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5 Reasons To Avoid Processed Foods
These days, processed foods are everywhere. From the snacks you eat to the meals you prepare for your family, many of the products or ingredients you use are highly processed. Let’s discuss 5 important reasons that you and your family should avoid processed foods.
1. Addictive And Convenient
Most processed foods are loaded with addictive ingredients such as high fructose syrup and other sugars, as well as sodium and fats.
Another addictive factor behind these processed foods and snacks is their level of convenience. They are literally everywhere.
2. Large Amounts Of Sugar
Manufacturers add sugars to their products to improve the taste. And while this improvement is highly successful, it is also highly harmful to those who consume it on a regular basis.
Large amounts of sugar can lead to such health issues as weight gain, and tooth decay, and can even increase your risk for heart disease.
3. Excessive Amounts Of Salts
Sodium in processed foods and snacks doesn’t just serve one purpose but two. It is a preservative and a flavor enhancer so that means that processed foods also have double the amount of sodium in them.
These high amounts of sodium can lead to dangerous health conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and even stroke.
4. Poor Digestive Function
Soluble fiber is an important component in unprocessed foods that helps your body with its digestive functions. This fiber continent, however, is lost when foods are processed. Because most processed foods are so low in fiber, many people who consume them experience poor digestive function and bowel transit time.
Having little or no fiber in your diet also affects your gut microbiome. Gut microbiomes refer to thousands of different bacteria that live in your intestines and help your body with digestion. When your body experiences a lack of fiber there is no fuel to support these microscopic gut workers.
5. Difficult To Understand Labels
Perhaps the most damaging is the use of misleading labels. Have you ever read a food label and all of its listed ingredients? Pretty confusing, right? This is why even when you are trying to eat healthier, it can still be difficult to do so.
How can you understand and avoid things you don’t want in your food or body if you can’t even understand the label of ingredients on the bottle or box? And as if labels being hard to understand is not bad enough, oftentimes marketing strategies are just as confusing and dishonest.
Contact Us
Time for some good news – you don’t have to try to figure all of this out on your own. Our goal here at The Gut Authority is to provide you with the education and knowledge to better understand your health and needs. Our office is located on County Road 13 in the Williamsburg Office Park, in Daphne Alabama. We also proudly serve the Gulf Shores, Al., area. So, if you’re ready to be better informed and begin living healthier, contact us today.
