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| Healthy Office Snacks |
People who are out there in the world shaking things up and making it happen doing what they love.
So, which is the five surprising health food that we shouldn’t be eating?
NUMBER ONE: THE WHOLE-WHEAT BREAD
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| The whole-wheat bread |
The first one is, and this one is a really tricky topic because a lot of people when they go out to eat and when they order a sandwich when they go for lunch or whatever, they order the whole-wheat bread. The whole-wheat bread at different major fast food chains, for example, Subway, the nine grain bread.
Everyone thinks that the nine grain bread is like the hallelujah sandwich. You get it and you get your veggies on it and it's under 300 calories and you're good to go. But that sandwich has probably close to over 50 ingredients in it and the sandwich actually has an ingredient in there along with the slew of other ingredients that is a dough conditioner that is banned in Europe.
If you get caught using it in Singapore you get fined $450,000. It's banned in Australia but we still use it here in the United States, and let me just try to say this word because it's a long word: Azodicarbonamide.
This gives people asthmatic symptoms and allergies and it's really sad. It's a really sad ingredient. But what you can do instead, that’s the important thing. If you are at Subway don't recommend it but if you are at Subway, get the salad, get a whole avocado on top. An avocado has protein added to it and that's the way to really enjoy a meal without any major toxins and you are getting some really healthy fat with the avocado.
so we’re going to stay from the whole grain, whole wheat bread generally speaking and go just for a salad and if you do go for bread and you love bread, I really love this Ezekiel bread. It’s amazing because there's no flour in it, it’s actually a whole grain so that’s the way our body was intended to actually digest grains and it actually gives us more energy that way because flour what it does is spikes our insulin level and promotes fat gain.
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NUMBER TWO: AGAVE NECTAR
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| Agave nectar |
Number two is agave nectar.
Oh God, I'm guilty of this one but I’ll tell you about it.
Agave got really popular because the raw vegans found a sweetener that they could have that was raw and vegan, and it was as close to nature as I thought to put in a lot of different desserts and other sweetened items. It’s a liquid base so it replaced honey for people who are concerned about the bees and things like that.
What they found is actually agave nectar has a higher concentration of fructose and almost 80% more higher concentration than high fructose corn syrup. What that means is that the first thing your liver processes is fructose. It’s either alcohol or fructose. If fructose is going straight to your liver, your liver is not in its fat burning mode. What that does is it promotes visceral fat and all the fat around your midsection.
What I love to recommend to people is coconut palm sugar.
Coconut palm sugar comes straight from the coconut tree, it's dried sap off the tree, it has all the minerals and vitamins, it's a one to one substitution for sugar, it's a low glycemic index so it's great for people who are on the diabetic spectrum were concerned about their glycemic level, or if you're really concerned, you can go with Stevia and Sweet Leaf here - they have the Stevia that doesn't have all the fillers and the crazy stuff going on.
There are Stevia products that are dreadful. Examples of those are Truvia and Purevia that are owned by Coca-Cola and PepsiCo respectively and they have this crazy 40 step patented process to completely process the Stevia to hell and just take a really natural beautiful plant that adds a lot of sweetness and just destroy it, so I wouldn’t recommend those.
NUMBER THREE: GATORADE
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| Gatorade |
Alright, so for the third one here, let's talk about Gatorade.
it's so toxic, why?
Gatorade is like one of those things that like my parents and I'm sure your parents gave to you when you were sick and when you are under the weather and you're out on the soccer field or cheerleading whatever you're doing when you were little and your parents would bring you Gatorade because they didn't want you to get dehydrated and it is one of the worst things ever because what Gatorade really is, is a bunch of sugar and chemicals with salt. And until recently it had this really controversial ingredient called brominated vegetable oil, BVO, which is actually still in Powerade today.
It's something that's banned in other countries and is a flame retardant. What I like to tell people is look to nature for electrolytes; coconut water is so amazing for electrolytes and you want to make sure you get a really good coconut water though because there's a bunch of coconut waters, and I did not know this until I started researching it, that are made from coconuts from all over the world and they use the concentrate so all the electrolytes are diminished.
What you want to do is go for raw coconut water and Harmless Harvest, who’s based in New York, is amazing.
Another really great electrolyte booster is celery. You can either eat the celery or you can juice it and combine it with a little lemon, a little apple, and that's just a great way to keep electrolytes. The third option to keep electrolytes is Chia seeds. Chia seeds, when they are soaked in water, they soak up 10 times the amount of water and when you eat that, it keeps your body hydrated. Aztecs back in the day would eat these seeds and that would be the only thing they would have all day and would keep them hydrated, which is crazy to think about.
It’s such a power food.
NUMBER FOUR: ALMOND MILK
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| Almond milk |
we have two more. Almond milk.
Almond milk, oh no! What's up with almond milk?
Almond milk inherently is absolutely wonderful. Usually it's just all almonds and water in a blender; 4 cups of water, one cup of almonds that are soaked overnight, in a blender strained, makes beautiful almond milk perfect, your body can assimilate, and it's great. But the almond milk that you buy at the store, nine times out of 10 has an ingredient called Carrageenan.
Carrageenan is derived from a seaweed plant so it seems very natural but what happens is when they derive it and they process it, it can be contaminated with degraded Carrageenan, and what that does is when you eat it, it can disrupt the whole G.I. tract.
All the people that have irritable bowel syndrome and other gastrointestinal issues, bloating and other things could be caused by Carrageenan and Carrageenan is not only in almond milk but it's in all sorts of dairy products like cottage cheese and sour cream and cream cheese and ice cream and other things like that.
Is it important for us, because I've always purchases almond milk?
Yeah, forget it. I know that the Whole Foods brand, 365, doesn't use Carrageenan and which is great, so that's a great option, or make it at home and that's what I do and I love it because it's two ingredients, it's super easy, it's always fresh, lasts a few days in the fridge and it's awesome.
NUMBER FIVE: FROZEN YOGURT
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| Frozen yogurt |
Frozen yogurt is like an invented thing; it's not something we've had a really long time in America. It was invented in the late 1960s. What they found was they wanted to make a healthy version of ice cream so they started freezing yogurt and everyone started complaining about the taste. They say it's tart and it's not that sweet and I still want my ice cream. The food manufacturers listened to that and they said
“Oh, we are going to add more sugar, we're going to make it more processed and we’re going to add a bunch of artificial colors and we are going to add a bunch of other crazy ingredients that does your body no good.” So what happened was that frozen yogurt ended up being something totally crazy and when you go into a frozen yogurt place and you ask to look at their product before they put it in the machine, it looks like Kool-Aid.
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It's so processed that the probiotic content, the whole reason why you want to have frozen yogurt in the first place, all those beneficial bacteria in your gut, they are pretty much diminished in that powdered product.
That’s disgusting. So what should we do? No frozen yogurt at all or is there any good brands or should we just look someplace else for a little sweet?
Well Red Mango actually has been paying attention to how much probiotics are in their frozen yogurt and they figured out the freezing process in order to keep some of the beneficial bacteria, and they are one of the cleanest ones that I researched recently which was really great. I would recommend going for the plain varieties so you don't get the artificial colors, you're not getting any of the other crazy flavorings that could be in there.
If you are there, you can get the plain yogurt; you can get some fruit on top and some nuts or something, but if you are going to go for something sweet and amazing, why not go for the real thing? Go for real ice cream, do a little bit of it or make your own and I love making my own with coconut milk right here.
This is an organic coconut milk that’s available by Native Forest. It doesn’t have BPA in the can which is so awesome, that’s another toxin we want to avoid, that’s available in typical canned products. All you do is you really put this in a blender with whatever flavorings you want, a little vanilla, maybe a frozen banana, or maybe some other type of fruit and make whatever flavor you want, and then through it in the ice cream machine; it is amazing.
I need to get myself an ice cream machine because that's one little piece of equipment that I don’t have. I love it… LOL
For a lot of people who are trying to avoid dairy because of environmental reasons or because they're vegan or whatever, I think coconut milk is the way to go. Plus, coconut is a powerhouse ingredient; it speeds up the metabolism, it’s got that medium chain fatty acid in there that really helps you build the right amino acids and I just love it. :)
ALSO READ: 5 Foods To Avoid
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