Eating too Many Processed Foods?

Snack Box Diet Vegetables

Snack Box Diet Vegetables

Could it be that we really are eating too many processed foods?

I would say yes!

But what is the alternative?

Is getting back to nature one of them?

For a long time the question has been posed that staying along the lines of “Can eating like Neanderthal or an ape improve our health?”

When we see how many diseases there are apparently connected to high cholesterol and blood pressure –  we’re told that the numbers of these diseases are on the increase day by day. It does rather raise the issue about whether or not our current western diet is actually a major factor or cause, of these cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, stroke and diabetes.

Paying the Price

That of course leads us onto the second question: “Are we paying the price for eating all these processed foods?”

Dietician Lyn Garton was responsible for taking ten volunteers on a journey back to our culinary roots, where she took a leaf out of our ancestors’ cookbooks, just to see what impact a comparatively short few days of eating much healthier food would have on reducing the risk of fatal illnesses, as mentioned above.

At the end of the test, biological markers for cholesterol and hypertension were measured to see how successful this test was. After the twelve day test, the groups total cholesterol fell by over 23%, and there was a marked decrease in the amount of sodium levels. From all of this, we can conclude that simply by introducing changes into our diet, by moving away from processed foods towards more healthily organically based foods, our health can be dramatically improved.

All the volunteers used in this test were chosen because they had above-average levels of cholesterol, according to the doctors, ranging from between 5 and 6.8. Also the test group confessed that they were eating diets which had very few fruits and vegetables, and were probably very high in trans-fats and many of them were confessing a life of fast, processed food.

Now obviously, the dramatic results from this test were slightly skewed because the volunteers were following a diet that had 5kg of fruit and vegetables a day, which with a balanced controlled carbohydrate diet would prove unnecessary, and in fact the pressures of our modern lives would probably make this totally impractical.

The Value of Good Vegetables.

However, what it does show is that if you want to lower your triglycerides levels then cutting down on processed foods and re-introducing vegetables, nuts and certain fruits into your diet would make that possible.

Here is just a small sample:

 

  • Apples
  • Apricots
  • Asparagus
  • Avocado
  • Bananas
  • Blueberries
  • Broccoli
  • Cabbage
  • Carrots
  • Cashews
  • Cauliflower
  • Cherries
  • Courgettes
  • Dates
  • Figs
  • Grapes
  • Hazelnuts
  • Honey
  • Kiwi fruit
  • Mange toutes
  • Mangoes
  • Melons
  • Mushrooms
  • Olives
  • Paw-paws
  • Peaches
  • Peanuts
  • Pears
  • Peas
  • Peppers
  • Plums
  • Radishes
  • Raspberries
  • Satsumas
  • Spring Onions
  • Strawberries
  • Sugar-snap peas
  • Summer Cabbage
  • Tomatoes
  • Walnuts
  • Watercress

To name but a few!

Many of these are allowed on The Snack Box Diet and would add a tasty addition to what you may be eating already.

As we’ve said before, variety is something to aim for in any diet – the more the merrier.

Snack Box Diet Food Preperation

Snack Box Diet Food Preperation

This is one problem you won’t have with the snack box diet as when you think about it, you are preparing all your meals for the day at the same time. And even if your still having to prepare meals for the rest of the family, it won’t really take up any more time.

The real keys here are planning and using your time wisely.

Planning is virtually self-explanatory.

With most diets you would be encouraged to sit down at the beginning of the week and sensibly plan what it is you’re going to eat throughout the week or even the month. With the snack box diet this is done for you.

Not only that but the shopping list has also been taken care of as well.

So there is a huge time gain over other diet systems.

Wise Use of Time

This again is fairly self-explanatory.

If you’ve got to be in the kitchen preparing food, you may as well be doing the preparation – not just for the meal that you’re going to eat immediately, but also for the meal that you might be eating later on or even the next day.

While you’re waiting for one pot to come to the boil or something to finish cooking under the grill or in the oven, you can make preparations for what it is you’re going to need for a later meal.

Then all you need to do is store it safely in the cooler ready to be used as and when it’s needed.

Even simple things like doing a few days salad preparation in one hit, and then storing it in a plastic bag in the cooler, can gain you so much time it would seem a shame not to take those opportunities.

So there you have a few seeds for thought, it’s really up to you to take them and nurture them, and build on them, using probably the most valuable tool any cook can have.

That tool? … Plain common sense.

What do I do?

For instance, the other weekend, we had a stir-fry Chinese meal, and when I was preparing the vegetables for that I didn’t just prepare the vegetables that I needed for the immediate meal, I literally doubled the quantity and put the excess into the fridge ready for another meal.

Let’s face it, it’s not the actual work of chopping and peeling and things like that that take the most time – it’s the getting things out and prepared and the clearing away afterwards that takes the most time. So just by doing two lots of vegetables at one time, you gain 15-20 minutes preparation and clearing up time in one fell swoop!

Other things, for example, if you’re cooking a chicken – cook a slightly bigger chicken so that you’ve got extra meat left over that you can then use in another meal, such as a chicken salad. It’s all of these little things that build up in order for you to gain time.

Dealing with Constipation

Any change of diet – particularly one that involves as drastic move away from high levels of carbohydrates as The Snack Box Diet one does, are bound to cause some sort of resistance from the body as it gets used to it’s new regime.

For many people, the fact that they are no longer eating vast quantities of pap and mush means that their digestive system actually has less to do.  It’s no wonder then that it slows down and so going to the toilet becomes less frequent.
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In real terms, the slowing down happens a little behind the  reduction in food eaten, so for a time it can seem that you’re not going to the toilet as you think you should.  At the same time the digestive system – used to having to work overtime – can for the first few days ‘over process’ the food that you’ve eaten.

This means that not only is the quantity of poop reduced but that which eventually does come out the other end is drier and harder than what may be normal for you.

This is not true constipation – it’s more the body retuning to another way of working.

That said, whilst constipation is rare when following a diet like this properly, it’s not unknown, so worthy of further gentle help.

One of the first things to do is to make sure you are drinking enough fluids as dehydration and constipation are firm friends.

Also, make sure you are eating a reasonable amount of fibre. That’s obvious but sometime we forget.[/private_silver]

Snack Box Diet Members

Membership during the launch phase of The Snack Box Diet Members website will be free for the first month. Obviously, the discount will be discontinued very soon as member numbers increase.

There is after all a lot of content on the site but only members get access to it.

Mark Moxom has made it clear that he would rather limit numbers and give members quality than leave the flood gate open at the risk of standards dropping.