Fast Food, Sugar and Caffeine OH MY!

Food is an interesting topic right? You drive down the street and have your pick of McDonalds, Taco Bell, Chick-fil-A, Good Times, Village Inn, Apple Bees, TGIFridays and many more. Fast food is now served at restaurants, drive-throughs, at stadiums, airports, zoos, high schools, elementary schools, and universities, on cruise ships, trains, and airplanes, at K-Marts, Wal-Marts, gas stations, and ironically even hospital cafeterias. In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food; in 2000, they spent more than $110 billion. Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars.

In the early 1900’s the average person consumed 5lbs of sugar per year. Today in America the average person consumes over 135lbs per year. And this is a conservative number. For some of you, that’s more than you weigh! That’s 2-3 pounds per week or more than ½ cup per day. It seems as though we have turned into a Sugar Baby nation.

You’d be surprised to know how much sugar is in the food you eat. A glass of milk is great right? Lots of calcium, but guess what there 12 grams of sugar in one cup. And what about orange juice to get that valuable vitamin C? Well that orange juice contains up to 20 grams of sugar for a small glass. And do you know that a red pepper contains 5x the amount of vitamin C with over 10x less sugar. What about soda? Take a look at this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F4t8zL6F0c Who wants a drink of that?

America has the most technologically advanced medical system, yet we don’t even make the top 10 list for healthiest nations in the world. According to the World Health Organization, we are 24 on the list. Babies and children are obese. The rates of diabetes have soared. Cancer has impacted too many lives. We are the most obese generation our country has ever seen. People in their twenties have aches and pains like an 80 year old.

Sugar is a perfect on ramp to a plethora of health problems, one of them being gaining weight. Sugar also cuts your immune system function in half for 4 hours. Eat a candy bar, that’s four hours, eat a muffin, that’s another four hours, drink a soda, that’s another 4 hours. Think about what that does to your ability to fight off the flu!

You know Coca-cola is a brilliant company. What are the four main ingredients of a coke? Sugar. Carbonated water. Caffeine. And maybe one we wouldn’t think of. Sodium or salt.
Ok so what does caffeine do to us? It gets us all pumped up and jittery. But is also acts as a diuretic, aka we pee out more water. So if we pee out extra water and eat salt how will you feel? Thirsty right? And you want to drink more. But guess what you don’t taste the salt because it’s masked by the sugar. Ingenious right? Maybe for them, but not so much for you. Sugar and caffeine are sisters, they tend to be found together and do similar things in our body.

Ok who out there are coffee drinkers? Oh that warm cup in your hands on a cold morning, warming you from the inside out and giving you a little spring in your set right? This is my Achilles heel. The thing I must resist. So what is so bad about caffeine anyways? There is all this research out there that it is so good for you right? Stimulates brain activity and so one. Well the bottom line is that caffeine is a drug. It stimulates your adrenal glands to produce more adrenaline and make you feel peppy. But the problem is that over time it drains you of energy instead of giving you energy. It also depletes your body of important minerals such as calcium which can lead to osteoporosis later in life.

Isn’t is crazy that the things that we love so much tend to be the most harmful to us? We must decide to make a change. Life is all about cycles of momentum. We can get the wheel rolling in the wrong direction and before we know it, it rolls on its own. To stop our bad habits and get that wheel rolling in the other direction takes a lot of work in the beginning. As you get the wheel of momentum rolling in the right direction it gets easier and easier as time goes on.