Hungry for Change

15 Minutes of… “Hungry for Change” Part II

Hungry for Change

Hungry for Change

I want you all to know that it it takes me a good 60 to 90 minutes to watch only 15 minutes of this documentary because I am constantly pausing it to research and truly understand some of the shhhtuff that they are talking about. Here are my takeaways:

  • “the food companies engineer addictions, I believe, into many of the foods”
  • “MSG and free glutamates are used to enhance flavor in about 80% of all processed foods.” – Raymond Francis M.Sc. MIT
  • MSG and free glutamates can be hidden behind over 50 different names
  • a processed, refined, sugar-food or soda will deliver a biochemical change in your brain and make you momentarily uplifted and happy. People get used to that feeling and want to get that momentary feeling back again and they will, but then that feeling will soon drop off and they are left empty, with their bodies and brains looking for the nutrients and the other things that they need to function properly.
  • the food industry wants you to buy more food, that’s what their main goal is. They’re not thinking about your health and wellness; they’re thinking about what they can do to make you buy more of their product. So they manipulate the chemical structure of  the food, so that it gives the impression that it is the most fulfilling thing that you ever had.
  • diet cola has a combination of aspartame and caffeine; these 2 together create a very unique blend of excitotoxin that kills off brain cells, but before they die they have this “excitement” this “buzz.” So what you find with diet cola addicts, they’ll drink Liters of cola a day to get that “Excitement” and “buzz” again; just like drug addicts.
  • Aspartame causes formaldehyde buildup in the brain, frontal lobe inflammation, migraines, visual disturbances, symptoms that mimic multiple sclerosis, headaches, neurological problem, cognitive problems, and seizures (in more serious cases); formaldehyde is put in foods to extend their “shelf life.”
  • when a food additive (like aspartame or any other artificial sweetener) is manufactured, the process of getting approval is: (1) the manufacturer wants creates a new additive, (2) the manufacturer funds (controls) the studies that of course will show evidence that their new additive is safe , and then (3) these studies are submitted to regulatory agencies (ie., the FDA) for approval.
  • The FDA doesn’t have their own scientists that do food analyses. They just evaluate the studies that the manufacturers submit.
  • food companies are just like the tobacco companies, but instead of using nicotine to get their customers addicted, they use MSG, processed sugars, aspartame and other chemicals.
  • many food labels are deceptive; it’s like these major food companies are naming these products based on what they hope you might imagine you’re eating, rather than what is really in the box. And then there are stuff in that food that they don’t want you to know about, so they don’t put it on the label (or they come up with a name that doesn’t sound as bad as the real name.)
  • when you see “Fat-Free,” on a label, it normally means that it is loaded with sugar; you could get a 2lb bad of sugar, label it “Fat Free” and it would be allowed to be put on shelves. Technically, there is not fat, BUT once the sugar is ingested, it will turn in to fat in the body because it sends the sugar levels sky high and the pancreas needs to secrete insulin in order to bring that down so that you don’t die. And insulin [can be] is a fat producing hormone. >> the reasons I, JR, say it can be a fat producing hormone is because insulin allows glucose to go from our bloodstream into our individual cells. And once its in our cells, we either use it as energy OR we store it and those cells become “fat cells.” The issue is that people intake so much sugar, but they are not moving enough to use it as energy; so most people store this sugar in the cells which eventually become “fat cells”
  • fat is really good for you, if its the right type of fat. we need the correct fats and proteins to feel satiated.
  • the worst kinds of fats are the partially hydrogenated fats. These are the hydrogenated oils in baked items, crackers, cookies, butter spreads, margarine, etc.
  • healthy fats are the natural plant based fats like in avocaods, chia seeds, flax seeds and even healthy fat from salmon

15 Minutes of… “Hungry for Change” Part I

Hungry for Change

Hungry for Change

Here are my takeaways from the first 15 minutes of this documentary:

  • we are not eating foods anymore, we are eating “food-like” products and they are adorned and made to look better and smell better so that people are attracted to them. They are made to have a long shelf life and the main objective is not really to give us a healthy product, its to give us a product that will make a lot of profit for the company that is producing it. 
  • we’re moving less and we’re consuming so much nutrient-less calories; these two things combined is the issue. these things combined create an obesity epidemic, a low energy epidemic, a fog in cognition, and we begin to lose the will to take self-responsibility. When we lose the will to take self-responsibility, we turn it all over to a doctor who is only able to prescribe a pharmaceutical pill that doesn’t address the real issues, which are buried and complex.
  • “the average American consumes more than 150 pounds of sugar and sweeteners each year.” – US Department of Agriculture
  • “we are overfed, but we are also starving to death”
  • as a species, the big challenge is to find calories and our body is biologically adapted to this; we seek calorie sources, particularly fats and sugars
  • when we taste something fatty or sweet, our bodies want more of it because for our hunter gatherer ancestors, fat and sugar meant survival
  • our bodies are programmed to “store up” for the “winter,” but the “winter” doesn’t come because we have so many sources of “food” today.
  • hunter-gatherer “gardeners” have an extremely HIGH amount of nutrition and an extremely LOW amount of calories in their food. Compared to our society: we have a high amount of calories, but a low amount of nutritional value
  • we have so many calorie sources, but our body still has the same signals that are ancestors had. so when we eat sweets and fatty foods, our body wants more because it is programmed to behave in a “feast or famine” environment. The problem is that we have FEAST, but there is no famine.
  • we could eat 10,000 calories a day, but if we are not getting the specific nutrients we need, then we are starving on a nutritional basis. and if we are starving on a nutritional basis, our body will remain hungry to get those specific nutrients. man-made foods (like bread and sugar and table salt) trick our body into thinking we’re getting those nutrients.
  • the biggest cause of obesity is addiction
  • we know we shouldn’t eat bad foods, but we don’t know WHY we continue to eat those bad foods