Helofuud.com

Video: CNN –Dr. San­jay Gupta on pes­ti­cides in produce.

Do you really need to wait for a study to be done or for the gov­ern­ment to tell you that con­sum­ing pes­ti­cides is a bad thing? If you wouldn’t spray a can of Raid into your mouth, don’t eat some­thing that has been soaked in it please.

In the video Dr. Gupta failed to note any­thing about GMO and in par­tic­u­lar the GMO corn he noted as being one of his favorites. That said, this was  main­stream news media and I don’t expect them to tackle some­thing so big or scary as Mon­santo. If noth­ing else  Dr. Gupta’s clout will sim­ply help to fur­ther aware­ness about organ­ics and that is a good thing.

Radio Inter­view with Dr. Cor­dain author of the Paleo Diet

I recently came to appre­ci­ate how much grains had an impact on my health after stray­ing from our diet on a few occa­sions with desert when we went out for din­ner. Both times I strayed the arthri­tis in my neck flared up within a day or so in a very notable way. This is the same arthri­tis that I was told would lead to fus­ing my ver­te­brae together within 5 years of my diag­no­sis. That was three years ago. I guess we will see where I am in another two years.

The dam­age to my neck has already been done through years of abuse with my diet. The dif­fer­ence now is that the chronic pain no longer exists.  Three years ago the pain was high enough that I almost did the surgery for relief. This is one instance that I am glad I procrastinated…

I have often strug­gled with how to put the basics of what I have learned into a sin­gle post. I think the new page on helo­fuud is the clos­est I have come so far with­out writ­ing a full on the­sis. If you are look­ing for some rapid changes to your health and weight this plan will help get you there. If you aren’t in a hurry you can spread out the time frame to fit your own per­sonal goals too.

Always con­sult a physi­cian before start­ing a new eat­ing plan. (I really hate that I even have to put that there)

click here for The Helo­fuud Thirty Day Plan

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.

If you are read­ing this you likely already know that “con­ven­tion­ally grown” pro­duce is not good a thing because pes­ti­cides and chem­i­cals in and on the food you eat is bad. (click here if you are not sure if you have been eat­ing con­ven­tional, GMO, or organic) I am amazed that so many peo­ple still choose to ignore this, espe­cially when they go to the gro­cery store. To be fair, I too once let the pretty arrange­ments of pro­duce  intox­i­cate my senses when shop­ping.  All that  unnat­u­rally pretty, oddly col­or­ful,  and uni­formly shaped pro­duce looks appeal­ing. This com­bined with a naive sense of faith in “the pow­ers that be”  also helped me to ignore the obvi­ous. If I ever did let my mind wan­der to images of rat poi­son and the like, I quickly dis­missed those unpleas­ant thoughts. It was eas­ier to believe that that the gov­ern­ment (and even their gro­cer) had my back on this issue. They wouldn’t allow  any­thing on the food that wasn’t well tested and safe for my fam­ily and I to eat right? This is eas­ier to  believe because if you choose not to, you will be forced to ques­tion other things. That is unset­tling for many peo­ple and a lot of work too. con­tinue reading…

A friend sent this link to me about a 14 year study demon­strat­ing  a link to pan­cre­atic can­cer and soft drinks. While it would be easy for me to jump on the band­wagon as an ex-soft drink junkie (we are the worst), and it would be easy for me to say “I told you so!” I can­not in good con­scious do that here.

D0 soft drinks cause pan­cre­atic cancer?

While the data seems pretty con­vinc­ing, the study also sites four other stud­ies done pre­vi­ously that did not show a link. The per­cent­ages also seem oddly high to me, enough that it makes me ques­tion the data and its accu­racy. con­tinue reading…