The TRUTH About Gluten

There’s a LOT of confusion out there these days about whether gluten is a real hazard to your health or not.

Even many news reporters on popular national TV shows have frequently shown the story from 2 totally opposite sides of the spectrum, highlighting some experts that say gluten only negatively affects a small % of the population that is officially “gluten-sensitive” or people that have Celiac disease, while highlighting other experts that say gluten is affecting a very LARGE portion of the population with various inflammation and auto-immune related health problems that most people don’t realize.
So I’m bringing in one of the experts that I’ve found on this topic, to clarify exactly how gluten could be affecting YOU… did you know that gluten could possibly be causing “tiny holes” to form in your intestines (aka, leaky gut) from the chronic inflammation that gluten can cause… and can also be causing nutrient deficiencies from damage to specialized cells in your intestines that control nutrient absorption.
Read on…

The TRUTH about Gluten

by Kelsey Kale –  Natural Food Chef & Nutritionist
One of the most common objections I get from people when I mention about the benefits of going gluten-free or grain-free is, “Well, yeah, I would cut it out – but I don’t have a problem with gluten.”
While this may be true for a small percentage of the population, more studies are showing that even those of us who think we “don’t have a problem with gluten,” are actually experiencing life-depleting side effects from eating it – but we just don’t know it.
It’s not that these symptoms are hidden necessarily (though sometimes patients with celiac disease have no visible symptoms right after they eat gluten) – more often we blame our symptoms on something else, and we forget to consider gluten as the source of the problem.
The Secret Ways Gluten Is Hurting You
Consider these facts:
>> Responses to the ingestion of wheat can be divided into three types… Let’s start with some basics. There’s a difference between being “allergic” to gluten, having celiac disease, and just being gluten sensitive.
Allergic responses like skin rashes and breathing problems appear to be related to a variety of wheat proteins. Studies done with purified wheat proteins that tracked specific autoimmune antibodies in patients’ blood showed that 60% had antibody responses to α-gliadins and β-gliadins, 55% to γ-gliadins, 48% to ω-gliadins.
On the other hand, certain wheat reactions, like WDEIA or “Wheat Dependent Exercise Induced Anaphylaxis” (a tongue twister, I know!) are syndromes that are known to be caused by a specific type of grain protein, ω5-gliadins.
It’s important to note that those with gluten sensitivity don’t experience their reaction in the same way that those with celiac disease do (though it may feel like it) – gluten sensitivity is not the same autoimmune response as celiac. People with gluten sensitivity have more of a reaction such as “set up a barrier to fight this one time irritant”, while those with celiac disease start building an internal army and develop specific antibodies to gluten so they’re constantly prepared.

Celiac Disease is 4 times more common today than it was 50 years ago.

Doctors and scientists are seeing that the popularity of gluten free diets isn’t just a fad – the actual number of people with a real autoimmune response to gluten is going up. An autoimmune response is more serious than an intolerance because this response causes your body to begin to attack its own cells. An intolerance or sensitivity to gluten is less severe and is more like your reaction to a cold or parasite, which attacks the “invader” but not your body.
This increase in celiac disease is likely due to a combination of the constant experimenting and hybridization of the wheat plant in an attempt to increase growth rate and the amount of grain each plant grows. There’s also the fact that wheat and flour based products now make up a large majority of the average person’s diet (even in countries like China where rice was a staple, wheat-based products are beginning to take over and instances of gluten-related illness are beginning to rise).
Also, because there are no testing measures in place to determine if these newly developed “franken-grains” are safe for human consumption (or if the newly created plants present any side effects when eaten by humans), we’re being served something called “wheat” that’s actually a far cry from the original plant that our grandparents knew and loved.

As many as 29% of us may have a gluten allergy or intolerance and do not know about it.

In a study published in 2007, researchers took gut biopsies from celiac patients as well as patients with no gluten-related symptoms. Five out of six of the patients “without symptoms” showed inflammatory autoimmune blood proteins when they were exposed to gliadin (a component of gluten).
Similar studies done on populations in the UK and Germany showed that when tested, 3 times more people were sensitive to gluten than they originally thought.
These “autoimmune blood proteins” are markers that tell the body to create a system-wide inflammation response (especially in our intestines). This happens for two reasons: One, it helps our body get rid of the offending gluten as quickly as possible; And two,  it sends us a painful message telling us not to eat that food again.
This full-body inflammation creates stress in our digestive tract and can lead to tiny holes in our intestines (known as “leaky gut syndrome”) that allow small particles of undigested food to pass into our bloodstream. This causes even more inflammation throughout the body. This inflammation also kills the specialized cells in your intestines that are designed to absorb nutrients, which can lead to malnourishment and “nutrient starvation” – even if you’re overweight.
It’s even been thought by some researchers that for every 1 person with celiac disease (an estimated 1.8 million Americans) there could be at least six or seven people with “non-celiac gluten sensitivity”. This means that gluten sensitivity may affect upwards of 10-12% of the general population (that’s another 10.8 – 12.6 million people!).

Eating Gluten Can Lead To Other Allergies

>> Gluten sensitivity can also cause dairy intolerance. This is because the enzyme we need to digest the milk sugar lactose (an enzyme called “lactase”) is created by the cells in our small intestine, and these cells can be killed by inflammation caused by eating too much gluten.
>> Lastly, celiac disease is determined by the number of antibody markers found in your stool or blood. The benchmark for beginning to diagnose celiac disease using a blood test is an antibody count of 30+. If you meet this number or higher you are likely to be diagnosed with celiac disease. If you score even 1 point below this number, you technically don’t have celiac – but you will definitely still feel all the painful effects of gluten.
NOTE: Having a high inflammatory blood protein count doesn’t always mean you have Celiac, so it’s best to consult your doctor and participate in a panel of tests before diagnosing yourself.

The Effects Add Up…

Your reaction to gluten may not be strong enough to worry you. A little bit of bloating here, mild swelling in the joints there – no big deal, just a little embarrassing… right?  Wrong.
Over a period of time (let’s say a few years) low levels of inflammation in the body start to add up. Even if you don’t experience any immediate negative effects from eating gluten (or your reactions are “tolerable”), you could be doing long term damage to your body.
For example, remember that this inflammation may be killing off the cells in your small intestine that are designed to absorb nutrients, which can leave you both fat and starving. And chronic inflammation anywhere in the body has full-body effects — chronic inflammation has even been linked to terminal illnesses like cancer and heart disease. Every bite counts.
********
Mike’s Note:  Beware of many new “gluten-free” packaged and processed foods that are on the market these days… Most times, these gluten-free processed foods just simply contain highly refined flours such as rice flour, tapioca flour, and corn starch which have severe effects on your blood sugar and insulin levels. Many “gluten-free” processed foods also still contain very high sugar levels.  Junk food is still junk, even if it is “gluten-free”.

Can you HEAL gluten-damaged intestines?

A couple things on this…
1.  There’s a unique ingredient called Actazin in this powerful probiotic supplement that shows strong promise at being able to help HEAL and regenerate gluten-damaged gut-lining cells.  You can read about it at that page.
2.  It’s also well known that Kefir (kefir is generally more powerful than yogurt in terms of both probiotic quantity and variety of strains) can have a powerful healing effect on the digestive system when used regularly because of the unique probiotics.  Kefir is also generally 99% lactose-free since the microbes consume most of the lactose in the fermentation process, making kefir one of the easiest to digest dairy products.
3.  If you’re like me and you stay gluten-free most days of the week, but still eat wheat based foods when traveling or at restaurants, there’s a new and very interesting ingredient called GlutenGone in this enzyme product that I use on the 1 or 2 days a week when I might dine out and eat some foods high in gluten.  I see it as a sort of “protection” against gluten damage for those occasional days when I do eat grains.
Lastly, on this same topic, if you’re not yet convinced of some of the potential health detriments to eating wheat and gluten, make sure you’ve also read this article:

11 Ways that “whole wheat” can damage your body

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3 SATURATED Fats that Actually SLOW Aging in Your Body

Yes, ALL three of these foods have a high ratio saturated fats, but studies are showing that they actually improve your heart health and fight aging. Read on...

by Mike Geary - Certified Nutrition Specialist & Catherine Ebeling - RN, BSN
Authors of the best seller: The Top 101 Foods that FIGHT Aging

The majority of the population these days still seem to "fear" fats in the diet because of all of the fat-free and low-fat propaganda of the 80's and 90's that falsely made people think that all fats are bad for us.  Nothing could be further from the truth!
As a health author, blogger, and Nutritionist, I observe people's eating habits all the time... and I still constantly see well-intentioned, but misinformed people choosing egg whites instead of whole eggs, even though studies show that the "fatty" yolks contain almost all of the anti-aging benefits, heart-health benefits, and 90% of the valuable antioxidants and vitamins/minerals in an egg, whereas the whites contain very little nutrition at all.  Not only that, but egg yolks have been proven to raise your GOOD cholesterol, and improve the good to bad ratios.
I also still observe people constantly choosing "low-fat" and "fat-free" options of various foods at the grocery store despite the fact that most of these options contain a LOT more carbs and sugars to replace the fats that are taken out, which actually leads to FASTER AGING by increasing the amount of Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs) that your body produces.  These nasty little compounds called AGEs speed up the aging process in your body including damage over time to your organs, your joints, and of course, wrinkled skin.

Plus, it's high blood sugar from all of those extra sugars and carbs in "low-fat" and "fat-free" choices that increase AGEs in your body on a daily basis leading to faster aging.  On the other hand, all of those FATS that people have been avoiding for years can actually SLOW the aging process by keeping your blood sugar lower and more stable, hormones balanced, and for other reasons too.
In fact, it's absolutely imperative to get enough healthy fats in your diet to keep your hormones balanced, blood sugar under control, prevent cravings, and to SLOW the aging process in your organs, skin, and joints.
And I'm NOT just talking about the obvious healthy fats that you hear about in the news all the time, such as almonds, walnuts, avocados, fish oil, and our beloved olive oil... all of those examples ARE definitely healthy and contain loads of beneficial nutrients that can help you to live longer, healthier, and leaner...
BUT...
Here are THREE more examples of "fatty" foods that most people falsely think are "unhealthy" simply because they do contain certain ratios of saturated fat... But in reality, these foods are shown in studies to protect our bodies from the ravages of aging and even help us to stay lean...


1.  Grass-fed (pasture-raised) butter & cream
Yes, delicious smooth and rich BUTTER (real butter, NOT deadly margarine!)... It's delicious, contains loads of healthy nutritional factors, and does NOT have to be avoided in order to stay healthy and get lean.  In fact, I personally eat a couple pats of grass-fed butter several times daily (and a Tbsp of heavy cream in my coffee daily) and maintain very lean body fat most times of the year.
There's a lot of confusion about this topic... in fact, I just saw a TV show today that was talking about unhealthy foods and one of the first things they showed was butter.  It just shows that the majority of the population still doesn't fully understand that butter (grass-fed only!) can actually be a healthy part of your diet.
In fact, there's even ample evidence that REAL butter can even fight aging and help you to lose body fat for a couple of main reasons:
   a.  Grass-fed butter is known to have high levels of a healthy fat called CLA, which has been shown in numerous studies to have anti-cancer properties, and also has been shown to help burn abdominal fat and build lean muscle.
   b.  Grass-fed butter also has an ideal balance of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids (unlike conventional grain-fed butter) which helps fight inflammation in your body, and can help balance hormones, thereby helping to slow the aging process, and keep your body lean.
   c.  The healthy fats in grass-fed butter also contain MCTs (similar to the MCTs in coconut oil), which help to boost your immune system and are readily burned by the body for energy.  The healthy fats in grass-fed butter also help to satisfy your appetite and control blood sugar levels, both of which help you to stay lean!
If you have a hard time finding a grass-fed butter at your grocery store, Kerrygold Irish butter is one of my favorites, and the cows are 100% grass-fed on lush green pastures in Ireland. It's one of the richest butters in color that I've seen, which indicates high levels of carotenoids, powerful antioxidants that help fight aging.  Another great brand is Organic Valley which has many options for pasture-raised butter and cream.
Note for people who are dairy sensitive or think they might be: 
People that are dairy sensitive or intolerant are generally NOT sensitive to butter or cream. This is something that's highly misunderstood in the nutrition industry, even by most authors and doctors.  The truth is that it's almost always either the lactose or the casein that people are sensitive to, and butter or cream has nothing more than traces of either since butter and cream is solely the fat portion of dairy while the lactose and casein have mostly been removed when the fat is skimmed off the milk.  The amount of casein in butter or cream is negligible compared to milk.
Also, fermented dairy generally doesn't give people any problems either (kefir or plain yogurt) because the lactose has been digested by the microbes, making kefir 99% lactose free usually.  Plus, even the casein in kefir and yogurt is MUCH more highly digestible because the microbes have already performed a little pre-digestion on it.


2.  Super Dark Chocolate (at least 72% cacao content or higher)
It might not be a secret anymore, but yes, dark chocolate (NOT milk chocolate) can be a very healthy food, even though it is technically calorie dense.
However, I would contend that dark chocolate can actually HELP you to burn off more body fat if you're the type of person that has a sweet tooth and likes to eat a lot of desserts.  In this case, just 1 or 2 small squares of dark chocolate can many times satisfy your sweet tooth for only 30 or 40 calories as opposed to 500 calories for a piece of chocolate cake or a piece of pie.
Also some brands of dark chocolate that are in the mid 70's in % cacao content or higher, can have a fairly high ratio of fiber content (I've seen some brands have 5-7 grams of fiber out of 15 grams of total carbs per serving), and relatively low sugar content compared to the amount of healthy fats.  In fact, that's one of the "tricks" I use to select a good quality chocolate... I look for more total fat than total carbs (or about the same number of grams of each).
The importance of that fact is that it means many dark chocolates will not greatly affect your blood sugar and will have a fairly blunted blood sugar response compared to other "sweets".
In addition, dark chocolate is also very rich in healthful antioxidants, including a powerful compound called theobromine which has been shown to help lower your blood pressure and have other health benefits.
Dark chocolate also contains antioxidants called flavanols with dozens of health benefits... One study found that eating as little as 6.7 grams of chocolate per day has a protective effect on your heart.  Other studies show benefits to your digestive system by improving the ratios of good to bad bacteria in your gut, possibly due to the catechins and polyphenols in cocoa.
The reason I say to choose dark chocolates with at least 72% cacao content is that the higher the % of cacao, the lower the % of sugar.  However, this does mean that any chocolate over 80% cacao content will generally start to get a more bitter taste and have very little sweetness.  If you like this type of taste, then the higher % cocao, the better. Otherwise, a good 75% dark chocolate is in my opinion an almost perfect combination of lightly sweet with a rich velvety chocolate taste.
You can also reap the benefits of the antioxidants and fiber without all of the calories by using organic unsweetened cocoa powder in your smoothies or other recipes.
The bottom line is that you can enjoy small to moderate amounts of dark chocolate and also cocoa powder daily, and it only helps you to stay lean and fight the aging process in your body.


3.  Coconut oil, coconut meat, coconut flour, and coconut milk
Coconut milk and oil are great sources of a super healthy type of saturated fat called medium chain triglycerides (MCTs), including a component called lauric acid, which is a powerful nutrient for your immune system, and is lacking in most western diets.  In addition, MCTs are readily used for energy by the body and less likely to be stored as body fat compared to other types of fats.
Eating coconut oil can help improve the health of your skin from the inside out... But in addition to being healthy internally, coconut oil is also known to be great for the health of your skin externally as a skin moisturizer that's healthier for you than most lotions since natural coconut oil allows you to avoid the harmful chemicals found in many lotions.
Coconut oil is even shown to help improve your thyroid function as well as helping to protect your brain from Alzheimers.
There are even direct studies that show that coconut oil can help you burn off abdominal fat more efficiently.
Along with coconut milk and coconut oil as healthy fat choices, we've also got coconut flour as a healthier flour option for baking. Coconut flour is an extremely high fiber flour alternative (almost ALL of the carbs in this flour are fiber and not starch!).  Coconut flour is also VERY high in protein compared to most flours and is also gluten free!
Just beware that if you're going to use coconut flour for baking, it absolutely NEEDS to be mixed with other flours as it sucks up moisture like crazy... I've made delicious baked goods by mixing coconut flour with almond flour and quinoa flour in equal parts, and adding slightly more liquid ingredients than the recipe calls for.

Let's look at more shocking anti-aging foods, spices, teas, and nutrients...

We'll show you MORE delicious foods, spices, herbs, and nutrients 
that PROTECT your body from the ravages of aging on the
next page!
These specific foods you'll discover on the next page will:

• Naturally boost your energy, 
• Help KILL your joint pain,
• Lower your blood pressure,
• Fight diabetes & control blood sugar,
• Boost your brain health,
• HEAL your digestion problems,
• and raise your metabolism
   

You will also discover over a dozen surprising tricks you can use daily to FIGHT aging, helping you to look 5-10 years YOUNGER... click the button below to go to the next page to discover unique and delicious anti-aging foods, spices, herbs, teas, and other potent youth-enhancing nutrients: 

Next Page 

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The #1 MOST Important Diet Lesson You Will Ever Learn

The BEST Way to Eat a Truly Healthy Diet for a Lean Body and Disease Prevention
by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer
Author of best-seller:  The Truth About Six Pack Abs


This article might surpise some people... because most people don't view nutrition in this way that I'm about to explain.  Instead most people get thoroughly confused about nutrition and calories, protein, carbs, fat, diet foods, low-fat, low-cholesterol, low-carb, healthy label claims, vegetarian, raw foods, etc, etc.
However, if you view nutrition in this way that I'll explain below, it solves every single confusion about nutrition that you could ever have.  I will warn you though, this is very BIG PICTURE thinking, and it helps explain a lot about the human body when you think about things this way.
Ok, the #1 MOST important aspect about nutrition involves the study of ARCHAEOLOGY (and anthropology)!
What the heck am I talking about?  Well, let's dig in...
Yes, everything about the human body that is either healthy or bad for us currently, all stems from hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years of evolution and how the human body adapted to everything around us, including food, exercise, our environment (city vs nature), and lots more.
We know from archaeological records that our current human species (homo sapiens) originated approximately 200,000 years ago... however, our close cousins (ancestors prior to homo sapiens), such as homo erectus, date as far back as several million years.
If you study evidence about what our ancestors ate, it gives obvious clues about how the human digestive system evolved and what are the healthiest foods for us to eat in today's world.
This obviously explains why relatively new chemicals and food types (that humans were NEVER meant to ingest) cause so many health problems, such as artificial sweeteners, HFCS and other corn derivatives, white bread and other refined grain products, refined oils such as soybean and unhealthy canola oils, and so on.
Now this discussion could get pretty involved and encompass an entire book, so let me give some important statements to best summarize this:
1.  Despite what you'll hear from extreme vegans, extreme raw foodists, and other believers in "extreme" types of diets that eliminate entire portions of the historical human diet, the human digestive system evolved to eat a mixture of plants and animal foods (yes, we evolved as omnivores), as well as a mixture of raw food AND cooked food.
I know, I know... You'll get heated debate about both of these topics...meat eating vs veganism, and raw foodism... however, it's historical FACT that our current species (and historical ancestors back over a million years ago) in almost every culture around the world, ate at least some % of plant-animal food combination and raw food / cooked food combination (even if it was at different times of the day, or even different times of the year).
Some cultures, such as the Inuit of the arctic and several tribes in Africa, thrived in stellar health on almost an entirely animal-based diet, and other cultures around the world thrived on almost an entirely plant-based diet... But all cultures generally had some mixture of plant and animal foods, even if the amount of animal food was small in some cultures, or the amount of plant food was small in other cultures.
Similarly, virtually every culture around the world has also historically consumed BOTH raw foods and cooked foods in differing amounts of each... but there's no real evidence of societies thriving on 100% raw food diets.
But what about the argument that raw foodists make claiming that all animals in nature eat 100% raw foods, but humans are the only species that eats cooked food...
Well, there's a simple explanation for that... humans were the ONLY species with a well developed enough brain to understand how to control fire and therefore cook our food... And since we've been cooking a portion of our foods for the entire existence of our species (200,000 years) as well as our ancestors back several million years, our digestive systems have adapted to eating a portion of our food cooked.
This also explains why acrylamides are more harmful to animals that eat cooked food compared to humans... since humans have adapted some level of tolerance to acrylamides from eating a partial cooked diet for 100's of thousands of years, but animals have never historically adapted to a cooked food diet, and therefore, are more sensitive to acrylamides.
If you've never heard of acrylamides, they are formed when the outside of foods are burned during cooking (such as the browning on breads or other baked goods, browning on deep fried foods, or the charring of vegetables cooked over a flame, etc) and these compounds are potentially carcinogenic to both humans and animals.  Cooking foods with water, and also using high antioxidant herbs and spices in cooking helps reduce acrylamides and protect you against them.
The bottom line... we were designed through evolution to eat a mixture of both plants and animals as well as cooked and raw foods... But let's clarify an important point in #2 below...

2. Although I say that we were meant through evolution to eat an omnivorous diet of both plants and animals, one thing that we were NEVER meant to eat is factory-farm raised animals, or eggs or milk from factory-farm raised animals.
Factory farming is an entirely new phenomenon that's still only decades old, so essentially, these types of meat products were never meant to be part of the human diet.
Chemically (nutritionally), factory-farm animal products are VASTLY different from animal products that were raised the way they were meant to live and eat. Examples of these differences can be seen glaringly in the nutrition profiles of grass-fed meats vs grain-fed factory farm meat, free range eggs vs factory eggs, wild fish vs farmed fish, and so on.
We're talking about major differences in omega-3's vs omega-6's, differences in vitamins and minerals, differences in other healthy fats such as CLA, and lots more.
So although I don't fully agree with veganism at least from a nutritional standpoint (moral arguments aside), I also don't agree with our current state of affairs of the majority of our food supply of factory farm raised animal products (at least here in the US, where the condition of the factory farm animals and nutritional quality of the food is horrendous).
That's why I try to not support the factory farm industry as much as possible (which is most meats and dairy in your supermarket) and instead, I try to eat almost solely grass-fed meats from free ranging animals, wild game, wild fish, eggs from local farmers from free roaming hens, and dairy only from grass-fed cows that are allowed to graze almost entirely on forage.

3.  Although I point out that many historical cultures around the world thrived on vastly different percentages of animal products vs plant products in their diet, here is another type of food that we were NEVER meant to eat:
PROCESSED FOOD
Yes, I know it hurts to hear it, but cakes, cookies, crackers, microwaved meals, chips, sodas, granola bars, sugary sports drinks or energy drinks, and 1000's of other products that line our supermarket shelves were never meant to be part of the human diet, so it's obvious why it causes so many health problems for us.
This gets back to what I always say about trying to include as many "1-ingredient" foods as you can in your diet if you want to eat like we were meant to eat.
"1-ingredient" foods means healthy meats, eggs, nuts, seeds, beans, tubers, fruits, and veggies.  It's really that simple.

4.  Ok, this one starts to get a little controversial... but, remember that agriculture is also a relatively new phenomenon in the big picture of the human diet when you expand far back in history a couple of million years.  And when I'm talking about agriculture, I'm mostly talking about the massive influx of grain-based foods into the human diet that occurred with the invention of agriculture.
The mass production of grains through agriculture is only a few thousand years old... Compare that to our ancestors historical existence as hunter-gatherers as far back as a couple of million years, and our current species (homo sapiens) 200,000-year history as hunter-gatherers.
If you think about it, as hunter-gatherers, we would have had very limited access to grains, and they would have encompassed a very small % of our historical calorie intake, since they weren't mass produced and processed. Instead, we thrived on mostly game meats (including the organ meats, where most of the micro-nutrients are found), wild fish and seafood, eggs, nuts, seeds, beans, tubers, fruits, and veggies.
From this perspective, grains probably never accounted for more than 1-3% of our historical calorie intake... and as you know from one of my recent articles, currently our modern processed diet that the average person eats consists of 67% of total calories from grains such as corn, soy, and wheat and their derivatives... now THAT'S a shocking revelation in why our entire food supply is backwards, and how that affects your waistline!
It also makes you think about how ridiculously wrong our "food pyramid" really is, which promotes the bulk of our food to be eaten from grains.
I could go on with more examples, but I think you're seeing the major points here... the most important aspect to eating a healthy diet that promotes a lean, healthy body is to acknowledge what our ancestors ate throughout the millions of years of evolution.
And that certainly wasn't processed "diet foods" with fancy label claims deceiving you into thinking they're healthy... instead, it was the 1-ingredient foods I listed above, eaten in a combination of raw food and cooked food.
A couple final thoughts on how to fit these suggestions into your healthy eating plan:
1.  Try to become a "locavore" as much as possible... if you can get local farm-fresh produce, that is the most environmentally and socially responsible, as well as healthy way to get your produce.  Research if you have farmers markets and farm stands that might be in your area, or deliver to your area.
2.  Try to choose organic foods as much as possible... but local food will many times trump organic food that had to travel thousands of miles to make it to you.
3. When choosing meat and eggs, try to choose grass-fed meats as much as possible, free range chicken, turkey, and pork raised in a humane manner, and eggs from hens that truly roam free outside instead of being confined to "chicken factories".  Many times, this means making the effort to seek out local farms or co-ops that deliver to urban areas.  This site is a great source of meats that were raised in the healthiest manner, and they deliver right to your doorstep:  http://healthygrassfed.2ya.com
Remember that eating healthy and responsibly doesn't mean eating bland boring food... there are tons of ways to eat in a healthy and socially/environmentally responsible manner, and we describe in depth how to do this in our Click Here Fat Burning Kitchen Program.
Please share this article to help your family and friends eat healthier and to help us all collectively choose our food from more responsible sources than factory farms.  Please email this webpage link to all of your friends and family and share this page on your blogs, forums, as well as Facebook and Twitter pages.

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Is Your Microwave Cooking Making You Sick?

A look at how microwaved food can negatively affect your health
by Catherine Ebeling - RN, BSN & Mike Geary - Certified Nutrition Specialist
co-authors - The Fat Burning Kitchen

Do you know what (besides a television) is in almost every home in America? It’s a microwave oven. Because microwave ovens are quick and easy and don't take up much space, they are used for meal preparation in the home, at the office, and even restaurants. Even your favorite healthy restaurant may depend on these electrical devices to quickly heat up or cook foods. So, the question here is —
Are microwave ovens safe, and is it ok to eat the food cooked in them?
Before we look at the science of how microwaved food can affect your blood chemistry and negatively affect your health, let's look at a bigger picture, common-sense thought process about this...
If you think about it from this perspective, the human digestive system evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to digest food that was either raw or cooked in water or by heat.  However, food cooked via microwaves is a totally alien and unknown cooking method to the human digestive system.
It's just common sense that such a radically different cooking method will alter the chemistry of the food to negatively impact our health.
Now onto a little more science...
Let’s take a look at how microwaves ovens work
Microwaves are a part of the whole electromagnetic spectrum of energy that includes light waves and radio waves. They travel at the speed of light--which is about 186,282 miles per second. So how does that oven heat up the food so fast?
Inside the microwave oven, there is a “magnetron” which is a tube full of electrons. The electrons in the microwave oven react with magnetic and electronic energy and become micro wavelengths. This is the radiation that interacts with the molecules in food.
Food molecules have a positive and negative end, kind of like the way a magnet has a north and a south polarity. The electrons from the magnetron produce wavelengths that react with the positive and negative parts of the food molecules. The food molecules then start vibrating, up to several million times a second. This molecular “vibration” is what creates the heat in the food.
This agitiation deforms the molecules in food and creates new unnatural radiolytic compounds previously unknown to nature. These strange foreign compounds in microwaved food have been shown to damage the blood, the digestive system, and our immune systems.
Microwave ovens have been actually been around for about 40 or so years, but so far, only a couple of in-depth scientific studies have been done on them.
Research showing negative health impacts of eating microwaved food
Extensive research, though, was conducted in both Switzerland and Russia on microwaved foods and their effects on the human body. Both studies concluded that microwaving foods significantly deteriorated the nutrient value of the food, distorted protein molecules in the food, and created new, radically unnatural compounds. Most alarming, however, was that the subjects' health deteriorated from eating the microwaved foods.
Their findings included:

• Blood hemoglobin (the extremely important oxygen-carrying component of the blood) decreased significantly after eating microwaved foods. 
• White blood cell count rose, (as it does in response to an infection).
• LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) increased, and HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol) decreased.
• Carcinogenic (cancer-causing) agents in foods increased.
• Higher incidence of digestive system cancers.

The Russian scientists found the microwave oven significantly scary enough to actually ban its use--up until recently.
When food is cooked in a microwave oven, it has:

• Significantly less B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, essential minerals and fats.
• Broken down and de-natured proteins.
• Loss of vital enzymes and phytochemicals.

And here is a really interesting study—done on grain germination:
The grain watered with microwaved (and cooled) water would not not even germinate or grow! It’s pretty obvious that microwaving changed the water chemically and destroyed its ability to nourish a plant.
Ok, so maybe it’s ok to just heat leftovers in the microwave oven once in a while?
NO! Actually, food heated in a microwave is heated unevenly creating super-heated spots and cool spots. Those cool spots may actually harbor bacterial growth such as salmonella, and you end up with food poisoning.
In addition, when you use plastic containers or plastic wrap in contact with your food, you end up getting all sorts of nasty chemicals like di(ethylhexyl)adepate, or DEHA, (a carcinogen), Bisphenol-A or BPA (a cancer-causing agent in plastics) and xenoestrogens (synthetic estrogens) in your food!
In one recent study, it was found that carcinogenic ingredients in plastic wrap were 10,000 times the FDA limit for safety!
Exposure to BPA, used in the manufacture of polycarbonate and other plastics, has been shown to cause reproductive problems and erectile dysfunction, and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans.
Xenoestrogens are really nasty synthetic estrogens that seem to show up everywhere. In men, xenoestrogens can cause low sperm counts and feminization (like the dreaded “man boobs”) and breast cancer and reproductive problems in women. Xenoestrogens promote weight gain around the belly and chest in men, and in women, it shows up as fat in the butt, hips, thighs and the back of arms.
So, in addition to being really unhealthy, microwaved foods can make you fat!
Parents should never warm breast milk or formula in the microwave oven—not only can it superheat the milk and burn the baby, but microwaving destroys the very valuable nutrients, enzymes and protein vital to babies' growth!
And here is something really scary: in 1991, a patient received blood that had been warmed in a microwave oven. That patient died of a severe anaphylactic reaction to the blood. The microwaving created something totally unrecognizable by the body!
If you want to be safe, healthy and LEAN, avoid your microwave—totally.  Personally, I threw out my microwave about 6 years ago and haven't even missed it!
There are far healthier and better alternatives:

• Eat vegetables and fruit raw preferably, or if cooked, sauté lightly (with a little water and some grass-fed butter) or steam until tender crisp in a pan on the stove.
• Heat water for tea, etc in a pan or tea-kettle instead of the microwave—or, better yet-- is to get a steaming hot water tap—I love these things!
• Plan ahead and defrost frozen foods in the refrigerator.
• Heat up ALL leftovers over low heat in a pan or in a toaster oven in aluminum foil (it still only takes 4-5 minutes to heat leftovers)
• If you must use a microwave (and I don’t know why you would!), use only glass containers instead of plastic.

Or you may want to try this-- small countertop convection ovens are great for cooking foods faster and more evenly than a regular oven or on the stove.
You can actually cook a frozen 15-oz. grass-fed ribeye in 20 minutes, and it is delicious; browned, tender and juicy. These little convection ovens will broil, bake, fry, roast, grill or steam your favorite foods, including meat, chicken, and vegetable. It takes 20-30% less time than a regular oven, and uses about 75% less energy.
This is a far healthier option than a cancer-causing, nutrient-robbing, microwave oven!

Please feel free to email the link to this page to your friends and family so they can make the smart decision to throw out their microwaves and protect their family's health!

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To your good health,
Catherine Ebeling & Mike Geary
Co-authors - The Fat Burning Kitchen:  Your 24-Hour Diet Transformation to Make Your Body a Fat-Burning Machine

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