The article that changed EVERYTHING

As i said in my introduction, reading Jillian Michael's Master Your Metabolism felt like it opened the world wide open for me!  I'll get into what she goes over in detail in another post but a long story short, your metabolism is driven by your hormones.  Your hormones control whether you gain or lose weight and EVERYTHING we do affects our hormones.  Our hormones are made to work at homeostasis (which is when your hormone levels are balanced).  This means your body is working properly by burning fat the way it should.  This is what makes the difference between the people who naturally do not gain weight, and those of us that smell a muffin and gain 10 pounds.  Our hormones react to everything. They react to what we eat, what we inhale, whether we sleep enough.  EVERYTHING.  So in an attempt to further explain why we should all be PETRIFIED of eating processed foods, Jillian cites this article published in the Chicago Tribune in January of 2006.  Its a little long winded, good reading nonetheless but in summation, the owner of Kraft used some of the same brain research that a tobacco company and alcohol company used in an attempt to make foods more appealing to the masses.  Wait...WHAT?! You mean my little All-American Kraft Singles were produced by researching what appeals to people who smoke?!  

This should freak EVERYONE out.  My first thought is, how is this not illegal?!  Here I am thinking that my good old grilled sandwich is harmless, when the process it endured to come to life came from the same research that caused people to smoke and drink like there's no tomorrow.  After reading this article, I realized I could no longer go on shopping for groceries and making a run to McDonald's or any other fast food place or restaurant for that matter without first investigating more about not only how they cooked their food, but what ingredients were in their food.  


Here's another example.  As i've said before, i'm a true Jillian Michael's fan. I love her training style, her ability to be so blunt about things, and how she is a no BS kind of person.  I don't know how many of you watch Biggest Loser, but I always thought the in-show commercials were always kind of cheesy.  But after finding out that Jillian was very adamant about eating organic natural food whenever possible, I started thinking about those in-show commercials.  And I realized that the only two products I had ever seen Jillian promote were the Brita water filter and Luna Bars.  Bob did most of the other products.  So I decided to do a little experiment.  I picked the Extra Dessert Delights sugar free gum from Wrigley's (Key Lime flavored) and decided to look at the ingredients.  Now before I go on, I just want to remind you that the Biggest Loser show endorsed this gum on the show as a way to curb cravings and promote weight loss. Here goes:


Ingredient #1:  Sorbitol.  I want everyone to click this link (Wikipedia definition of sorbitol) and please read out loud the first sentence to yourself. 


"Sorbitol, also known as glucitol, is a sugar alcohol that the human body metabolizes slowly. "


I don't know about you but "human body metabolizes slowly," sounds a lot like it slows down your metabolism.  Here is this extremely popular, highly viewed show that promotes weight loss to live healthier lives, encouraging me to chew gum that will curb my appetite, but at the same time, slow down my metabolism!  That is just insane.  Now that being said, I highly doubt that one piece of gum every now and then would cause that much damage.  But can you imagine the effect that this had on the people that took what the Biggest Loser (again highly reputable show) encouraged their viewers to use as a tool to help with their weight loss and carried that pack of gum religiously and had one every time they had a craving (don't know about you but that's several times a day)?   That could cause serious damage to their metabolism!  So here are all these people chewing this gum to try and lose weight, when INGREDIENT NUMBER ONE makes your metabolism slow down.  


Now i know what you're thinking.  How much damage could all this really cause? I want you to do the experiment for yourself.  The next time you are at home, getting ready to cook, I want you to look at the ingredients and google a couple of them.  Google the ones you can't pronounce.  You will be surprised at what you find and might start thinking twice when you decide whether or not to take that free "harmless" sample of cookie cake when you are walking in the mall.  

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