Helofuud.com

I am often asked to pro­vide a list of (click here->) the foods we eat and do not eat. Here is that list.

I am sure I have omit­ted some things but the major foods are there. It may seem extreme but it really isn’t. It is a lit­tle chal­leng­ing at times only because the bulk of mass pro­duced foods are not tai­lored to this lifestyle.Even so, it is quite easy to stick to once you under­stand the effects that cer­tain foods have on your health.

If you are inter­ested, do a lit­tle research. I did. It is no coin­ci­dence that this lifestyle is a com­mon choice amongst can­cer patients. It is easy to see why when you start tak­ing a close look at what is in the foods you are eating.

I have been doing some research into this in an effort not to sound like a paranoid-hypochondriac when I finally do post, but I hon­estly don’t think the infor­ma­tion can wait.

Besides this recent news arti­cle I have found that this phe­nom­e­non isn’t iso­lated to apple juice and peo­ple need to know about it.

Below are links to the news arti­cle, pod­cast, and a research study on arsenic in bev­er­ages that I am still review­ing. You can decide for yourself.

Arsenic Lev­els High in Apple Juice, St. Peters­burg Times Finds — Audio Version

St. Pete Times Article

Arsenic in Com­mer­cial Bev­er­ages Study

con­tinue reading…

“But they are picky eaters!” This is the com­plaint I often hear from par­ents when dis­cussing ways to help their chil­dren make bet­ter food choices. What most par­ents fail to real­ize is that this is a learned behav­ior not a genetic trait. The good news is that par­ents can help their kids to UN-learn this behav­ior. The key to suc­cess lies in the com­mit­ment to be a strong par­ent, even when your kids are con­vinced you are evil incar­nate for not let­ting them have Pop Tarts instead.

When my kids were old enough to start adopt­ing their own opin­ions about foods my wife and I estab­lished a few sim­ple rules. These were the “Rules of Engage­ment” that we reminded our chil­dren of in a calm and “mat­ter of fact” tone when chal­lenges arose. If you make eat­ing any­thing into a trau­matic event you are going to fail, so don’t over-react. Remain even tem­pered but diligent.

con­tinue reading…

Do I Eat This?

Some­times we just need some­thing easy to remem­ber to help us make bet­ter choices when it comes to food. Com­pli­cated diets and menus are not prac­ti­cal. You need to be able to make deci­sions on the fly when­ever you are faced with the deci­sion to eat, or not to eat. I love acronyms so D.I.E.T. Rules seemed as good as any to use. 8). A sim­ple, easy to fol­low set of guide­posts to help you along the way through daily life.

If you make small con­scious choices like this one each time you eat it becomes an effort­less habit in no time. Then you can add to it and really build some momen­tum with your eat­ing habits. Weight comes off eas­ily and you feel bet­ter too.

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Take the helo­fuud chal­lenge and try fol­low­ing this one small guide­line for just one week.

D.I.E.T. Rule #1:

If you can­not pro­nounce it and/or you do not know what it is, do not eat it..

Start by read­ing the ingre­di­ents label on every­thing you eat. I will warn you now, if you are eat­ing a lot of food from a box or can you will have a lit­tle work to do.

Pretty sim­ple rule to fol­low right? Just because some­thing is sold as food and just because the FDA or some sci­en­tist tells you that it is okay to eat, doesn’t mean that it is.

Smok­ing cig­a­rettes was once con­sid­ered okay by experts too. In fact I recently found a num­ber vin­tage news­pa­per arti­cles (pre-1950) not­ing the ben­e­fits of smok­ing by experts includ­ing med­ical doc­tors. Hope­fully we can learn some­thing from his­tory since we all know how the whole “smok­ing is good for you” thing worked out. Let’s not make the same mis­take with the foods we eat by lis­ten­ing to experts who tell us that things like Polysor­bate 60 and cal­cium sul­fate are okay to eat. (FYI — those are just two of the ingre­di­ents in Twinkies.) Coin­ci­den­tally both ingre­di­ents are also used in rocket fuel. Mmm…mmm!

If you really want to eat some­thing you can’t pro­nounce, at least do some home­work and find out what it is first. Then if you still feel safe doing so, go ahead. Try doing a search for Polysor­bate 60 and ask your­self if you would still eat it if it wasn’t in a Twinkie.

Also make no assump­tions if you can pro­nounce it. Red food dye sounds sim­ple enough right? Click here to find out what it really is.

Unfor­tu­nately most fruits and veg­eta­bles are not required to include ingre­di­ent labels yet. With­out an ingre­di­ents label you have no way of know­ing exactly what was used to grow your food. Hence you don’t know its true ingredients.

For more on this check out my post on Organic vs. GMO & Con­ven­tion­ally grown fruits and vegetables.

Remem­ber, if it sounds too sci­en­tific or you need to Google it to know what it is, don’t eat it. If every­one did this I am will­ing to haz­ard a guess that the world­wide can­cer rate would begin to drop.