Do You Really Know What You're Eating?
The Truth Will Surprise You!
by Shin Ohtake creator of Max Workouts

You are what you eat. It's something we all understand (intellectually) but don't take it seriously enough. (And I was reminded of that myself, after watching a documentary called "Food Inc." A great film...and I have to say, even for me, some of the information was quite disturbing. So much so, that I decided you need to know about it...so I wrote a little about it myself. I highly recommend you watch the film.) It's much easier to look over the obvious and pretend that everything is fine. I mean everyone else is eating it... so it must be okay...right? Well, considering the epidemic rate of obesity and diabetes, I'd say that following what majority of others eat, is not such as wise idea. But in all fairness, the food industry makes it extremely difficult for you to eat well. I mean have you noticed that you can buy a burger for a buck but you can't buy an apple for the same price? How does that make sense? In fact, if you went to your local grocery store and started comparing prices of processed foods to real foods like vegetables and fruits, 9 out 10 times the processed foods are cheaper. How can that be? It's processed, doesn't that mean, it should cost more? It takes more time and energy into making each product right? You would think that what comes out of the ground or grows on trees as mother nature intended would naturally be cheaper than anything that has to be processed. But logic takes a back step when greed and profit become the primarily motivator. What's happened to our food industry is not only alarming but darn right scary. Find out more...

What used to be hundreds of small to medium size food companies have all gone out of business or have been bought up or merged into 4 huge food conglomerates. Each of these companies are so huge that they have the power to make decisions on what gets put onto the shelves of our all grocery chains in North America. And much like most large conglomerates, the bottom line is always profit...no matter what. And who gets the short end of the stick? That's right, you and I, the consumers. I know it seems like you have many choices when you go into a grocery store, but you really don't. It's a facade. When there's only 4 food major companies producing most of the products, what you see on the shelves are just different names and packages of the same thing. And that's not all, it's what they're putting into the food that's most disturbing. You may see bright fresh looking fruits and vegetables or freshly cut sides of beef or well packaged and displayed chicken breasts and endless processed foods with labels like 25% less fat, or 15% more fiber and all sorts of others things that fool you into thinking that you're buying fresh, healthy foods...but don't judge the book by it's cover. It's what's inside that counts. From meat and poultry injected with antibiotics, growth hormones, to fruits and vegetables sprayed with carcinogenic pesticides, preservatives and other harmful chemicals to ready made, processed foods prepared by chemists in laboratories using artificial chemicals rather than natural foods. If you are what you eat...it's no wonder that our nation is battling a health epidemic such as early onset diabetes, obesity and countless numbers of health problems that have all emerged in the last couple of decades.

Unfortunately, the situation we face today is really a product of our own poor choices. Poor choices that you and I made over the years by going to fast food chains for a quick cheap meal or going to your local convenience store to get your salt and sugar fix from soft drinks, candy bars and chips. It probably didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but when just one fast food chain serves over a billion customers...cumulatively it makes a HUGE difference. In fact, you can thank your fast food industry giants like McDonald's and Coca Cola (just to name a few) for the changing the entire food industry as we now it today.

It's our insatiable appetite for fast foods, which ironically put so many of the smaller food companies out of business and allowed the bigger companies to get bigger and more powerful. The result is what you see today. The crazy thing is our appetite keeps getting bigger as well. We want more food, faster, for less money. And these large food companies make it happen by finding better faster more efficient ways to produce it. But like anything else, when mass, speed and efficiency is the goal, things always have to get cut out. And in almost all cases it's quality and sometimes even safety. Lack of quality is not good for anything, but lack of safety is completely unacceptable when it comes to food. The USDA does have guide lines to ensure that we as consumers are protected, but these guidelines seem to favor the large food conglomerates rather than the consumers. Now, I'm not going to get too far into the political aspect of this issue here (although it's hard not to, since it's all intricately related), but let's just say that sleeping with the enemy is common practice amongst former executives of these food conglomerates and the USDA. Let's just say that many of the top execs have held similar positions on both sides of the fence. So who determines "quality" and "safety" in our foods? Well, your guess is as good as mine....either way one thing is for sure?

When you can't trust the ones that are supposed to protect you...what do you do?

The answer isn't easy, but we can start by trying to the make right choices. Here's a few simple but effective tips to begin with:

Start by eliminating processed foods. Almost all processed foods are based on corn. It's corn processed in hundreds of different ways combined with a whole bunch of artificial chemicals. Corn is the cheapest source of food. In fact, prior to the fuel shortage, corn was cheaper sold than made. So it's in every food companies best interest to use corn as the basic source of processed foods. This also includes frozen ready made foods like burger patties, chicken strips, microwaveable dinners etc. Processed foods will not only make you fat and unhealthy, but you're also strengthening the vicious cycle that empowers the food giants.

This is a no brainer...avoid ALL fast foods. Fast foods are the source of ALL problems. You need to stop giving them the kind of monopoly power that they've acquired. And the best way to do that is by not eating it. I don't need to get into what's in your fast foods, do I? Fast foods hits all of your cravings: sweet, salty and fat with absolutely ZERO nutritional value. These cravings are a chemical addiction much like nicotine. You're brain is hardwired to want more if you feed it! The only way to break the craving cycle is not to feed it! Remember, no matter what the ads and commercials say, there is no such thing as a nutritional fast food. And if you don't believe me, just do a little digging into the source of your fast foods and you'll immediately understand that it's NOT possible to have nutritional fast foods.

A simple but good tip is to think and eat like a cave man. They only ate what was available to them from mother nature. Basically they ate real foods. Foods that were meant to be eaten. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, spices, meats, poultry and fish. Foods like bread, pasta and rice which are all based on grains were never consumed. In fact, grains only became a staple of human diet as population grew quickly and demand for affordable food became necessary. Since grains are cheap and plentiful, and can be stored and used during months when other types of food were sparse, it became a staple in our diet. However, that doesn't make it good for you. If you still choose to consume grain products, make sure to stick with whole grains that haven't been bleached or overly processed like wild brown rice and whole grain bread rather than white rice and white bread.

Eat organic meat, poultry and fish as much as possible. It may be a little expensive but it's well worth it, knowing that you're eating foods raised in natural environments free of antibiotics and hormones.

If you're a beef consumer, makes sure to get grass fed beef. Most, if not all regular beef in the grocery stores are corn fed cows that are raised in an over crowded manure infested areas, where they have no place to move. They're fed corn because, it makes cows fat faster...so fat in fact that they can't even support their own weight to stand or walk. Since cows aren't meant to eat corn, they also develop intestinal infections that have to be treated with antibiotics. Grass fed cows are free to roam the pasture and graze the natural food that they were supposed to eat, thereby producing healthy lean beef.

When you buy poultry, make sure that your buy free range chickens. This goes for poultry as well. Most chickens are kept in a dark coup with thousands of other chickens where they're constantly fed from the time they arrive as a chick until their fully grown in as less than 48 days. The faster they can get bigger the better - which is why many are injected with growth hormones as well! Not to mention, most chickens are also given antibiotics because many get sick from the atrocious conditions they're raised in.

When you purchase fish, try to eat wild caught fish as supposed to farmed fish. The problem with farmed fish is the condition they are raised in as well as. Most farmed raised fish are "trained" to eat corn as for food, even though they don't normally eat corn. If you have to eat farmed fish make sure that you know where they came from. Depending on the country, their health and safety regulation can vary pretty drastically. Stick with wild caught fish and you're ensured a healthy fish. (You can go to NRDC to find out the mercury content of fish, so you know which ones are safe to eat.)

Eat organic fruits and vegetables and support your local growers as much as possible. The biggest reason being pesticides and soil deprivation. The pesticides used on fruits and vegetables have been directly linked to cancer and other harmful effects. The soil they are being harvested in have been over harvested and completely stripped of any nutrients and minerals. Don't let the big bold colors of the fruits and vegetables being displayed on the counters of your local grocery store fool you. Most have been sprayed with deadly pesticides, preservatives and have little nutritional content. If you have a local farmers market near you, try and get your fruits and vegetables through them. That way you can ask to make sure that they don't use any pesticides or preservatives on their products before you buy. Plus they'll only carry what's in season, so you know that the soil hasn't been over harvested.

Lastly, the more you can reduce buying from your local grocery chains the better. Find other sources of food, like local organic farmers. You don't need to live in the country to get local farmed foods. I live in the city and I have a couple of organic farmers where I order my organic vegetables, free range chicken and eggs free of antibiotics and growth hormones, as well as organic grass fed beef. It's a little pricier but well worth the piece of mind knowing that the food I'm eating is healthy and wholesome.

It's important to keep in mind that you as a consumer vote every time you purchase food. What kind of foods you'd like to have in your local grocery store is determined by what you purchase. If you buy Coke, you're only helping them keep their diabetic promoting drinks on the store shelves for more consumption. If you eat at McDonald's it only promotes more unhealthy foods to be produced and keeps feeding fuel to these powerful giants. If the tabacco industry can be brought down by your choice NOT to smoke...certainly, we can get control back from the food industry giants. Everybody should have the right to affordable, healthy natural foods.
It's your decision to make. Vote to be healthy.

Shin Ohtake is the author of the world-famous fitness program, MAX Workouts. To learn more about how you can get ultra lean and toned with shorter workouts, visit http://www.MaxWorkouts.com

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