Three "Poisons"
When talking about the
significance of diet to health, we should pay attention especially
to things like so-called damaged carbohydrates, Western fast food,
and highly refined food. This type of food, which consists of fat,
white flour, and great quantities of sugar, is the cause of many
diseases that appear more and more, especially in the Western
countries. This kind of nutrition causes, for example, adult
diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, constipation and intestinal
disorders, cancer and gallstones. These diseases hardly appear in
the developing countries where food contains much more fibers and is
more natural, but where the Western food culture is more common,
these problems are also more common.
Good examples of
the change of diet can be found in the Japanese and the Chinese
culture. The Japanese and Chinese do not suffer from cardiovascular
diseases and diseases caused by a high standard of living when
living in their homeland. However, when Japanese or Chinese have
moved to Hawaii to the American food culture, for example, their
mortality rate has increased. They have gotten diseases which have
been common even in the Western countries only for about one
generation (approximately 80 years). One cause of these diseases is
food that contains very little fibers and protective nutrients.
Pies, sweets, sweetened soft drinks, potato chips, doughnuts, fatty
sausages, and meat pies are examples of such food:
When I ask my
patients, "Do you eat bad food?”, many say firmly, "No, I don't.”
The patient actually means that he does not eat strychnine, lead, or
spoilt food. ”I have thought that my diet is good and right,” my
patients often explain as I monitor their diet diary and note that
they eat many processed "junk foods".
What is "junk food"
really? Junk is whatever food from which most of the nutrients have
been processed, refined and cleaned away. Two good examples of this
kind of food are white flour (in America, the most commonly used
flour) and white granulated sugar. Food that contains noticeable
amounts of these two ingredients must be regarded as junk food,
since its nutritive value to the body is non-existing.
White flour and
sugar are found in bread rolls. In addition, fat content of
hamburgers is high, which is unhealthy. There are no undigested mass
and fibers. There is a lot of sugar, caffeine, and color agents in
Coke. There are lots of calories and plenty of sugar in a milk shake
and beer. The nutrition value of a typical milk shake is much lower
than that of whole milk, and whole milk is also far from the perfect
and ideal food. The typical American meal must be regarded as “junk
food" in its entirety. (2)
The
so-called junk food does not contain the most important protective
agents – vitamins, minerals, and fibers. There are not many of these
important ingredients for the development of body and health, but
instead junk food contains many useless or harmful ingredients.
Sugar, white wheat flour, and animal fats are such ingredients, for
example.
Sugar.
Sugar is one of those " poisons" that we may use too much. For
example, sugar consumption in Finland is 60 kilograms and in the
United States 80 kilograms a year per person. Such large figures are
difficult to believe, but sugar has been added to many foods and
drinks. Sugar can also be called saccharine, dextrose, fructose, and
maltose. Sugar can be found in many pastries, buns, sweets and ice
creams, canned food for babies, as well as mineral waters and
lemonades. For example, in an ordinary 1.5-liter bottle of lemonade,
there can be approximately 115 grams of sugar, in other words about
45 lumps of sugar or even more.
Sugar is a
substance that we do not need in our body. It contains empty
calories only and strains our body. Sugar does not contain any
important minerals, trace elements, or vitamins that can be found in
fruit and whole meal bread. In addition to this, it is one of the
largest reasons behind obesity and diseases caused by a high
standard of living. That is why much smaller amounts of sugar should
be used than are being used at present.
White flour.
Another not so
nourishing foodstuff that we may use too much is white flour and
products containing it. (The same kind of "refined" nutrients are
also white polished rice, white macaroni, and cornstarch. The
majority of the most important protective nutrients have been
removed from these.) An ordinary Finnish person eats about 74
kilograms of flour in a year, and up to three quarters of it is
white flour that has been refined or from which many important
nutrients have been removed. The flour has been refined in order to
keep flour better for a longer time but also in order to obtain
better baking properties. White bread, buns, hamburgers, doughnuts,
pastries, rolls, and pizzas are products that contain a lot white
flour.
What happens then
if we eat too much white flour?
The answer is that
using large amounts of white flour is not any more reasonable than
using excessive amounts of sugar. Up to 90% of the necessary
vitamins, minerals, trace elements, and fibers have been removed
from white flour, and what is left is energy, just as in sugar. This
kind of food strains our body and is not useful when used to the
excess.
It has also been
suggested that a diet of white pasta, white bread, and white rice is
one of the largest causes of bad cholesterol. It decreases the
amount of good cholesterol, raises the fat level in blood, and
produces small and harmful cholesterol particles. Consuming too much
can be a real risk from the point of view of cardiovascular
diseases.
Fat
- (Lev 3:17) ‘This is
a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live:
You must not eat any fat or any blood.’
The third ingredient
that we eat too much are animal and milk fats (in other words cream,
cheeses, ice-creams, fatty milk, and fatty sausages) as well as
hardened vegetable fats that appear in pastries, fried food,
doughnuts, chips, French fries, pizzas, biscuits, and some
margarines. A normal modern person may get most of his or her energy
from these ingredients that are probably the largest cause of
cardiovascular diseases. The
use of animal and milk
fats as well as hardened vegetable fats is quite a recent issue;
these ingredients have been consumed for about 50 years only. For
example, in the United States, much less of these ingredients were
used a hundred years ago, and that is why not many people suffered
from cardiovascular diseases in those days. The food at that time
contained much grain and vegetables, and that is why they did not
have these diseases.
The next newspaper
article from 50 years ago describes this issue. It indicates how,
for example in Finland, too fatty food added increased mortality
rate caused by heart diseases. However, during the war there was
less "luxury food” and subsequently, the mortality rate due to heart
diseases decreased:
70%
Increase in Use of Edible Fats in 50 Years
Christmas is
approaching fast and when the supply of fatty roast hams seems to
reach record levels this year, there is a reason to study the
consumption of edible fats in our country a little closer. According
to the market research department of the Pellervo Confederation of
Finnish Cooperatives, the consumption of edible fats (pork, lard
etc. as well as margarine and butter) in our country was in 1901 a
total of 19.8 kilograms and in 1953 a total of 33.7 kilograms per
person. (...)
Recently, the
conclusion has been reached that the more and more increasing use of
animal food ingredients, especially fats, is probably the main
reason for the alarming increase in cardiovascular diseases in all
the Western civilized countries.
It is certain that
diet is the most important factor. We can see it clearly when we,
for instance, think about the situation in our country during the
war, when our nerves really were strained and when we all lost
weight because of the lack of food, such as edible fats. During this
difficult and serious time of depression, doctors were greatly
surprised by the notable reduction in mortality due to
cardiovascular diseases and also many other diseases.
This
surprising fact clearly indicates that overeating and especially the
ample use of edible fats is one of the worst enemies to our health.
(Newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, 16 December 1954)
