What are hydrogenated oils?

This week I'm focusing on the top  6 things to avoid in your diet.

Yesterday was soy, today I'm gonna talk about   

  Hydrogenated Oils.

What is this hydro what wah? Well you might commonly know this as shortening, margarine or Crisco. It's when scientists figured out that if you add  hydrogen molecules to vegetable oil it becomes a solid mass like butter and the shelf life is much longer therefore less money lost.

Why not just use butter? Well, the self life is longer, companies save more money and a while ago in the 50's dietitians thought that saturated fats were evil so they thought by getting rid of butter (high in saturated fat)  and replaced it with hydrogenated vegetable oil (low in saturated fat) it would make Americans less fat....We all know that Americans have become less fat since the 50's right? NOT!

In fact fully or partially hydrogenated oil has been seen recently by scientist as an inedible substance. Your body doesn't process this "food" at all.  So this means it can just sit there in your system for a long time and cause lots of problems like diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease.

DON'T BE FOOLED BY NUTRITION/ TRANS FAT LABELS

Companies now  have to label if there food has trans fat (partially hydrogenated oil) or not. This is good but if the food has less than one percent the product can say that it has zero percent trans fat >:/ So look at the ingredient label, there, it has to be listed as shortening, partially/fully hydrogenated oil, or margarine. 

As for you pie/ pastry lovers, switch over to butter, palm kernel oil, or coconut oil in your crust and other pastries. It tastes better, is a semi solid at room temp and despite popular belief it is healthier for you. To be sure of what your eating, start baking up a storm, take ownership of your food!

More on hydrogenated oils you can go here http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/healthy-living/deadly-fats-why-are-we-still-eating-them-843400.html

America's Devil: Un-fermented Soy

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I want to tackle one of the most used and unknown harmful foods on the market in America today.

You might be asking: Why is soy so bad?

                              

                                     What does un-fermented mean?

Well, most people don't know, but soy is actually a toxic plant like many other plants on this planet. Soy is not meant for human consumption unless (this is where the un-fermented comes in) it has been fermented. The fermentation process turnes soy into soy sauce, miso, tempeh, natto and tamari sauce. Asian countries developed the fermentation process many years ago to strip the toxins from soy. Only recently has the plant in it's unfermented state, like edemame, tofu, vegetable oil, soy flour, soy lecithin, and toasted soy beans, been used for human consumption. More info on soy can be read about here http://www.greenlivingonline.com/article/dangers-soy.

The worst part about un-fermented soy is that it's in everything!

You will see it on your ingredient labels as  soya oil, vegetable oil, soy/soya lecithin, soy flour. You might see these things in almost all processed foods that you will get at your local grocery store. Try to get your favorite candy bar, I bet you it's got soy lecithin in it. What about gum, yeah that too. Sliced bread, shucks. Most bread product in general have soy in it. Possibly the most toxic product of soy, is lecithin. Lecithin is a brown goo from all the junk/ byproduct of  when companies make soy oil/ vegetable oil.

Brands that avoid Soy  for chocolate are Theo's , equal exchange, some trader joe chocolates, and whole foods.

Another company that avoids soy is Annie's Homegrown. They have a whole line of foods that I would approve of  from cereal to cheese crackers to mac n cheese and even graham crackers. 

 For bread stick to your local bakeries. Ask the people that make the bread what they used. Your bread should only have four ingredients: Wheat, yeast, salt and water.

All around these companies or pretty good to trust but remember ALWAYS READ YOUR INGREDIENTS LABEL! If you don't know what it is DON'T EAT IT.