Upgrade Your Food Choices

You’re slightly confused. You are not sure who to believe. You are ready to start, but not ready to commit to the whole enchilada. You wonder how you can possibly obtain some free nuggets that will help set you on a track to health, without breaking the bank. I will tell you what you can do. You can learn how to get healthy, and stay on track, by transitioning your food to better options, that don’t insult your taste buds and your account manager.

So how do you get healthy without falling off the wagon?

You stop ingesting toxic ingredients and transition to higher quality foods you can enjoy, so you can stay the course and continue to upgrade your health as you you continue to be empowered on how to get healthy.

Let’s get started.

Ingredients To Avoid

There are several toxic ingredients that are hidden in packaged foods that you have no idea are causing you harm. How would you know if you either don’t read labels closely or don’t know what you are looking for?

Well, a lot of the confusion has been taken out of what ingredients to avoid, from this A to Z list. This list is very comprehensive, and I would suggest you avoid these ingredients as much as possible, to slow down and ultimately stop the ingestion of toxic ingredients that are damaging your body.

So now that you are aware of what ingredients to avoid in order to get healthy, let’s look at some transition foods.

Grains & Starches

We love wheat. So much that we typically have it in every meal. From our toast, cereal, bagel, pop tart, whatever…to our sandwich, pasta, pizza, and wraps. Not to mention plenty of of other places it shows up.

If it’s not wheat, its potatoes. Easy to grow, cheap, and fill the stomach. The North American dream meal!

The problem with wheat aside from gluten intolerances is that we ingest it in incredibly large amounts, in an non-organic form, and leave it to be assimilated by a digestive system void of a healthy ecosystem, which in turn results in large, undigested particles that eventually render themselves toxic.

Potatoes are difficult to assimilate as well and often have a nice dose of chemicals on them, including fungicide. Rice is often not much better.

So what transition ‘grains’ should you consider as an upgrade?

Try quinoa (keen-wa), an ancient grain with lots of protein. Easy on the palate and easier on the stomach (rinse, then soak in clean water first for at least 2 hours first).
If you need to make a crust, bread, or cookie, try alternate flours like quinoa, amaranth, kamut, coconut, and almond. They don’t alter the taste much, and are generally easier on the stomach.
If you want potatoes, eat the red skinned kind and make sure they are as organic as possible. Even better, try sweet potatoes which offer much more nutrition.

Animal Protein

People will sometimes tell you to get healthy you are basically stuck with fruits and vegetables. Although this has merit, it’s not entirely true.

The problem is with what they call ‘meat’ (like hot dogs for example), the cleanliness of it, and eating too much.

The only real meat you should avoid altogether is anything that comes from a swine. It’s not sanitary and the human body lacks the enzyme to actually digest it. You should avoid it at all costs if you want to get healthy.

So what transition ‘meats’ should you consider as an upgrade?

Your best choice is grass fed organic beef (to avoid intaking the grains for reasons mentioned above) as it contains many more nutrients and is easier on the body.
Your next best choice is fish, caught from an unpolluted source that is not chock full of mercury.
Finally, organic free range chickens (vegetable fed) are a better choice than the caged, heavily inoculated kind.

If you think your hormones are out of balance (mood swings, stubborn weight), a lot of it can occur from hormones and other toxins injected into the meat you consume, which in turn puts yours out of balance. You can’t get healthy be eating these types of meats.

Dairy

Cow’s milk is such a favourite. We’ve been led to believe it is the purest and only form of calcium on the planet, and if we don’t eat it we are all doomed to broken bones, osteoporosis, and can never get healthy.

The truth is, conventional dairy is very harmful to the digestive system as it is mucous forming, mostly pasteurized, full of hormones, and is actually acidic in nature. That’s no way to get healthy.

Another ‘dairy’ product people enjoy is margarine. Margarine became a popular alternative to butter when it got the bad rap, but since then, we have realized margarine is one molecule removed from plastic and largely undigestible.

Finally, lets not forget cheese, the add on to everything. Hard cheese is another mucous forming food that causes digestive upset.

So what transition ‘dairy’ should you consider as an upgrade?

Coconut milk, almond milk, or hemp milk, preferably organic. Check out these recipes.
Raw organic cows milk if you can handle it.
Choose organic butter, unpasteurized if you can, as it is way better than margarine.
Choose raw cheeses that contain bacterial cultures and are more digestible than their counterpart, hard cheese.

Note I did NOT include soy milk. Even though it was touted as THE alternative source, it’s widely known in health circles that soy is ONLY healthy if its organic, non-GMO, and fermented. I don’t know of any widely available soy milk that has any of these characteristics to date, so you can’t get healthy drinking it.

Fats

Fats have received a bad rap, but as with any essential nutrient, it’s the form of it that’s the issue.

Most fats you are ingesting are trans or hydrogenated fats, which are damaging to many parts of your body, including your cardiovascular system. These are found mostly in processed and packaged foods due to their extended shelf life.

Good fats help with many functions, including the brain’s. Want to get smarter? Increase your beneficial fat intake.

So what transition fats should you consider as an upgrade?

Coconut oil is BY FAR the all around healthiest fat you can take. It is anti-bacterial and extremely healing. Try it for cooking, in smoothies, and even baking in place of margarine or conventional butter.
Olive oil is also a good fat to ingest, with antibacterial qualities as well. But you need to navigate between the good and the bad.
Also try hemp oil and avocado oil which are loaded with healthy fats.

Sugar

The darling of the masses…everything is sweeter with sugar!

It’s not that sugar in and of itself is ‘bad’, it’s just that we eat too much of it in a bastardized form and it feeds Candida, an issue for 80% of the population. Not only that, it has caused other health issues like obesity and diabetes.

When choosing sugar, limit your intake. Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) or any corn syrup for that matter, and limit your intake of the white refined stuff. You can’t get healthy by eating refined sugar.

So what transition ‘sugars’ should you consider to upgrade?

Try stevia or xylitol (non-GMO from birch), natural sweeteners with no glycemic index value. They work well in smoothies, teas, and some baking.
Use coconut sugar, a sugar with a malty taste that is very low on the glycemic index.
Consider yacon or lakanto.
Lastly, try raw cane sugar in place of white sugar as another alternative.

Salt

Salt has become the obsession with people starting to take care of their health, and all the talk is about how to reduce it. The fact is, you require salt and its nutrients for many of your body’s processes to take place and to get healthy.

However, the majority of people are consuming processed table salt, that has been stripped of its spectrum of nutrients and has added chemicals in the process. This salt has little benefits, and you should limit your intake of it until you don’t consume it at all.

So what transition ‘salts’ should you consider to upgrade?

Use a full spectrum sea salt (pink himalayan sea salt is a good choice) that still contains all the essential nutrients of salt, so you can apply liberally to your food as you would table salt so you can get the taste AND the minerals.

Snacks

Snacks…the focal point of our gluttony. The snack industry has capitalized on our desire to graze, but has generally made us fatter and more unhealthy than ever before. This is one of the primary stumbling blocks when trying to get healthy.

The problem with most snacks is that they are full of hydrogenated oils, harmful salt, MSG, HFCS, GMO’s, dyes and colours, wax, and non-organic grains and starches. It’s a digestive nightmare and a dead end road if you want to get healthy.

Some newer “healthier” snacks have come to the forefront, but many of them in fact are not much better than their counterparts. It’s important to read the top ingredients to avoid above, to understand what is in your snack food and what it is doing to your health.

So what transition “snacks: should you consider to upgrade?

The only snack that I have found that you could truly enjoy the taste and still feel great about the ingredients is Way Better Snacks which offers a largely organic and sprouted snack that tastes delicious.

Beverages

Two beverages that are crippling our nation can both be made much healthier – soda and coffee.

People are consuming soda at an alarming rate, with little to no idea of how it is slowly destroying multiple areas of the body. Coffee is a 1-5 cup a day habit that is not going away and as a result we are more high strung, anxious, and jittery. You can’t get healthy drinking either conventional versions.

However, both offer alternatives that can allow you to transition to a much better habit.

So what transition “beverages” should you consider for an upgrade?

If you really need to wean yourself off soda, or replace it with a better habit, try Zevia. It’s sweetened with stevia and the ingredients are much less harmful than regular soda.
If you love the taste of coffee, but realize that the side effects are much more damaging than you would like to admit, try SereniGy healthy coffee which gives you your coffee, without the side effects.

Transition is Important

There is a lot of information out there on what to avoid, what to eat, and which are the best products out there. This can be very overwhelming and lead people to give up before they even really start.

The purpose of this article is to provide you with some easy transitions that will keep you on the wagon until you are ready to introduce a higher level of nutrition that involves considerably more fruits and vegetables, super foods, high quality herbs and supplements, and processes that improve the digestibility and nutrients of everything (like fermenting).

Until then, transition as many of the above categories you can, preferably the ones you consume the most, and get ready to progress to the next level when you are ready to feel even better!

Ingredients To Avoid

Grains & Starches

Animal Protein

Dairy

Fats

Sugar

Salt

Snacks

Beverages

Transition is Important

Derek Henry

@healingthebody1

+Derek Henry

Derek Henry

Derek Henry

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