antibiotics preemptively to keep them from spreading the sickness. These fish also have higher levels of contaminants, including carcinogens, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides such as dioxin and DDT, which are really hard on the liver. Some nutritionists believe the benefits of omega-3s outweigh the risks, but I don”t agree with that at all. Antibiotics wreak havoc on our digestive tracts, which in turn, wreak havoc on our immune systems and health!

According to David Carpenter, the director at the Institute for Health and the Environment in Albany, NY, the most contaminated fish come from Northern Europe, which can be found on American menus everywhere. Preliminary science has also linked DDT to diabetes and obesity.  Ask your waiter if the fish they serve is wild caught or farmed. If enough of us ask, and then refuse to eat chemical and antibiotic laden fish, we might see a change! And if the package or menu says fresh Atlantic, it”s farmed. There are no commercial fisheries left for wild Atlantic salmon.

Cool Whip

These are the ingredient in Cool Whip Regular: Water, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (Coconut and Palm Kernel Oils), High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Skim Milk, Light Cream, Contains less than 2 percent sodium caseinate, natural and artificial flavor, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60, sorbitan monostearate, beta carotene (color).

I used to love this stuff. I used it as my ice cream alternative. I thought “It has to be better than that fattening vanilla ice cream.” Holy cow, not even close (depending on which ice cream we”re comparing it to of course). Cool Whip came around in the 60″s, around the same time as pasteurized milk, and it was the convenience factor that was so appealing. It could keep in the refrigerator or freezer for weeks or months and not go bad! And now it comes in five other versions, including extra creamy and sugar free.  As convenient as these replacements may be, they”re a mix of trans-fatty oils (linked to cancer), high fructose corn syrup and enough chemical additives to make you squirm.

High Fructose Corn Syrup interrupts the body”s hunger and fullness cues and can lead to overeating and obesity. The chemicals are hard on the liver. And natural and artificial flavors always make me nervous. Why won”t they say what they are?

In a Cool Whip Experiment, a New York dad left the topping out on the counter at room temperature for 12 days and found that it looked exactly the same as day one in the refrigerator. Of course, this isn”t strong science, but it does make you wonder how the body feels about this foreign concoction. Go for the real stuff!

What Other Foods Would You Add To This List?