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MALNOURISHED... while eating a full
plate of food? This will shock you!
by Warren Matthews
Note: This was edited from the August
21, 2002 issue of
XTEND-YOUR-LIFE, a service of
Xtend-Life Nutraceuticals, Inc.
This is a concept that you may have difficulty
in accepting. Nonetheless it is one that I have
been ‘preaching’ for years and has
now been confirmed by studies showing people
in the US, Canada and the UK are amongst the
most malnourished in the world. This is
the case, in spite of obesity reaching epidemic
proportions in the US. Malnourishment is without
doubt a leading factor in a wide variety of
health problems including cancers. Does this mean that overweight people are eating
all the food to the detriment of the rest of
the population? Not at all! In fact, obese people
figure prominently amongst those people who
are malnourished. I can sense you thinking... "That’s
a crazy statement". After all, when you
think of someone being malnourished your mind
flashes to pictures which you have seen on TV
of starving children in Africa. How can
an overweight person be malnourished? Much more
easily than you think... please read on and
I will explain. The Problem is in the Food!
A recent analysis of a range of staple foods
in Canada including potatoes, tomatoes, bananas,
apples, onion, broccoli etc, was commissioned
by The Globe and Mail and CTV news. The results were predictable to some and a
shock to others. Let’s use potatoes as
an example. This is what the analysis found:
Over the last 50 years the potato has lost:
-
100% of its Vitamin A
-
57% of its Vitamin C and iron.
-
28% of its Calcium.
-
50% of its riboflavin
-
18% of its thiamine
Of the seven nutrients analyzed
only niacin levels had increased. The results
were similar for all the 25 fruits and vegetables
tested. One of the worst results was from broccoli
in which ALL nutrients had declined measurably
including niacin with Calcium down 63%. The Globe and Mail and CTV used
comparative figures from government researchers
for the years 1951, 1972 and 1999. These earlier
figures had been published in various scientific
journals in the UK including the British Food
journal. Release of this data in the US has
been limited to a few alternative health journals.
Tim Lang a professor at the
centre for Food Policy in England says as a
further example of how our food has been degraded
is that you would now have to eat eight oranges
today to get the same amount of Vitamin A that
your grandparents got from eating just one orange.
Do foods that have low
nutritional values play a part in obesity?
Absolutely! I believe this is
a major factor in the current epidemic of obesity.
If you are lacking in essential nutrients it
will have a serious flow-on effect in your body.
First of all you will never really feel ‘well’,
you will lack energy which means you exercise
less, and you will have a tendency to seek out
‘comfort’ foods which generally
contain sugars and thus the cycle continues
and it gets worse and worse and ultimately ends
up in obesity and ill health. What can be done about
this problem?
- Try
to eat organic fruit and vegetables wherever
possible.
- Avoid
processed foods! If you think the loss of
nutrient value in fresh fruit and vegetables
is bad enough, I can assure you that it is
nothing compared to the nutritional emptiness
of processed foods... and to add insult to
injury they are full of transfats due to the
hydrogenated processing methods that are used.
- Take
a QUALITY multi
NUTRIENT supplement. A multi
vitamin/mineral tablet is not adequate for
a number of reasons. The prime one is that
most ‘multi vitamin’ supplements
use synthetic ingredients with both questionable
efficacy and bio-availability and they lack
other important nutrients. Unfortunately this
is an area in which many consumers are being
mislead. It’s a complex subject and
as such I may devote a newsletter to this
very important subject in the not to distant
future.
It was interesting to see that
even some mainstream physicians are beginning
to recognize this problem as evidenced by a
recent article in JAMA which advocated people
take quality supplements for preventative measures.
© Copyright 2002 Warren Matthews,
Editor In Chief. XTEND-YOUR-LIFE
is a FREE service of Xtend-Life Nutraceuticals,Inc.,
manufacturer of Total Balance, a synergistic
blend of 67 different nutrients, vitamins, amino
acids, minerals, herbal extracts and bioflavinoids
designed to provide your body with the key nutrients
missing in today’s food supply.
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