Posted
April 19, 2008
My Family Fitness/Nutrition
This posting was written as an appeal
to be understood as moderate and modern. I
admittedly eat unusual foods like raw soybeans (edamame), seaweed (nori),
beets and beet leaves, raw oatmeal and pure maple syrup,
blueberries and mango; and I do not eat food that was
unclean in the Bible even before Moses’ Law or Noah’s Flood—not
for legal reasons but for discretionary reasons. I list these below. But I
want my friends, neighbors, and schoolteachers of my children to see
that there is reasonableness behind my dietary choices even though
they may seem backward to you if you were raised eating raccoons and
possums here in Missouri. I am not into processed
health food like tofu, polenta, hummus, and soy milk. I am not a
vegetarian—almost but not quite. I do not even take a vitamin pill.
I
do think that I have found the fountain
of youth, or at least the keys to being healthy and raising strong and
intelligent children. There are three keys:
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In the final analysis, our
bodies store calories (energy) as fat. If we intake greater
calories than we burn, we gain weight that day; if we intake
fewer calories than we burn, we lose weight that day (so eat
less). If we burn greater calories than we intake, we lose
weight that day; if we burn few calories than we intake, we
gain weight that day (so exercise more). If we lose weight
for any reason, our bodies will be hungry. Therefore, we
cannot lose weight without being hungry. We will survive
being hungry. When I learned this, my weight fell to what it
was shortly after I graduated from high school.
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Our bodies burn a ratio of
calories and oxygen, our heart rates represents the delivery of that
oxygen, and our breathing speed represents how much oxygen our hearts
are demanding for delivery and therefore how many calories our
bodies are burning. We must do whatever we can do to burn
calories the fastest. Therefore, we should do whatever makes us
breathless. I run. We should run if we can, walk if we
can, or type if we can. And I run in the winter because
calories are used for heat, and besides we should exercise beyond
summer and the first week after the New Year.
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Eat whole food. Eat it the way God
created it. Eat it the way that nature created it. Eat it the way that
humans have eaten it for thousands of years of natural selection. Any
way you cut it, whole foods fit the human body for fitness. This
means skipping processed food, refined food, additives, and empty
calories.
Cargill, Monsanto, Conagra, and ADM could use their corn syrup, corn oil,
and corn dogs to fatten up the orphans of Africa and Asia instead of
America adults, if charitable people giving food aid created the
economic demand. |
I recognize that by following the
scriptures that we have a promise of health, intelligence, and
endurance. I was a director of restaurants for a major hotel
company, and love to cook with whole foods—except my sashimi,
which I want cut with a sharp knife. My children were raised with a plentiful variety of healthful choices, and were never required to eat anything they did not like, but simply not offered
that which was innutritious. They were acculturated to like vegetables
and salads, local and exotic fruits, white milk and brown bread
instead of brown milk and white bread, 100% everything because I
love them 100%, just as the children of any foreign country prefer
the food of their parents through imitation like language. My mother
bought bulk food from a health food coop, particularly whole grains
including oatmeal, rice, and beans. My mother and grandmother always
had vegetable gardens. My mother baked heavy bread, and canned fruits and
vegetables in our kitchen. My father taught me how to find wild
plants to eat in the forest. My grandparents taught me how to fish,
fillet a fish, and sauté a fish.
My children and I love French, Spanish,
Italian, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Japanese cuisine; and the children love to cook and experiment with me, or eat wherever we can find fresh, gourmet, and ethnic whole foods.
We love to shop at Wild Oats, Dean and DeLuca, and the City Market. We emphasize moderation in all things; a wide variety of foods filled with known and
also yet-unidentified vitamins, minerals, flavenoids, phytochemicals,
and antioxidants; and highly diversified food sources and
originations to avoid toxins.
We are also an exercising family.
We workout together. We all run for fitness. We hike for fitness. We
each have a gym membership at 24-Hour Fitness. Each of them participates
in other sports. We do recreational activities as a family. Running
races was an ancient Biblical activity (Psalms 19:5 and
119:21, Isaiah 40:31, Jeremiah 12:5), and Paul speaks of
running races at least a half-dozen times in four
different works as allegoral for spiritual races, most
notably 1 Corinthians 9:24: “Know ye not that they which
run in a race
run all, but one
receiveth the prize? So run,
that ye may obtain.”
So, I am actually quite moderate and tolerant, giving my children the freedom to enjoy whatever God has created for our use, in purity of form, with thankfulness—often erring through human weakness, but always trying to be stronger.
What we try our best to eat:
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Fresh colorful and organic vegetables,
of great variety and diversity:
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Fresh fruits (especially vine fruits),
of great variety and diversity
Fruits have fiber, vitamins,
and antioxidants that fruit juices lack.
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Whole grains (especially whole wheat, bulgur, and wild rice), great variety and diversity
100% whole wheat
bread, not just wheat bread;
preferably the kind that you can
see the grain and seeds.
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Meat in moderation (but almost none in hot weather):
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Beef
and buffalo |
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Lamb
and goat |
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Deer, elk, antelope, etc. |
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Any singing birds
I am
really not sure if sure
about chickens and
turkeys, but roosters
sound prettier than hens.
Hens and chicks are a
parable for the people
of God in the Bible, but
many birds are called
hens and their young
were called chickens,
particularly partridges.
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Fish (with scales and fins), great variety and diversity, and wide-ranging water sources
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Certain shellfish
such as clean bivalve mollusks that move in flowing water, like clams and scallops
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Organic white milk, and
organic (cage-free) brown eggs
“A land
that floweth with milk and
honey” is an expression
throughout the Bible. Butter is
repeatedly symbolic of
prosperity in the Bible. Jesus
spoke a parable about giving an
egg to someone who wants one
(Luke 11:12). Ten cheeses are
also favored in 1 Sam. 17:18 and
cow cheese in 2 Sam. 17:29.
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Natural sweeteners:
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Raw honey
Honeycomb
and honey are favorites
in the Bible, eaten by
royal King David who
dined on honey, butter,
and cheese with his beef
steak, wise King Solomon
who ate honeycomb and
honey together calling
them good, prophetic
John the Baptist who was
clothed in fur and
leather while eating
gourmet foods like
locusts and wild honey,
and all-knowing Jesus
Christ who ate broiled
fish with honeycomb (2
Sam. 17:29, Proverbs
24:13, Song. 5:1,
Matthew 3:4, and Luke
24:42).
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Pure maple syrup,
from real trees in Sharon, Vermont
God made
beets sweet as an
incentive to eat the beets,
but agribusiness has
centrifugally refined
sugar from plants,
discarding the nutrients
and fiber from beets and
cane, and they should be
beet with a cane.
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Molasses
Sugar is
made by spinning off the
molasses, because
Americans feel purer if
they can make white
sugar out of black
syrup, but the nutrients
are spun off and the
calories have to be run
off.
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Sea salt and other gourmet
unrefined salts from ancient sea beds
that have a naturally occurring
proportion of all minerals in
addition to sodium chloride.
I believe that
salt is essential to maintain
proper blood pressure, based on
scriptures. Jesus said: “Salt
is good: but if the
salt
have lost his
saltness, wherewith will
ye season it? Have
salt
in yourselves, and have peace
one with another.” (Luke 14:34).
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Cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil
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Spring water |
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What we usually avoid eating or consuming:
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Biblically
unclean animals (before the added law of Moses, see Genesis 7: 2, 8; 8:20; Leviticus 11;
and Deuteronomy 14), particularly scavengers:
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Pigs,
hogs, and wild boars
Jesus, the fulfiller
of the Law, still did not speak
kindly of swine in Matthew 7:6,
8:32, and Luke 15:15. As Paul said,
“All things are lawful for me, but
all things are not expedient: all
things are lawful for me, but all
things edify not.” (1 Corinthians
10:23). Swine carry diseases
including the swine flu (which
killed 50-100 million people in the
pandemic of 1918); they are
omnivorous (eating other animals);
they are fattening, they oink, and they
stink. They make pigpens, and they make lard. They are unclean.
I am not alone in this regard: I am united with Jews, Muslims,
Seventh-day Adventists, vegetarians, heart patients,
people on low-cholesterol diets, and people who do
not like to get their calories from fat. The followers of Moses, and the followers of Abraham (who preceded the Law
of Moses), do not eat pork. Pork originated in
faithless nations: the Chinese domesticated the wild
boar like domesticating a wild bear—but Muslims,
Jews, and Christians were supposed to know better
when the Chinese introduced the pig snout into Eastern Europe.
Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas people think that not
eating pork is peculiar, because this is pig farmer
country. But their local, state, and
federal governments subsidize the conspirators (pork
councils and pork boards), who have marketed pork as
the “other white meat”, which is dishonest since it
is a red meat. Dishonest junk mail is called spam, and junk meat is called
spam. Fat congressional spending that goes to waste
is called pork, and fat meat that
goes to your waist is called pork.
This is Kansas City, the BBQ rib center of the world. Here, if
a kindergartener asks whether or not a hot dog is pork, the
cafeteria worker answers, “No” if it is turkey
and pork. If the
kindergartener asks whether a pizza contains pork, they answer, “No, it is pepperoni”. They just do not get it—they
cannot learn the
definition of the word porcine if they cannot
learn the definition of the word pork. One
restaurant nearby sells
only pork ribs and other
pork items like those
with ham, but
the dining room is
decorated with western
saddles, lariats, and
b&w photographs of
cowboys on horses. I
have never seen anyone lasso a pig
on a pig ranch.
Multi-cultural
cities like New York City, Los Angeles,
Chicago, or Dearborn all serve all-beef
hotdogs, yet in Kansas City a steakhouse will
invariably serve a salad without forewarning that
ham or bacon is standard on all
salads and vegetables.
And the healthier the
vegetable, the more ham
or bacon its taste
requires; so, green
beans, cabbage, and
spinach are all flavored
with pork fat. Vegetarians need more
legumes for protein, but KC baked
beans have have their token one gram
piece of pork fat. Here, if you
order a $25 filet
mignon, it might be
wrapped in a piece of
10¢ bacon. Here, if you
order seared $20 ahi
tuna, or $15 wild caught
salmon, or even $10
vegetarian eggplant
parmesan, they will
still deliver a salad
topped with 10¢ worth of
red meat.
Even the pet food aisle
of the grocery store aisle
demonstrates the inferior quality of
pork with its labels of “real beef”, “real
lamb”, and “real chicken”, but pork is not fit even
to feed to dogs. A hot dog should be dog food, and
cat fish should be cat food. Ham needs to be smoked or honey-baked to make it
eatable. Most sausage is filled with sugar, salt, spices, and chemical preservatives and chemical flavors because it is otherwise unpalatable or contains bacteria
and viruses. Pigskin is kicked around as a football,
but the finest books are bound in
calf, sheep, or goat (morocco).
So, please understand
that I do not want any pork in my
house, and that it is not
unusual outside of suburban Kansas
City where we regularly travel. My reasons are not so much
that I think that God forbids it,
but matters of intellectualism. You
probably do not eat animals like
aardvarks, anteaters, or armadillos,
and that is just the A-list
animals with snouts. I choose not to
eat wild boars, which are considered
similar in many cultures, if not
mine. Each time that a restaurant
tries to process it into my salad,
vegetables, sandwich, or pasta, my
annoyance at cultural naiveté
increases. |
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Ducks and geese
Incidentally, foie gras is the fattier liver pâté of a force-fed
and overfed abused duck or goose, a politically
incorrect product of France increasingly banned in
other renaissance countries.
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Alligators, frogs, turtles, etc. |
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Rabbits, kangaroos, and lamas:
which do not chew
their cud and have divided hooves |
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Catfish, eel, dolphin and other fish without fins
and scales |
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Snails
(escargot), oysters, and mussels
I am not really sure if shrimp and lobster are
clean, either. |
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Other scavengers generally
This is easier than a vegetarian diet, and everyone in my family has been a vegetarian at one time or another.
Of course you do not believe in eating all meats,
and neither do we. We do
not eat “cats or rats, dogs or hogs,
horses or porpoises”. |
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Drugs:
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Any addictive substance, however mild |
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Any mind-altering substance, however mild |
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Any behavioral stimulants, however mild |
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Ethanol (strong drinks) |
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Excessive or nonessential use of medicines or vaccinations, or other drugs with side effects
I know that depression is debilitating for many
Americans and I am not insensitive to that fact.
However, I am anti-anti-depressants. Antidepressants
have affected my life through the lives of those all
around me. Antidepressants make us indifferent and
complacent. Antidepressants make us stop tackling
our problems and make nothing seem critical or
timely. Antidepressants take the highs and lows away
from every emotion that God had himself when we were
created in his own image—whether love, anger,
indignation, wrath, hatred, fury, and revenge (those
are in the Bible as attributes of God) and I might
add to those both sorrow and joy, and crying and
repentance. Antidepressants make us lose
connectivity with our families, because they dull
our passions and cares while we can still be devoted
to the mechanics of family activities.
Antidepressants make us stop being depressed about
our bills. Antidepressants make us stop worrying
about our jobs, and make us lose our jobs.
Antidepressants make us procrastinate.
Antidepressants make us stop worrying about our
future. Once our lives are ruined, we are even more
depressed and are given a higher dosage.
Antidepressants even make us care too little to
bother with researching the side effects of our
antidepressants. The last two details are what makes
the pharmaceutical companies so successful. Even
people at the FDA are taking antidepressants.
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Alcohol
I have
been a beverage manager, banquet manager, fine dining
manager, room service manager, and dance club manager
for companies like Hyatt Regency Hotels. I am a
historian who knows about wineries, breweries, and
distilleries. I know about oak and cork, and I
know about barley and hops. I know the difference
between port and sherry, between a varietal and a
region, and between a vineyard and a vintage. I
understand the concept of describing alcohol using
ethnicities, heritages, and cultures. I realize that
your alcohol comes from a specific region of a certain
country with a historical context, soils, botanicals, and
herbs. But I also know something about marketing,
and all of that science is simply
being used for product differentiation, as is using
creative recipes, flavors, colors, garnishes,
and stemware to make ethanol more appealing. In the end, ethanol is ethanol. Distilling
is undoubtedly worse than the essential fermenting of
wine or beer as a preservative in ancient times before I
owned a refrigerator. Even so, drinking wine for the
antioxidants improves your nutrition, but not as much as
eating grapes which contain fiber instead of alcohol.
Studies on health benefits of wine do not consider that
most Americans are merely deficient in the vitamins and
other nutrients contained in dark fruits, not deficient in alcohol.
Feeding beer to starving children in Darfur would
improve their nutrition too, since they lack calories,
but nobody would consider giving them beer rather than
porridge. Americans do not need the carbohydrates from
beer, they need the fiber and protein from bran and
germ. They do not need the alcohol in wine, they need
the antioxidants from pomegranates and cherries that could be
replanted over vineyards if Americans created the
economic demand. |
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Tobacco
Comment should be unnecessary. Cuban
cigars are as sophisticated as
Cognac brandy or Kentucky bourbon, used by
those who fancy themselves as having discriminating taste.
However, real refinement
requires enlightenment not
lighting up.
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Caffeine:
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In hot drinks
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Coffee (caffeine) |
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Tea (theophylline) |
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Hot chocolate (theobromine)
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In cold drinks
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Iced tea |
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Iced coffee and
iced cappuccino |
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Coke® |
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Pepsi® |
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Mountain Dew® |
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Many other soft drinks, including some root beer and orange sodas
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Some states have now
outlawed soft drinks in all schools.
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Chocolate
This is America’s romantic drug and the legal drug for your
children. Chocolate contains caffeine and other
caffeine-like addictive stimulants, mainly theobromine.
Chocolate tastes so
good only after the addition of milk
and sugar.
They call it devil’s food cake instead of
angel food cake for a reason, they call it sinfully delicious for a reason, and they call
it decadent chocolate for a reason. The
addictive properties are described as your craving,
temptation, or obsession.
Withdrawal causes temper tantrums in children, and
road rage in adults; withdrawal causes irritability,
fatigue, inability to concentrate, and migraine
headaches. Since most people do not get chocolate in
a consistent flow, as do those who get their drugs
from coffee, most chocolate eaters are in daily
withdrawal for years.I have heard all of the anti-oxidant arguments about
coffee and chocolate, but a handful of almonds or
pecans has the same anti-oxidants without the
caffeine and instead an increase in fiber, vitamins, and
protein. |
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Hot drinks:
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Including
all hot drinks, not just caffeinated hot drinks |
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Decaffeinated coffee
or herb tea |
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Postum® (a grain drink,
formerly a Post® cereal brand but now a
Kraft® brand) |
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Hot
chocolate
I listed hot chocolate
for its temperature alone, assuming
that you do not believe that
it has caffeine
and/or caffeine-like theobromine.
There is more, and it is about coffee shops and
chocolate: I already knew spiritually that hot drinks
were not for our bodies, which are the temple of the holy ghost (1 Corinthians 3: 16; 6: 13, 19).
I already knew scientifically that caffeine, theophylline, and theobromine
are carcinogens, addictive stimulants, and
mind-altering drugs. I already knew from my
marketing education exactly why the Starbucks message is so successful. I
already knew from my life experience that world culture must be deeper than drinking from a plastic lid sippy cup on Earth Day simply because your cup is called cozy names like Caffe, Mocha, Latte, or Frappaccino
and you are drinking
your antioxidants for
health while eating
their Cinnamon Toffee
Crunch Loaf.
But this is the latest for me: I cannot ignore world news reports that 15,000 children are enslaved in the Ivory Coast of Africa. I
love the orphans around the world—whether in China, the Pacific Islands,
Mexico, or Eastern Europe. Would you whip children into carrying sacks of beans for one hundred hours per week without wages, for a “relaxing” of cappuccino or espresso? How is that relaxing for
them? Are you reading this and sitting down comfortably while they are falling down on their knees? Can you support the selling of children and still feel spiritual, cultured, and trendy while drinking at Starbucks and other cafes with your Christian friends?
All of
the money spent by
Americans on gourmet
coffees and in trendy
coffee houses probably
exceeds the annual food
budget of some
continents.
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Aspartame and Sucralose:
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Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet®,
Equal®, and Splenda® |
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Children’s toothpaste and vitamins |
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Diet soft drinks |
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Sugar-free gum and candy
These cause dizziness in airline pilots. My
daughter, Samantha, is allergic to and gets dizzy
spells from aspartame. |
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Corn syrup
Corn syrup is one of the great agribusiness deceptions in history, alone accounting for all of the excess calories eaten in the world: added to soda pop, cereal, tomato sauce, salad dressing, and, well, everything. So, the next time that you drink something that is 5% fruit juice, remember that it is 95% theft of your nutrients by the manufacturer and that you need to drink 20 glasses of cocktail/drink to get the same nutrients as one glass of juice. Of course, you have to drink an infinite
(literally) amount of soda pop to get any nutrients whatsoever, so soda pop goes completely to waste and waist measurement. Even 100% juice is like eating white bread, having removed the vitamin and antioxidant rich skins and the fiber.
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Hydrogenated
oils or saturated fats :
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Canola oil |
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Vegetable oil |
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Soybean oil |
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Corn oil |
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Cottonseed oil
Super-heated oils are difficult to avoid completely unless
you eliminate all processed foods and all restaurant
foods. Incidentally, olive oil is from olives,
peanut oil is from peanuts, but
Canola oil is from another plant
than its name. Canola oil is made from Canadian rapeseed,
a plant with a history of health
controversy, which was previously
used for industrial lubricants; thus they chose to
trademark it Canola for Canada
oil. |
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