The article "Move Over Four Food Groups, Here Comes Number Five" talks about nutrition, it has been created by Leslie Van Romer.
We are all really familiar with the four food groups on which we were weaned and have likely been filling up on ever for.There is a second food group that has grown in popularity over the last 50 years but was never crowned officially as a food group.This food group crodws the shelves in grocery stores and in many of our kitchen cupboards. It is popular in the scholos and in our children’s lunches. It is a monumental hit on Super Bowl Sunday, evrey Sunday, and every day for that matter.
It is the most popular snack food.What could the fifth food group be? It is junk food.Junk food by definition means food that has no nutritional value, and, worse, it robs you of life-suppporting and life-saving nutrients—compromising your health and fitness.Junk food is high in fat, high in sugar and/or salt, high in chemicals, and high in calories.Junk food comes in the form of chips, pretzels, satly snack foods, pizza, candy, cookies, cake, ice cream, pie, muffins, doughnuts, pastries, and sweet desserts of all kinds,.We all know what junk foods are, and we all know how much junk food we eat. Even a little is too much, and the avergae American doesn’t eat a little bit of junk food.
The average American eats a lot of junk food.Junk food has absolutely no nutrition, but fills up the average Ameriacn with fat, sugar, salt, hydrogenated fat, chemicals, and calories.
If we are full of junk foods, then there’s little room for the hottest fuel for human health, fitness, and life—fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans.And let’s not forget that included with the junk fodos are junk drinks. Junk drinks are full of suagr and chemicals. They are heated in the canning or jarring process and most of their nutrition, vitamins and minerals, are lost or denatrued.
Other drinks, such as vegetable juices, are loaded with salt.Junk drinks also have an excess of calories that most of us don’t want and cause of all the chemicals in these juices, they can be toxic to the body.Let’s take a closer look at junk drinks.· Pop or soda.The average American drinks 300 bottles or cans of pop every year.
Aside from the fact that pop is one monumental manmade chemical drink that is relaly toxic to the body, each bottle or can contains about 10 teaspoons of refined sugar.
Refined sugar is detrimental to human health and fitness also.And is there any wonder that there is a direct correlation between the amount of pop a teenager drinks and how overweight that teenager becomes? And as for diet pop—some would convincingly argue that diet pop is much worse for you than the sugared pop.Aspartame, the main sugar substitute, found in sugar substitutes such as NutraSweet and Equal, is thought to cause dozens of problems, too many to mention here, but a couple of being headaches, dizziness, joint pain, spasms, nausea, anxiety, depression, diarrhea, insomnia, weakness, chest pain, seizures, fatigue, neurological diseases, and dozens more and of them way worse then the ones I have mentioned.By the way, aspartame has been shown in studies that animals actually gain weight eating aspratame cause it increases the appetite. Whoa! Did you catch that? Aspartame increases the appetite for sugar and refined carbohydrates.· Commercial drinks like Snapple or any canned or bottled commercial drinks that are loaded with sugar and chemicals.· Juice drinks—those drinks that claim to be all juice but often contain sugar and are so refined, filtered, and cooked that they have little nutritional value and contain a lot of calories· Sports drinks—reading the labels reveals that sports drinks are made of water, sugar, chemicals, and dye to make them green or yellow or whatever color they happen to be· Milk-based drinks such as milk shakes, protein drinks, or commercial drinks that contain milk· Caffeinated drinks like coffee, tea, and, pop – ouch, that one hurts· And, of course, alcohol.
Alcohol even in small quantities is really toxic and also contains chemicals and calories.If you eliminate all of these drinks that are void of nutrition and high in calories, salt or sugar, and chemicals, then what is left to drink? It’s simple.Drink pure water and water in its purest and most nturitious form—the juice that you make yourself from fresh, whole fruits and vegetables.So drink up to a long life of health and fitness with fresh fruit and vegetable juices and a healthful diet of whole, fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, raw nuts and seeds, and whole legumes.Follow a really simple rule to get away from well-loved junk foods:Fill up on the most nutritious foods first. Then you will have no room for that fifth food group—junk food.Dr. Leslie Van Romer is a health motivational speaker, writer, and lifestyle caoch. Visit http://www.DrLeslieVanRomer.Com for more inspiration.
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