4 Common Foods That Kill 15 Million People Per Year

The biggest causes of death in the world are preventable, lifestyle-related diseases. These include obesity, heart disease, type II diabetes and various types of cancer. In the year 2011 alone, these diseases killed over 15 million people (1). Interestingly, most of these diseases appear to be completely absent in populations that eat a non-industrial diet (2, 3, 4). What this implies is that there is something in the Western environment that is causing them. The unhealthy diet that we are eating is probably the biggest contributor. These 4 common foods are by far the worst… 1. Sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup Added sugar is often considered unhealthy because it contains “empty” calories. That is, plenty of energy without any vitamins or minerals. This is true, but it is really just the tip of the iceberg. Let me explain why… Sugar (as in table sugar, or sucrose) and high fructose corn syrup consist of the simple sugars glucose and fructose in about a 1:1 ratio. Every cell in the human body can metabolize glucose, but the liver is the only organ that can metabolize fructose in meaningful amounts (5). While the liver can easily metabolize the small amounts of fructose found in fruit, large amounts of fructose from added sugars can overload the liver (6). When the liver gets more fructose than it can handle, it turns the excess into fat (7). This fat either gets shipped out of the liver as VLDL (very low density lipoprotein), or it may lodge in the liver and cause non-alcoholic fatty liver disease… which can lead to a host of problems (8, 9). Controlled trials in humans show that large amounts of fructose can lead to most of the characteristic features of the metabolic syndrome in only 10 weeks (10, 11): Increased triglycerides, small, dense LDL cholesterol, apoB and oxidized LDL. This indicates a massive increase in the risk of heart disease. Insulin resistance, a stepping stone towards type II diabetes.



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