Why nutrition facts are the 51st shade of grey

For many years, I suffered from food addiction. It led me to take up studies about natural health, and my quest for answers about my own painful experience has empowered me with armloads of truth. Shocking truth.

We now know that diets don't work. The fact that you're eating too much boils down to:

• Wonky eating habits
• The actual make-up of the food (some foods are addictive, and carefully engineered to be addictive so you keep coming back for more)

Being overweight is about habits that need readjusting, not just about stopping to eat the bad food you're eating, or starving yourself.

In my quest for knowledge, I learned that empowering yourself with truth and facts helps you make better choices.

This article explains how the food and the healthcare industry have lied to us. It will take you back in time to see how those of old used food for survival.

It will show you how you should be thinking about food if you want to finally conquer overeating and food addiction.

For years the People have been deceived. For years, the People have been gullible. In our naivete, we've simply accepted that food and healthcare companies are truthful and that they care for our health.

But food is big business.

Health is even bigger business.

Food companies and healthcare companies have hidden agendas, and they’re all about the money.

It is precisely these two industries which have led you astray and are in the process of destroying your health because of their greed for your money.

We have listened and taken their advice for too long, and it’s killing us.

They have deceived us into believing lies which they spew out in order to create puppets out of us. Puppets who keep buying their products so that they benefit.

They do not care about your health. Neither do they care about the health of your children.

The lies they’ve fed us have impacted our thinking, our physical health and our emotional health.

We’ve been told to eat three meals a day. We’ve been taught these meals have to consist mostly of carbohydrates (cereals, pasta, breads), then vegetables and fruit, then proteins and dairy and lastly, treats.

I’m betting you never knew that it was precisely the cereal industry which came up with the food pyramid in order to get people to buy more cereal!

The Wall Street Journal reports that " the government's food pyramid correlates to obesity".

Most cereals contain the nutritional value of a carboard box. Their nutritional facts are deceptive.

Let me rephrase that.

Most cereals – which are marketed as the best and healthiest way to start your day, contain the nutritional value of a cardboard box.

Why on earth should we be eating more cereal if there is no nutritional value in it? In fact, they do us harm. There are a few which may be nutritional, but generally, the ones we buy in boxes at the superstore down the road are actually harmful. Consider this:

"Yogurt Berry Crunch" cereal (with added fiber!) from a popular brand contains the following:

• 51 ingredients, including a whopping 10 different sources of sugar
• 7 corn derived ingredients (very likely from genetically modified corn), including corn syrup and corn starch
• Inflammatory wheat ingredients and gluten
• Two of the worst damaging, denatured oils you can consume - canola oil and soybean oil

This is really just the tip of the iceberg, but I’m hoping it gives you an idea of how food companies – but not only the cereal companies – market their products so that we will buy them, even if we’re paying for crap, not nutrition.

Most of us think about food in an unhealthy way.

This results in weight gain and obesity.

The more unhealthy, fat and desperate we become, the more we pay for food, and then we pay doctors to “fix” our health because of the food we eat, and then we pay more to weight loss companies who we hope will help us lose weight.

Scrap everything you’ve ever been taught about health and weight loss.

Let's go back to basics...

How should we relate to food?

I think the best thing to do is to take a look at how people in Biblical times thought about food - people in those days did not suffer from obesity. It was unheard of. Actually, the first case of obesity was in the late 1800's!

In Biblical days, eating food was a very social event, but in those days, they most often did not eat three times a day. Some would eat once a day, and some would even go hungry for much of the time due to scarcity of food.

The staple food in Biblical times was bread, but very importantly, the nutritional bread in those days was not like today’s bread which is filled with processed ingredients and altogether bad for you.

They would use olive oil and most meals would consist of bread and olive oil with water, and sometimes milk and cheese from their flocks and fruit and vegetables from their orchards and gardens. Only on very special occasions would they eat meat. Those who lived near the Sea of Galilee would eat fish.

Other foods recorded are barley, wheat, spelt, millet, olives, grapes, figs, pomegranates, sesame seeds and vegetables. Very often people picked ears of grain to eat raw, or roasted to produce a sort of popcorn.

All food was fresh, organic and natural since it came out of the house holder’s own field, vineyard and vegetable garden. It certainly was never sent to a factory!

Wine was generally kept for a special meal or for someone of importance and was mixed with water.

Vegetables or fruit could be mixed in with the dough to make a sort of sweetened fruit loaf, much like we have today but excluding the bad ingredients.

Figs were the most important fruit and its trees grew all over the countryside. Dates were eaten fresh.

Except in the houses of the rich, meat appeared only at special times such as a wedding, so the people in those times generally ate a predominantly vegetarian diet.

Other foods eaten included:

• Eggs
• Fowl
• Pigeon
• Locusts
• Cured fish (cured by son and salt)
• Nuts
• Dates
• Herbs

If they ate breakfast, it probably would have been bread and olives, with an onion or any other fruit or vegetable which might be in season.

If they ate a midday meal, it would more than likely have been bread soaked in wine with a handful of parched corn, or bread and grilled fish.

How Did People in Biblical Times View Food?

More importantly, was perhaps how people in Biblical times viewed food as opposed to how we view it today.

I am not referring to people of great wealth in those days, because they too knew very well how to indulge, just like you and I. Rather, I am referring to the average person in those days who did not obsessively plan their meals.

These people would leave home to go and work and perhaps while strolling, pick a few berries or figs to sustain them on their journey. Today, we spend huge amounts of money on fast foods, and a huge amount of time shopping for food ingredients. It’s rather sad to think about how complicated we ourselves have made life, and our eating habits.

How We Should Aim to Think About Food

Pondering how people used to eat way back then, the end goal for how overeaters or food addicts should think about food, is to get our minds to think of food as a means for survival and well-being, and to try to eat as simply as possible so that we don’t think of it excessively or dwell on how good it tastes.

Yes, it’s a lot different to today’s way of living and eating, where we are inundated with advertising, smells, so-called nutritional and diet experts, etc.

Simple and healthy – really healthy – is what we should be aiming for. What is healthy – physically and emotionally?

Physically would mean the food we eat:

Should be as natural and unprocessed as possible – fruit, vegetables, raw nuts and seeds, cold pressed oils are the way to go.

Emotionally would mean the way we think about food:

Our thinking should be: what should we eat for optimum health, and how can we make food and meals less complicated?

Good health and weight loss is not complicated. It's actually pretty simple.

Mary-Ann Shearer, South Africa's first natural health guru, says it's not about taking your favorite foods away, but rather adding more of the good to your diet, bit by bit.

The only reason a program would be complicated is if someone wants to make money from it.

They're counting on your desperation.

And very blurred nutrition facts. Designed to confuse.