An interesting CNN article came out recently… and it was an eye-opener. Well, maybe not for everyone, but surely a wakeup call for those who don’t consider real food with the respect and appreciation it deserves.

The following are excerpts from the article:

Eating a lot of ultraprocessed foods significantly increases men’s risk of colorectal cancer and can lead to heart disease and early death in both men and women, according to two new, large-scale studies of people in the United States and Italy published Wednesday in British medical journal The BMJ.

Ultraprocessed foods include prepackaged soups, sauces, frozen pizza, ready-to-eat meals and pleasure foods such as hot dogs, sausages, french fries, sodas, store-bought cookies, cakes, candies, doughnuts, ice cream and many more.

“Literally hundreds of studies link ultra-processed foods to obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and overall mortality,” said Marion Nestle

More from the same article:

Processed and ultraprocessed meats, such as ham, bacon, salami, hotdogs, beef jerkey and corned beef, have long been associated with a higher risk of bowel cancer in both men and women, according to the World Health Organization, American Cancer Society and the American Institute for Cancer Research.

The new study, however, found that all types of ultraprocessed foods played a role to some degree.

A bit more:

“Americans consume a large percentage of their daily calories from ultraprocessed foods — 58% in adults and 67% in children,” she added. “We should consider substituting the ultraprocessed foods with unprocessed or minimally processed foods in our diet for cancer prevention and prevention of obesity and cardiovascular diseases.”

WHAT???? 67% of American children consume ultraprocessed food … DAILY!!!!! And people are worried about Covid? Sheesh!!!

• Not that Covid isn’t a concern but when it comes to epidemics, it’s easy to see that metabolic diseases is the front runner by a long shot. How many lives are lost annually due to Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, Dementia, and Cardiovascular Disease to name but a few.

More from this article:

In fact, over 80% of the foods classified by the guidelines followed in the study as nutritionally unhealthy were also ultraprocessed, said Bonaccio in a statement.

“This suggests that the increased risk of mortality is not due directly (or exclusively) to the poor nutritional quality of some products, but rather to the fact that these foods are mostly ultraprocessed,” Bonaccio added.

Not real foods the article adds:

Why are ultraprocessed foods so bad for us? For one, they are “ready-to-eat-or-heat industrial formulations that are made with ingredients extracted from foods or synthesized in laboratories, with little or no whole foods,” Zhang told CNN.

These overly processed foods are often high in added sugars and salt, low in dietary fiber, and full of chemical additives, such as artificial colors, flavors or stabilizers.

Ultraprocessed food isn’t real food… DUH… who knew?

Their suggestion…

“While some ultraprocessed foods may be considered healthier than others, in general, we would recommend staying away from ultra-processed foods completely and focus on healthy unprocessed foods — fruits, vegetables, legumes,” Mendelsohn said.

In case you want to read the article in its entirety go to: CNN article here

Time to get serious..

We, the adults, are responsible for what we feed our children. Maybe our parents didn’t feed us right, and maybe that set us up with bad nutritional habits. They may have done so in ignorance… they believed all those food guides, and ah… they thought the stuff in supermarkets and grocery stores was… ah… food. Why would they think otherwise?

We, today, are in a different place. We have the information. We can make changes. We aren’t ignorant. We know that all things in food markets aren’t necessarily good for us or even classified as food. We can do better. We can help our children, and eventually, they (thanks to us) will turn this disastrous ship around… so to speak. Let’s help them stay healthy. Let’s educate them well, and let’s all look forward to a better, healthier world in the days, weeks, months, okay… years ahead.

Thanks for the visit

Suzanne Rightley is an author of children’s fiction books. Her Granola Brea Health-nut Series addresses metabolic disease in a way that children can understand. They find humour in Granola Brea’s…ah…mishaps, as they learn how to become health-nuts themselves.

After all… learning about making healthy choices doesn’t have to be “boring”, lol.

thanks for the visit