The Ten Dangerous Foods/Ingredients to Eliminate From Your Diet

Eating quality, real foods is essential to our health... it's when food can truly be our medicine. However, over the past 40 years, we have dramatically changed our food system, moving away from scratch cooking and putting much more reliance on convenience foods -- either from takeout or the grocery store.

Most of the foods we eat get processed – either by us or for us. Cutting an apple into slices is considered processing. There is generally nothing wrong with the simple processing of foods. Processing makes the food more available to consume.

Processing becomes dangerous – and food marketers took it this far starting about 40 years ago – when the ingredients are manipulated in such a way as to strip the nutrients while adding excess sugars and chemicals in a process we now call ultra-processing. Back in the day, it was called “hyperpalatable foods” as marketers manipulated flavors chemically to create a “bliss point” – because it’s at this place where people could not resist eating them… a lot of them.

Ultra-processing adds multiple types and large amounts of sugar, whether the product is sweet or savory. Healthy fats are replaced with mainly soybean oil and other toxic seed oils; this was done at first due to the mistaken idea that animal fats are dangerous, but food marketers embraced the concept because the seed oils are extremely cheap (partly because the “vegetables” used are subsidized by the U.S. government). Then all the fiber is removed, to negate the satiety factor. Fiber fills us, so in order to sell more product, food marketers strip the fiber. Finally, many untested chemical additives and preservatives are added for shelf life, color, taste, texture, etc.

If you are truly interested in your health and improving your health, here are the items that should be avoided in any diet:

• Refined Sugar. We now know with certainty that consumption of refined sugars leads to metabolic health issues, including being linked to heart disease, diabetes, dementia, and cancers… and the sugar industry has known this since the 1960s. Note that food manufacturers have more than 100 different names for sugar to hide the enormous amounts of sugar used in the foods.

• “Vegetable” Oils. These oils now comprise the highest percentage of calories most Americans consume. These oils are cheap (partly due to U.S. government subsidies for soybean, corn, peanuts), which is the driving force behind their use in the food industry. These oils were originally designed for manufacturing (back in the early 1900s) and go through a refinement process that includes the use of bleaching and chemical solvents. Labeled the “The Toxic 8,” they include soybean (which also is labeled as “vegetable”), canola, cottonseed, corn, safflower, sunflower, peanut, and palm.

• Refined flours. Most wheat flours are ultra-refined and bleached (to the point of stripping away most nutrients), and used in baking, cooking, pastas, breads, etc. The health problems stem from the change in the wheat grown in the U.S. to a hybrid focused on yield, not taste; the increased use of pesticides and other chemicals in the farming; and the understanding that simple carbohydrates are unhealthy and drastically increase the risk of many diseases, including obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. These flours are often “enriched” with chemical nutrients to replace the natural nutrients stripped away in the refining process.

• Trans fats (partially hydrogenated oils). Artificial trans fats are a form of unsaturated fat that are created when vegetable oils are chemically altered to stay solid at room temperature… and have been shown to increase the risk for heart disease. Food marketers use trans fats because they give foods a much longer shelf life. They can be found in fried foods and in small amounts in some processed, imposter foods.

• Food additives. There are thousands of additives – preservatives, emulsifiers, flavorings, colorings, etc. – that can legally be added to foods without having ever been tested for safety. Not surprisingly (if you understand how money talks), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows food companies to add new ingredients to the food supply with almost no federal oversight by using the term GRAS for "generally recognized as safe.”

• Conventionally-raised meats. Just one picture of a feedlot should be enough to convince you to never buy conventionally raised beef. The animals are kept in concentrated areas, fed GMO and chemical-laden feed to fatten them quickly before processing, and given antibiotics and growth hormones. When the cows are processed for meat, they are overly stressed, metabolically unhealthy, and filled with toxins. Cows are meant to forage grasses, not eat cheap, chemically-laced grains.

• Conventionally-raised chicken and eggs. Chicken is a healthy, lean protein and eggs are a superfood that have endured years of being labeled dangerous due to our misunderstanding of cholesterol. That said, almost all conventionally raised chickens (including egg-layers) are overfed to increase size, fed GMO and chemical-laden feed, and given antibiotics – all the while living indoors in cramped cages and pens. Chickens are omnivores who should be out in pastures, eating grasses and grubs.

• Conventionally-farmed fruits and vegetables. The focus of industrial farming over the last century has been on increasing yields at all costs. This philosophy has led to the development of GMO seeds, heavy use of pesticides and herbicides, and depletion of the soil. The fruits and vegetables may look “perfect,” but most contain traces of dangerous chemicals, and are lower in nutrients. Finally, many of these foods are practically tasteless; have you eaten a farm-fresh strawberry or tomato? So much tastier than store-bought.

• Conventionally-farmed seafood. For decades, the high demand for seafood resulted in overfishing and the depletion of fish in our waters. The result was a movement to farm fish. Farmed fish are raised in massive monocultures – or single species of fish – swimming in tight quarters. Depending on the species of fish, they may be reared within a huge netted system in the ocean or a freshwater pond. In the wild, fish eat whatever is in their environment. With farming, the fish are fed a GMO diet that often includes antibiotics.

• Artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners are a type of food additive that provide sweetness without adding sugar or calories. Artificial sugars were created to mimic the flavor of sugar, but are often hundreds of times sweeter than sugar. Not only do these fake sweeteners disrupt the gut microbiome, but many have been linked to a higher risk of cancers, stroke, heart disease, and death. These sweeteners include acesulfame potassium (Ace-K), sucralose, saccharin – under the names of Equal (blue packets), Sweet’N Low (pink packets), and Splenda (yellow packets).

Additional Healthy Diet/Living Resources

• Are Ultra-Processed Foods Killing You? Learn everything you ever wanted to know about ultra-processed foods and their impact on health and lifespan.

• Change Your Grocery Shopping and SAVE Your Life. Learn about hyperpalatable, ultra-processed foods, which use the savory-sweet-fat combination to overstimulate our brains.

• The Deadly Truth About Our Sugar Addiction. We are culturally addicted to sugar… refined sugar. Sugar is pervasive in our culture. Every holiday is a sugar holiday, with specialized candies, cakes, cookies. Learn more.

• Diets Don’t Work… and Other Truths About Food. Dieting – the idea of restricting foods – does not work, and often leads to increased weight gain after any initial weight loss.

• 50 Things You Can Start Doing Today to Improve Your Health -- discover 50 things you can start today for your health.

• For Good Health, Please Consume (More) Fiber! Fewer than 1 in 10 Americans are getting enough fiber in our diets. Learn how to consume more fiber.

• Keys to Truly Understanding Food Labels. Food labels are designed to mislead. This article informs consumers how to read food labels, what items to review, more.

• Purge Your Pantry For Health and Healing. Don't let food marketers trick you. Most of the food sold in supermarkets is literally unhealthy junk food. Purge your pantry!