It is starting to get increasingly clear that those seeking lower blood pressure must avoid packaged foods. Its certainly no coincidence that runaway rates of elevated blood pressure, diabetes and extraordinary obesity in the West coincide with the upward push of these products.
As a matter of fact, two explicit ready-made foods, products that have come to dominate entire food groups, are now obviously linked to obesity and hypertension. They are hydrogenated, or trans-, fats and high fructose sweeteners. These freaks can justly be called ‘Frankenstein Foods’ as examples of science gone wrong.
Trans-fats undergo a method that turns liquid oil into solid fat. We know this substance most frequently as margarine. The characteristics of many of these margarines are no coincidence ; the chemical structure of hydrogenated fat is similar to plastic. Unnecessary to say, trans-fats do not happen naturally.
Ironically, margarine and other hydrogenated fats were once promoted as healthy choices to saturated fats. But we know now that natural fats contain trace minerals, amino acids and other nutrients essential to good health. Its hydrogenated fats that are the monsters.
Consumers need to read food labels carefully and treat hydrogenated fats with caution. And if you have raised blood pressure you should avoid them like the plague. Naturally, with extensive coverage of the health dangers of trans-fats this advice may appear old hat. A number of progressive shops and food producers have even taken the first steps to ban trans-fats in their products.
Another known cause of hypertension is high fructose syrups. These sweeteners were similarly promoted as healthy alternate choices to the feared cane sugar. Food producers have pulled the wool over the publics eye by stressing the association of the name ‘fructose’ with fruit. Fruit contains fructose but it is in no fashion the same substance as the high fructose syrups, most frequently corn syrup, utilized in the food industry.
High fructose syrups are only now being exposed as a health danger and few folk recognize the size of the problem. High fructose corn syrup is cheaper than cane sugar and many times sweeter. The result is not surprising ; high fructose syrup is everywhere in fast foods from soft drinks to ketchup to spaghetti sauce. Even Coca-Cola has used high fructose corn syrup since 1985.
Like hydrogenated fats, fructose sweeteners also increase gut fat, much way more than conventional sugar. The effect is a threatening condition called metabolic syndrome. Obesity, defective insulin metabolism, high cholesterol and high blood pressure are all results. What is more, fructose sweeteners have the potential to damage the liver as they pass undigested through the small intestine where they head straight to the liver.
But our shops remain stacked high with countless other elevated blood pressure causing foods. These include processed cheese, meat from animals treated with growth hormones and other chemicals, fake salt substitutes, dairy substitutes and lots more. Basically, they include any foods that have been chemically or mechanically made, enhanced or improved. Please bear in mind that not all of these foods are harmful if eating in very small quantities, but the majority are just not required for the security of our food supply and our good health.
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