In today’s health-aware world, people have started to check whether what they consume is good for their bodies. Some of these foods are advertised as healthy and useful to the body, when in truth they are not beneficial at all. You may eat these foods expecting they have the required nutrients you need, while thinking they are beneficial to your health. You may have included some of these foods in your diet for a long time without realizing they are unsafe or provide no nutritional benefits. In fact, some foods are more harmful than beneficial. This means you should read labels and try to be more watchful about what you eat, as you could harm yourself unknowingly.
Some foods, such as margarine, vegetable oils, canned and non-organic foods are a part of our everyday diets, yet they contain unsafe compounds and chemicals that may slowly harm us in the long term. To check which food is beneficial and which food is harmful to your body, you need to carefully check the ingredients in the specific food you are purchasing.
For fresh produce, you can how they are cultivated and if preservatives or fertilizer was used to grow them. You need to be cautious when buying anything for eating and know what different chemicals can do to your body. This includes looking at the ingredients in any food you are not certain of, with the goal of eating only healthy food.
More foods are being made in labs with chemicals, either to enhance the flavor or to ensure the manufacturing costs are low. Farms are raising and cultivating animals and crops using chemicals for quick maturity, so they can be ready for the market in a fraction of the normal expected time.
In this article, you will learn about nine foods that are common in most diets, yet are extremely unhealthy. This article does not include every one of the foods you need to avoid, but rather it gives the nine most basic ones used by almost everybody.
1. Microwave Popcorn
We all love popping fresh, hot popcorn in the microwave. This simple-to-make snack is universally loved, particularly since you can make and eat it in a few minutes. Health authorities; however, have a notice for everybody who appreciates this snack: Microwave popcorn is not healthy.
When you pop your popcorn in the microwave, there is a sweet smell that makes the popcorn more enticing. What we don’t know is that sweet smell is a chemical known as diacetyl, which is an artificial butter flavoring. Breathing in such a substance, as per the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), is connected with a lung malady disease commonly known as “popcorn lung.” While diacetyl is relatively harmless when you eat it, breathing in the vapor after you have heated it to high temperatures is extremely unsafe. Countless laborers in popcorn production industries have been found to have issues with their lungs because of exposure over a long period to artificial flavorings like diacetyl.
Research has connected diacetyl with Alzheimer’s disease since it can pass through the blood-brain barrier that is supposed to keep toxic substances from the brain. It results in the brain proteins folding into the beta-amyloid, creating an Alzheimer’s-linked form. Aside from diacetyl, there have been worries about the high amount of salt in some of the popcorn packages.
Perfluoroalkyl, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) are chemicals used to line the popcorn bags, to keep them from being soaked in oil. They blend with the popcorn when you warm it and have been connected to issues with the thyroid and endocrine system.
If you choose to still consume microwave popcorn, be sure to let it cool completely before opening, so that you will inhale less diacetyl. You can pop the kernels the old-fashioned way, or prepare the popcorn using olive oil on a stove, that would be even better. Homemade popcorn is sweeter and healthier than the microwave type – and more affordable, too.