How The Richest Country In The World Has Become Malnourished And Overweight

By Darren Craddock

It is no secret that Americans are gaining weight. Every day you see something on the news talking about the problems of obesity. What you may not know is that along with the problems of obesity is a lesser known issue that is just as serious - and changeable. Nearly all Americans are deficient in magnesium, zinc, calcium, the B vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids.

The effects of malnutrition costs millions each year. 

Malnutrition is a condition that is caused by not getting enough of the right nutrients to keep your body healthy. You would think that just being fat would mean that you would have plenty of nutrients - in fact a reserve of nutrient. Ironically it seems to be the opposite. We are not getting fat eating healthy foods. We are getting fat by eating un-nutritious chemically enhanced, highly processed facsimiles of food. Right now, an entire generation of children does not even know what real food looks or tastes like.

The American diet has changed – drastically, and not for the good. It all started with the industrial revolution, we needed to be able to feed lots of people in a crowded space. This meant that people could no longer afford the land to grow their own fresh foods. The process rapidly accelerated after WWII. Modernism swept the country and the idea of packaged foods took hold.

Feed the masses but don't nourish them

In order to feed the increasing number of people clustered in every growing city, the process of refining and distributing food dramatically changed. In order to make foods have a longer shelf life and survive transportation and packaging, filler and preservatives were added. Keep in mind, many of these substances were the exact same chemicals used in cleaning products and other non food applications.

Food as a product rather than nutrition. 

Food became manufactured rather than grown. Chemists worked on food flavorings rather than food recipes. A variety of dyes and fillers were added to everything. These added fillers were designed to make common family foods mix with water and preservatives we added to make them last longer. Nearly every possible kind of chemical was tinkered with and injected into the food most Americans eat.

This radical way of processing foods meant that besides chemicals being added, many essential nutrients were being removed –entirely– rendering the food worthless to our bodies. The husks from rice, the sheath from grains and too many others to name. Not only were we now ingesting a boatload of chemicals, the food that was left was often stripped down and nutritionally void. Entire generations that had eaten homemade wholegrain bread now marveled at light fluffy (a nutritionally devoid) white bread.

The big problem here is that we had no idea what this would do to the human body. Since people did not start falling over dead, we assumed it was safe. Because more people had access to more types of food than ever before the effect of this radical change were not immediately noticeable. Several generations later, we are definitely feeling the effects of this radical shift in what we eat.

Diabetes and heart disease are epidemic in America. 

Next came sugar and salt. Even thought salt has been a major form of preserving foods for thousands of years; it has only been recently (the last hundred years) that people have started having serious health issues as a result of too much salt. The next culprit is sugar. Sugars, especially high fructose corn syrup, became a major food ingredient - even in toothpaste! The body changes sugar into 2 to 5 times more fat in the bloodstream than it does starch. It changes your blood sugar levels by rapidly elevating them and then dropping them just as suddenly. Diabetes and heart disease are rampant in America and both are largely self induced illnesses created by the choices we make when we eat.

The American Diabetes Association estimates that 15.7 million Americans have diabetes, the nation's sixth leading cause of death by disease. These and other effects of diabetes--including a significant increase in heart disease, kidney and eye disease and other health problems--can be prevented by maintaining good blood glucose control, as well as a healthy weight, a low-fat diet and regular exercise.