 |
It is a common habit to label food as
healthy or unhealthy. In any book dedicated on healthy living it is
possible to find this type of classification. Roughly speaking,
unhealthy food – also called junk food – is food that should be excluded
from our diet, or at least drastically reduced, while healthy food is
the food of choice and should be eaten in abundance. Fruit and
vegetables are an example of healthy food; fried food is an example of
the other kind of food. It is widely believed that the larger the
quantity of unhealthy food we eat, the greater the damage to our bodies,
while the opposite is considered true for healthy food. The larger the
quantity of healthy food, the greater the benefits. No-one has ever
challenged this concept, as far as I know.
Well, now it is time to challenge this concept. An important point in
the IntenseDF diet is that every food is intrinsically unhealthy, none
excluded! I repeat – none excluded.
|
Is this just an
exaggeration? Not really, and we will see soon the reason behind this.
One day, while I was on a train, a girl sitting near me said to her
friend “as soon as I get home I’ll have some apples. I have been very
naughty, and just had two doughnuts, and to compensate for that I’ll
have two apples later on.”
When I heard that I asked myself, “Can a so-called healthy food repair
the damage caused by an unhealthy food?” A few months later, I managed
to give an answer to that question and it was a sound NO! To understand
why healthy food does not exist, we need to consider the results of an
important experiment carried out a while ago.
It is well know in the scientific community that after a meal, an
increase of free radical production is normally seen inside our bodies.
A scientist wanted to evaluate how many free radicals were produced when
just a particular quantity of pure refined white sugar was consumed,
compared to that produced by a certain amount of natural orange juice
(without additives) containing exactly the same quantity of
|
sugar. What does
‘containing the same quantity of sugar’ mean? Well, oranges are sweet
because they contain a small quantity of natural sugar. This scientist
had prepared a quantity of orange juice that had the same quantity of
sugar prepared previously.
A group of people had been asked to eat just the white sugar, and for a
while the radicals production inside their bodies had been measured and
recorded. Another group had the same amount of sugar but this time it
was given as natural orange juice. The results were quite interesting.
The people that had the natural orange juice experienced a whopping 60%
reduction in radical production compared to the group that had the
refined white sugar. This sounds like a very good result. A 60%
reduction in free radical formation surely is enough to label orange
juice as healthy! Isn’t it?
Before jumping to quick conclusions, let us present the data in another
way:
The quantity of free radicals produced when the group ate the refined
white sugar was 100;
|
|
|
|
The quantity of free
radicals produced when the group ate the orange juice was 40.
Therefore, in summary, pure sugar has created a damage level of 100,
while orange juice has created a damage level of 40!
Analysed in this way, clearly both foods cause problems to our body, in
this case radical production. So why do we label one as healthy and the
other as unhealthy?
We should label one as very unhealthy (white sugar) and the other one as
just unhealthy (natural orange juice).
Can we repair the damage caused by eating two doughnuts simply by eating
two healthy apples? The answer again is a sound NO! Actually if we eat
an apple, we will add further damage.
Suppose that the quantity of radicals produced by the two doughnuts is
100 and that caused by two apples is 40. Let us analyse the situation in
terms of damage:
|
|
Food
|
Damage
|
Total
|
|
2 doughnuts
|
100
|
100
|
|
2 apples
|
40
|
40
|
|
2 doughnuts + 2 apples
|
100 + 40
|
140
|
If we say that all food is bad for us does that mean we should forget
about trying to eat healthy food? The answer is no!
We have to eat healthy food because in this way we experience less
damage. Unfortunately, we live in a world where each single food has a
negative impact on our bodies. Any food can cause some sort of problem
to our bodies, but because we have to eat, it is vital to keep the
damage as low as possible by eating those foods that case the minimum
damage. Fruits and vegetable are examples of this kind of food.
So remember healthy food does not mean no damage at all, but it does
mean lower damage. An important concept in the IntenseDF diet is that
eating healthy food when we do not need to eat is truly unhealthy.
Because each food causes damage to our bodies we should aim to eat a
quantity of food just enough to
|
satisfy our metabolic
needs – no more, no less. In this way, we can keep the total damage as
low as possible.
Let’s look at a few numbers to consolidate this important concept:
|
Type and quantity of food
eaten
|
Damage caused by eating
that food
|
Classification
|
|
Minimum quantity of health food to survive
|
40
|
Best
|
|
Minimum quantity of junk food to survive
|
100
|
Bad
|
|
Four times the minimum quantity of healthy food to survive
|
160
|
Very bad
|
|
Four times the minimum quantity of junk food
|
400
|
Worst
|
As you can see from the table, it could be better to eat a small
quantity of junk food than a very large quantity of healthy food.
Because the damage piles up, the larger the quantity of food we eat, the
greater the damage that our bodies have to withstand. It does not matter
if we are eating healthy food.
This is why we should follow these two principles: |
|
|
|
1) Only “healthy” food should be eaten in order to
keep the damage low
2) Just the right quantity of healthy food should be eaten – no more, no
less.
Why is even healthy food unhealthy?
Refined food is nothing more that healthy food deprived of antioxidants
and phytochemicals in general. The antioxidants minimise the damage
caused by sugar, but sugar is a natural component in many foods like
fruit and, to a lesser extent, vegetables. The sugar in fruit is the
same as that found in refined white sugar, so it should not be a
surprise that when we eat fruit we suffer similar damage.
Another food that is labelled as unhealthy is saturated fat. However,
any food, even olive oil, contains a certain quantity of saturated fat.
Conclusion:
Any food, fruit and vegetables |
included,
can damage our body because it contains the same
unhealthy
nutrients as junk food – sugar is one example. Because of this, it is
vital to eat only as much as we need to satisfy our metabolism.
Overeating, even on healthy food, is unhealthy. Eating or overeating on
unhealthy food is very bad, as we already know; overeating on health
food is bad too, albeit to a lesser extent.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|