What 5 Days of Junk Food Can Do to Your Metabolism
By Dr. Mercola
If you overdo it on pizza, macaroni and cheese, chips,
and ice cream, you might worry about what it's going to do to your thighs or
mid-section. But binging on junk food isn't only a matter of weight gain. It
might have far more serious repercussions than that. People who ate a diet
focused on macaroni and cheese, processed lunchmeat, sausage biscuits,
mayonnaise, and microwavable meals with unhealthy fats, for example, showed
serious negative changes to their metabolism after just five days. After eating
the junk-food diet, the study participants (12 healthy college-aged men)
muscles' lost the ability to oxidize glucose after a meal, which could lead to
insulin resistance down the road.
Even though their caloric intake remained unchanged,
when men ate a junk-food diet their muscles' ability to oxidize glucose was
disrupted in just five days' time. This is a significant change, because muscle
plays an important role in clearing glucose from your body after a meal. Under
normal circumstances, your muscles will either break down the glucose or store
it for later use. Your muscles make up about 30 percent of your body weight, so
if you lose this key player in glucose metabolism it could pave the way
for diabetes and
other health problems.
As reported
by TIME: "'The normal response
to a meal was essentially either blunted or just not there after five days of
high-fat feeding,' [Matthew] Hulver, [PhD, department head of Human Nutrition,
Food, and Exercise at Virginia Tech Hulver] says. Before going on a work-week's worth of a fatty diet, when the men
ate a normal meal they saw big increases in oxidative targets four hours after
eating. That response was obliterated after the
five-day fat infusion. And under normal eating conditions, the biopsied muscle
used glucose as an energy source by oxidizing glucose. 'That was essentially
wiped out after,' he says. 'We were surprised how robust the effects were just
with five days.'"
Morgan Spurlock's documentary Super Size Me was one of the first to vividly
demonstrate the consequences of trying to sustain yourself on a diet of fast
food. After just four weeks, Spurlock's health had deteriorated to the point
that his physician warned him he was putting his life in serious jeopardy if he
continued the experiment. But as the featured study showed, it doesn't take a
virtual month to experience the health effects of a poor diet. In fact, the
changes happen after just one meal,
according to research published in the Journal of the American College
of Cardiology.
When you eat a meal high in
unhealthy fats and sugar, the sugar causes a large spike in your blood-sugar
levels called "post-prandial hyperglycemia." In the long term this
can lead to an increased risk of heart attack, but there are short-term effects
as well, such as:
·
Your tissue becomes inflamed (as occurs when it is
infected)
·
Your blood vessels constrict
·
Damaging free radicals are generated
·
Your blood pressure may rise higher than normal
·
A surge and drop in insulin may leave you feeling
hungry soon after your meal
The good news is that eating a healthy meal helps your
body return to its normal, optimal state, even after just one. Study author
James O'Keefe of the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri
told TIME:
"Your health and vigor, at a very basic level,
are as good as your last meal."
Dr. Braden Kuo of Massachusetts
General Hospital used a pill-sized camera to see what happens inside your
stomach and digestive tract after you eat ramen noodles, one common type
of instant noodles. The results
were astonishing. Even after two hours, they are remarkably intact, much more
so than the homemade ramen noodles, which were used as a comparison. This is
concerning for a number of reasons. For starters, it could be putting a strain
on your digestive system, which is forced to work for hours to break down this
highly processed food (ironically, most processed food is so devoid of fiber
that it gets broken down very quickly, interfering with your blood sugar levels
and insulin release).
When food remains in your digestive
tract for such a long time, it will also impact nutrient absorption, but, in
the case of processed ramen noodles, there isn't much nutrition to be had.
Instead, there is a long list of additives, including the toxic preservative
tertiary-butyl hydroquinone (TBHQ).This additive will likely remain in your
stomach along with the seemingly invincible noodles, and no one knows what this
extended exposure time may do to your health.Common sense suggests it's not
going to be good.
Research published in the Journal of Nutrition found that women who consumed
more instant noodles had a significantly greater risk of metabolic syndrome
than those who ate less, regardless of their overall diet or exercise habits. Past
research also analyzed overall nutrient intake between instant-noodle consumers
and non-consumers, and found, as you might suspect, that eating instant noodles
contributes little value to a healthy diet. The instant-noodle consumers had a
significantly lower intake of important nutrients like protein, calcium,
phosphorus, iron, potassium, vitamin A, niacin, and vitamin C compared
with non-consumers. Those who ate instant noodles also had
an excessive intake of energy, unhealthy fats, and sodium (just one package may
contain 2,700 milligrams of sodium).
Not to mention, refined carbohydrates like breakfast
cereals, bagels, waffles, pretzels, and most other processed foods quickly
break down to sugar in your body. This increases your insulin and leptin
levels, and contributes to insulin resistance, which is the primary underlying
factor of nearly every chronic disease and condition known to man, including
weight gain. Not only that, but remember when you eat junk food you are not
just feeding yourself, you’re feeding your microbiome, too, and
in so doing altering its construction for better or worse. Your body’s diverse
army of microbes is responsible for many crucial biological processes, from
immunity to memory to mental health, so feeding it wisely, with fresh
unprocessed and naturally fermented foods, is crucial to your overall health
and well-being.
In the US, about one-quarter to one-third of adults
fall into the obese category. A staggering two-thirds of Americans are
overweight, and poor diet is in large part to blame. Last year, UN Special
Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, said that "obesity is
a bigger global health threat than tobacco use," and that this fact isn't
taken as seriously as it should be. His statements were delivered at the
opening of the 2014 World Health Organization's annual summit.
De Schutter ultimately wants nations to join forces to
place stricter regulations on unhealthy foods: "Just as the world came
together to regulate the risks of tobacco, a bold framework convention on
adequate diets must now be agreed," he said. 'The Special Rapporteur has previously agitated for greater
governmental action on junk foods, including taxing unhealthy products,
regulating fats and sugars, cracking down on advertising for junk food, and
rethinking agricultural subsidies that make unhealthy food cheaper,' Time
Magazine noted. 'Governments have been focusing
on increasing calorie availability,' he said, 'but they have often been
indifferent to what kind of calories are offered, at what price, to whom they
are made available, and how they are marketed.'"
The idea that being overweight can be more harmful
than smoking is
likely to make many balk, considering how "normal" it has become to
carry around extra pounds, but in terms of overall health effects and
subsequent health care costs, it's likely true.
For example, data collected from
over 60,000 Canadians show that obesity leads to more doctor visits than
smoking. Further, according to a report by The McKinsey Global Institute, the
global cost of obesity is now $2 trillion annually, which is nearly as much as
the global cost of smoking ($2.1 trillion) and armed violence (including war
and terrorism, which also has a global cost of $2.1 trillion). For comparison,
alcoholism costs are $1.4 trillion annually, road accidents cost $700 billion,
and unsafe sex costs $300 billion. What's more, if current trends continue, the
McKinsey report estimates that nearly half of the world's adult population will
be overweight or obese by 2030.
Your body is designed to naturally regulate how much
you eat and the energy you burn. But food manufacturers have figured out how to
over-ride these intrinsic regulators, designing processed foods that are
engineered to be "hyper-rewarding." According to the "food
reward hypothesis of obesity," processed foods stimulate such a strong
reward response in our brains that it becomes very easy to overeat. One of the
guiding principles for the processed food industry is known as
"sensory-specific satiety."
Investigative reporter Michael Moss
describes this as "the tendency for big, distinct flavors
to overwhelm your brain. The greatest successes, whether beverages or
foods, owe their "craveability" to complex formulas that pique your
taste buds just enough, without overwhelming them, thereby overriding your brain's
inclination to say "enough." In all, potato chips are among the most
addictive junk foods on the market, containing all three
"bliss-inducing" ingredients: sugar (from the potato), salt, and fat.
Further, as reported by TIME.
"Studies suggest that fatty, sugary foods promote
excretion of the stress hormone cortisol, which seems to further stimulate
appetite for calorie-dense foods. And the big post-meal spikes in blood sugar
are more likely in people who don't exercise or those who carry weight around
their abdomen. All of it makes it tough for people to stop eating junk food
once they're in the habit. 'The more you eat it the more you crave it. It
becomes a vicious cycle,' says O'Keefe."
And while food companies abhor the
word "addiction" in reference to their products, scientists have
discovered that sugar, in particular, is just that. In fact, sugar is more addictive than cocaine. Research published in
2007 showed that 94 percent of rats that were allowed to choose
mutually-exclusively between sugar water and cocaine, majority chose sugar.
Even rats that were addicted to cocaine quickly switched their preference to
sugar, once it was offered as a choice. The rats were also more willing to work
for sugar than for cocaine.
The researchers speculate that the sweet receptors
(two protein receptors located on the tongue), which evolved in ancestral times
when the diet was very low in sugar, have not adapted to modern times'
high-sugar consumption. Therefore, the abnormally high stimulation of these
receptors by sugar-rich diets generates excessive reward signals in your brain,
which have the potential to override normal self-control mechanisms and thus
lead to addiction. Replacing processed foods with homemade meals made from
scratch using whole ingredients is an ideal and important way to ensure optimal
nutrition. This will automatically cut out the vast majority of refined
sugars, processed fructose,
preservatives, dyes, other nasty chemicals, and many addictive ingredients from
your diet.
This will allow your body to depend less on sugar and
more on fat as its primary fuel—provided you eat enough healthy fat, that is.
As a result, you will no longer crave sugar to keep you going. The key elements
for a healthy diet that can help kick your junk food cravings to the curb are
the following. For a comprehensive guide, please see my free optimized nutrition plan:
·
Avoiding refined sugar, processed fructose, grains,
and processed foods
·
Eating a healthy diet of whole foods, ideally organic,
and replacing the carbs you eliminate with:
o
As much high-quality healthy fat as you want
(saturated and monounsaturated). Many would benefit from getting as much as
50-85 percent of their daily calories from healthy fats. While this may sound
like a lot, consider that, in terms of volume, the
largest portion of your plate would be vegetables, since
they contain so few calories.
Fat, on the
other hand, tends to be very high in calories. For example, just one tablespoon
of coconut oil is about 130 calories—all of it from healthy fat. Good sources
include:
|
|
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Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk
|
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Organic raw nuts, especially macadamia nuts, which
are low in protein and omega-6 fat
|
Organic pastured egg yolks and pastured meats
|
|
o
Large amounts of high-quality organic, locally grown
vegetables, fermented vegetables, and ideally sprouts grown at your home
o
Low-to-moderate amount of high-quality protein (think
organically raised, pastured animals, or eggs)
Ditching processed foods requires
that you plan your meals in advance, but if you take it step-by-step as
described in mynutrition plan, it's quite
possible, and manageable, to painlessly remove processed foods from your diet.
You can try scouting out your local farmer's markets for in-season produce that
is priced to sell, and planning your meals accordingly, but you can also use
this same premise with supermarket sales. You can generally plan a week of
meals at a time, making sure you have all ingredients necessary on hand, and
then do any prep work you can ahead of time so that dinner is easy to prepare
if you're short on time (and you can use leftovers for lunches the next day).
Finally, if you're an emotional eater, I highly recommend using the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT is simple and effective, and
can rapidly help you eliminate your food cravings naturally.
