What’s this? We’re now supposed to be eating fats? Aren’t we all supposed to be striving for fats-free diets?
No! It turns out now, in this week’s medical bombshell, that our bodies actually need for us to eat some kinds of fats, and to be very wary of complex carbohydrates such as starches. Who wouldda thunk it?
Forty-some years ago, the news burst upon the world that eating fats was baaaaad for you. Medical Authorities Said So! Except, that wasn’t quite exactly what they’d said — they were actually just warning against eating too many foods containing unsaturated fats and cholesterol. A subtle point, that went right by many folks, who — absorbing the simple but unintended message that eating fats is bad for you — switched to eating many fewer fats and lots more carbohydrates, meaning foods with lots of sugars and starches. And starches, of course, are complex sugars. Bingo! An ‘epidemic’ of obesity, continuing up through present times. REDUCED FAT!! and even FAT-FREE!! became standard sales-pitch customer-hooking lines in marketing for ‘health’ products. People figured that they could eat, guilt-free, lots and lots of this processed stuff because it didn’t have much or any of That Evil Fat, and the folks producing it and selling it got rich. But, somehow, the folks buying it and eating it didn’t get thin — they got fatter, and fatter, and as they got older some of them became Type II Diabetic. And so here we are, today.
Healthy Fats Food
The health message was, actually, a little bit more complicated — that there are good fats and bad fats, and also good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates. Olive oil is fatty — and yet it is good for us. So are canola oil (called ‘rapeseed oil’ back in less-Politically-Correct times), nut oils, and avocados.
Unhealthy Fats Food
Cakes, cookies, potatoes, ice cream, and puddings, on the other hand, are full of both simple and complex carbohydrates, and can raise our blood-glucose levels and even cause our livers to get fatty-liver disease. Oops . . .
Glycemic index
There’s a nutritional-science, parameter called glycemic index, that attempts to measure how quickly sugars and starches that we eat are converted by our bodies into glucose in our bloodstreams; a too-rapid conversion process generally isn’t the best thing for us. Pure glucose has a glycemic index of 100. Cornflakes are at 93, and generally foods that you would expect to be high/bad are in fact high/bad. But, Surprise! Peanuts and hummus come in respectively at 7 and 6, very low.
A related concept is glycemic load, which attempts to measure the total effects of foods on our bodies. It can qualify the initial verdict of high glycemic index about some foods. Watermelon, for instance, has a high glycemic index; but, as its name implies, this fruit is mostly water — and, therefore, watermelon imposes a relatively-low glycemic load.
High Glycemic Load Foods
High-glycemic-load foods can cause overweight folks yet another problem – that of insulin overshoot. After eating hearty meals of such foods, these folks’ bodies may produce too much insulin — even if they aren’t Diabetic and aren’t giving themselves any extra insulin. When this insulin overshoot happens, they get hungry again — too soon — and consequently they eat too much total stuff. Low-glycemic-load foods won’t cause them this problem. And eating good fats can actually delay getting hungry again, although the total number of calories eaten still needs to be carefully monitored.
Notwithstanding all this, the glycemic index and the total glycemic load of all of the foods devoured in the United States have risen in recent years, due to the big switch away from fats to carbohydrates. This major trend has in turn led to major increases in overweightness, obesity, insulin resistance, Type II Diabetes, fatty liver disease, and circulatory-system maladies. Canada has most probably followed all of these same unhealthy trends right along, too.
And, so has China. Chinese folks have traditionally relied on white rice as their major food staple, but they generally used to be active enough physically to burn off most of its extra calories. Nowadays, as Chinese standards of living have risen, Chinese people are becoming more sedentary — and consequently they are getting on the unhealthy-eating bandwagon pioneered by North Americans.
Here’s a link to the article, in The Seattle Times that was the source for information in this blog:
So, what can you do about these issues for yourself? First of all, you can get off the fats-free-diet train that leads to health problems. Next, you can start having your blood-glucose level checked fairly often. And then you can try taking CLE Holistic Health Naavudi, a natural herbal-extract preparation that is produced and distributed in the form of accurately-premeasured 550-milligram gelcaps. Naavudi is a blend of nine different herbal extracts, all of which have been used for centuries or even for millenia in traditional Indian Ayurvedic and Chinese natural-medicine practice.
Like other CLE Holistic Health products, Naavudi is produced wholly by CLE Holistic Health, from its own herbs, harvested entirely from its own land, and processed according to its very own proprietary methods; so that its quality and uniformity are always extremely well controlled. Naavudi is not believed to interact with any prescription drugs, so taking Naavudi does not need to affect any of your other current health practices. So, if you have blood-glucose-level concerns, why not give Naavudi a serious shot?