Okay, so things happened, and I haven't been able to get around to updating this for a while. So I decided I'd better set aside some time and do this. Today's entry is going to be the first of many 'buyer beware' type articles.
It's getting tougher and tougher to stay healthy these days. Chances are, the average person carries a few misconceptions of foods or habits that are healthy and ones that are not. Nowadays, a lot of companies are getting on the 'healthy' or 'natural' bandwagon, and have been making various claims on their products to assist people in their shopping choices. Advertising to the rescue! If it says it's good for me, it's true, right? And thus millions of ignorant people buy products or "healthy" food items, products, etc. and use them daily, thinking they're doing the right thing for themselves, when really all they're doing is flushing their lives (and money) down the toilet.
With the job I do, I see the consequences of these people's habits every day. It's a scary thing to see. Many people just think that illness is something that comes with getting older. They're probably the same people who hold the opinion of "Well, anything can kill me, so it doesn't matter if I (insert bad habit here)."
Unfortunately, the average person just simply doesn't know the difference. You hear a news story telling you something is good for you, and then a few years later you hear one telling you it's bad for you, and the cycle repeats. Not many people really think about looking into stuff like this, they just remember what they saw on TV, or in a magazine, etc. and they just go blindly with that. What I aim to do is educate the public, in hopes that one little bit at a time, you can start making more informed choices for your health.
I certainly can't cover everything at once, but I'd like to start with the beverage category. I'm seeing more and more claims arise out of what's safe and what isn't, and I'd like to cover some basics on what to look for when choosing what to (or not to) drink.
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I'm going to start with one of my latest peeves: Vitamin Water. This stuff came out on the market, along with similar "vitamin infused" drinks, such as Fuze (among others that I can't think of right now). So people see that and go, "Oh, vitamins! That's GOT to be good for you!" Wrong. But zillions of people started buying it.
You want to know what Red Flag #1 is? Look at the label. Vitamin Water is made by Coca-Cola. Do you honestly think they made this product with your health in mind?
Not only does this drink contain a ridiculous amount of dangerous sweeteners, all the so-called "vitamins" that it contains are likely synthetic, and/or are used in forms that are not very optimal for your body to use. Ultimately, they're pretty much useless.
As well, most vitamin B3 that they use to add to drinks and other food products is usually in the form of niacinamide, which really I don't even want to consider a vitamin. Vitamin B3 is niacin (aka nicotinic acid), which has a variety of powerful health benefits, including being hands-down the best solution for cholesterol. Niacin naturally causes a warming effect when taken, called the niacin 'flush'. A brief warming and pink colour in the skin characterizes this. For some ridiculous reason, this bothers some people. So what they made to "remedy" that was niacinamide, a version of niacin that is made not to flush.
But it's not really niacin. When you make a change to a molecule, its structure is completely changed. It no longer can function the same way in the body, because it is physically different. It's like taking two puzzle pieces that fit together, taking one away, and then trying to put a different puzzle piece back with the other one. It just doesn't work.
What usually ends up happening is the body makes changes to compensate, or finds no use for the new molecule whatsoever. In the latter case, when the body has no use for something, different things can happen. Sometimes it is just excreted. Other times, it will go to the liver to be processed as usual, only the liver has no idea what to do with it because it doesn't recognize it. A lot of times it just gets stored away in a fat cell (put two and two together here on all those processed foods you might eat). Other times, it gets broken down into whatever the liver can do with it in its attempt to salvage something useful for the body.
Anyway, one of the things that niacinamide can be metabolized into in the liver is, wait for it...ammonia. If you don't know much about ammonia, the one thing to note is that it is toxic to all living things. Therefore, regularly consuming things with niacinamide in them = not good.
But here comes another problem, which makes this issue worse. Sometimes products are not properly labeled. You might see something which just says "Vitamin B3" on it. I am positive that I have seen products that claim to have actual niacin in them, but it is highly doubtful that it is actually nicotinic acid. Also, sometimes other things are added that bind to the niacin to get rid of the flush effect. I am not a fan of that either, for the same reasons above: When a molecule is changed, it is not the same molecule anymore.
How to know the difference? Easy. Niacin causes flush. If you don't experience flush, chances are it's not really niacin. I could go into possibilities like your body having absorption problems, but the former is the more likely answer.
Aside from the byproducts of niacinamide in the liver, the other synthetic additions in these types of drinks and other foods will inevitably tax the liver, because it has to work even harder to figure out how to process things that it was never intended to process.
And don't even get me started on the sweeteners. I could write pages on that. Instead, I'll refer you to this article: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/05/26/What-is-Erythritol-Doing-in-Vitamin-Water.aspx
It's worth reading.
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This sub category is going to take many entries to go through, so I am going to get through them a little bit at a time.
I just wanted to discuss a bit about that VitaminWater thing because I am seeing so many people just blindly buying things that are being marketed as 'natural' without knowing anything about it. The same goes for any other similarly marketed drink. And don't even get me started on energy drinks (a topic for another day when I have more time).
I work in a mall, and often sit in the foodcourt during lunch break. I watch as hundreds of people eat their way into lifetimes of diabetes, heart problems, and obesity, to name a few of hundreds of possible health problems.
In the next entry, I am going to discuss fruit juices, and go a little bit more into "natural" and artificial sweeteners, which ones are safe, and which ones are not.
Do you know what's in your food and beverages, and what they do inside your body?
The vast majority of people simply do not know these things, because the average person doesn't invest much time into biochemistry or wondering what the additives in their food does after they actually eat it. Sure, there's mystery ingredients in there, but since people have become so used to seeing them in their food, many just assume they're supposed to be there. Unfortunately, ignorance is one of the biggest health hazards that exists these days.
If you knew something was a carcinogen, neurotoxin, or otherwise dangerous chemical, would you willingly continue to consume it? Survival instinct and common sense (and even safety labels for the common-sense challenged), among other things, tell people not to ingest poisons. You wouldn't grab a bottle of Windex and drink that, but I've told you today about something that can turn into ammonia after you consume it.
Though you may not know the scientific details of what it does, you've surely heard of the poison formaldehyde, a known dangerous toxin and carcinogen. Generally something one would try to avoid coming in contact with, yes? Yet you are probably drinking something every single day that can produce it in your body.
More on that next time.
~Sheeyannyface :)
