Author: Kristin Steinholt

Carrots and diet soda, that sounds healthy right? At least that's what I thought when I was in my early 20s. I lived in the deep south at the time and was surrounded by very rich and lots of fried food, so to counterbalance I would snack on carrots and drink diet cola. I knew carrots were definitely healthy because they were a vegetable, and diet cola must be healthy, because it didn't have all that sugar of regular soda. No wonder my cravings were all over the place, right alongside my moods.

Ignorance is bliss, some say, but in my case, ignorance was slowly killing me. Diet soda, I've come to learn, contains chemicals that are the equivalent of pesticide. Poison in other words. The phosphoric acid in soda (both regular and diet) is right next to battery acid on the pH scale and leaches iodine from your body, which in turn affects your thyroid and can slow down your metabolism, causing weight gain. Diet soda can actually cause you to gain weight!

The point, though, is that I really believed I was making a healthy choice. Just as, a little later on, I would make sure I looked for sugar-free desserts, because, sugar, of course, was to be avoided at all cost. As a result, I was exposed to a rainbow of artificial sweeteners that continued to play havoc with my brain chemistry (read, severe mood swings), insulin and immune system.

Then, I jumped on the "fat-free" band wagon, and was so focused on no fat, that I missed the sugar content all together, and overloaded my system with refined carbohydrates on a regular basis.

The result was that I ate a lot of man-made, processed foods, thinking that I was so healthy, because I wasn't ingesting all that sugar or fat. Instead I was feasting on a diet of food additives, preservatives, toxic sweeteners and zero quality nutrients.

There are so many people today making those very mistakes in the name of making healthy choices. The reason? Lack of education and an industry that spends billions on advertising really, really unhealthy foods. Food manufacturers use less expensive, and lower quality ingredients to increase profit, they use harmful preservatives for longer shelf life and they add unnecessary quantities of sugar and salt to ensnare the public's taste buds and cause them to keep craving more and more. The more sugar you eat, the more you'll crave sugar. The more salt you eat, the more you'll crave salt.

What's the answer? How do you go about educating a population that's growing unhealthier by the minute?  As I've mentioned before, statistics predict that this is the first generation of children who will not outlive their parents because of poor eating habits and childhood obesity. How do you "Stop the Madness", in the words of 90s nutrition zealot Susan Powter. I wish I knew the solution. It obviously starts with awareness and education. I'm excited to see the popularity of shows like "The Biggest Loser" and Jamie Oliver's "The Food Revolution". These shows are at least opening the eyes of some people, and that's a positive start.

If you've read this far, it most likely means that you take an interest in your health, and that's awesome. It also probably means that you take responsibility for your own health and you want to learn how to stay healthy. That in turn means that you have the power to open someone else's eyes, and in the process maybe even save their life. And, that may be the solution, opening people's eyes to the madness of unhealthy food choices, one person at a time.

 

 

For more eye opening information how to take charge of your health, go to:

http://www.HealthWorksForYou.com

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/nutrition-articles/carrots-and-diet-soda-if-you-think-that-sounds-healthy-this-article-is-for-you-4609505.html

About the Author

Living and laughing with horses in Golden, Colorado I work alongside my husband, Ken Emrick to help people improve their health through nutritional cleansing.

Last Updated on Thursday, 21 April 2011 01:26