It’s never been harder to be healthier. It’s not just the chemicals and the pesticides. It’s all the secret health killers that people are told are healthy.
What hurts me the most are all the people trying to eat healthy but instead are poisoned by what they are eating. Stabbed in the back and betrayed by their diet.
Imagine if you think you’re living a healthy life, but it turns out you’ve been living next to a radioactive plant and are going to get cancer. That’s like the Standard American Diet….
Our diets have been infected with malignant, slowly festering cancers. And many times, we don’t feel the consequences until it’s too late. You thought you were headed north, but it turns out you were accidentally driving in reverse the whole time.
Unfortunately that’s the case for most people when it comes to “healthy” eating.
Here are the five main secret killers in your diet that are sabotaging your health.
#1 Vegetable Oils
Vegetable oils are killing you and they’re hidden in almost everything.
What are vegetable oils? First off, they’re not vegetables at all. A more fitting name would be industrial processed seed oil sludge.
In the early 1900s, an evil genius at Procter and Gamble came up with the idea to use cotton seeds — a toxic waste product — and turn them into a cooking oil.
Cotton seeds were first used to make candles and soap. But scientists at P&G later discovered they could hydrogenate these seeds and turn them into a solid that resembled animal fats.
Behold…the birth of Crisco.
This means that vegetable oils are actually made from seeds, not vegetables. Below are some common ones:
- Corn
- Soybean (the most common in diets)
- Sunflower
- Canola
They are directly linked to almost every chronic disease.
- Alzheimer’s
- Cancer
- Insulin resistance
- Acne
- Heart disease
- Autism
- Dementia
- Heart disease
- Autoimmune disorders
- Leaky gut
The craziest part — they’re still labeled as heart healthy by the AHA because they can help lower cholesterol. This is despite the numerous studies showing replacing saturated fat with seed oils increases death rate.
One study for instance, showed that “there was a 22% higher risk of death for each 30 mg/dL reduction in serum cholesterol” when replacing saturated fats with these seed oils .
Today, they are ubiquitous.
Vegetable oil consumption has increased over 1000x since the 1900s. And they are now hidden in almost everything.
Why do they cause so much damage?
Two big reasons:
- Toxic byproducts
- Increasing your omega 6 to omega 3 ratio
The fat you eat becomes the fat on your body. Over the last 25 years, human fat cells have been transformed into stored unsaturated fatty acids. Linoleic acid concentration in human fat cells has increased almost 25x.
The problem is that linoleic acid and seed oils are very unstable and tend to break down into toxic byproducts.
The three best studied toxins that seed oils produce are Acrolein, HNE and MDA. Acrolein is the toxin found in cigarette smoke that causes lung damage. It is a biocide, meaning it kills all life. HNE and MDA are both cytotoxic and mutagenic — they kill cells and alter DNA.
And worst of all is that these toxic byproducts are highly reactive, leading to a cascade of toxic byproduct production when they’re in your body. Think of them like reactive zombies that infect every other fatty acid.
Additionally, vegetable oils disrupt your omega 6 to omega 3 ratio.
Vegetable oils, like canola oil, are predominantly omega 6 fatty acids, such as linoleic acid.
Omega 3s and omega 6s are critical structural components. They have conflicting physiological effects, so the ratio between the two in the diet is important.
As you replace omega 3s with omega 6s in your diet, your body rapidly converts your structural components into whichever you consume. This shows up directly in human fatty tissue. As a result, from 1960 to 1986, the linoleic acid content in human fat tripled from 6% to 18% .
If our body was a house, we’d be constructed with radioactive nuclear waste instead of sturdy concrete under this new paradigm.
A diet high in the omega 6: omega 3 ratio shifts your body to a proinflammatory state. And inflammation has been implicated in every chronic disease.
The best way to change your fatty acid profile and health is with the carnivore diet. If you’re interested in getting started, sign up below for a 30 day guide.
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#2 Gluten
I get it the gluten fear is annoying. To many today, gluten is scarier than nuclear weapons. But it’s warranted.
What is it? Gluten is actually a complex of 100s of different proteins mainly consisting of two: gliadin and glutenin. It is the main protein in wheat and comprises approximately 80% of the protein in wheat.
Gluten can cause a whole spectrum of reactions. It can even kill people that are highly allergic. This alone should make you skeptical of all the health claims around gluten containing foods.
The real danger stems from the fact that you do not have the enzymes to break down their amino acid structure. They are incapable of being digested and anything that cannot be digested or expelled causes harm.
However, even if you don’t have celiac, you should be wary of gluten.
The picture below shows the gut of two people: one with celiac and one without. For both groups of people, gluten their increases intestinal permeability.
How does it exert these toxic affects? Gluten increases zonulin production, a protein that breaks apart the tight junctions in your digestive tract . This causes something known as leaky gut.
And leaky gut is directly associated with everything from acne to cancer.
A study conducted on subjects 61 subjects showed improvements in in autoimmune disorders, IBS, bloating, brain frog and even depression when removing gluten.
Gluten is also neuro-toxic. This randomized controlled trial showed that gluten caused depressive symptoms even in non celiac people
It is one of the most toxic compounds in the food system and just 50 mg can trigger your immune system . The challenge today is it’s almost impossible to avoid.
Gluten helps to hold bread and wheat together. But surprisingly it’s also used in many daily household items like lipsticks, postage stamps, beer, ice-creams, sweets, confectionary, and many more (13).
#3 Lectins
“Vegetables are healthy”. “Eat your fruits and veggies”.
Vegetables and health are synonymous today.
But it turns out they may not be as healthy as you’ve been told. Because plants, unlike animals, cannot run away from predators they produce chemical booby traps to deter them. One of which are lectins.
Lectins are a plant defense mechanism that protect the seeds. . They are in many of the foods you consider the healthiest.
Remember, evolution is about maximizing genetic fitness. That is, increasing the chance genes are passed down to the next generation. If a vegetable’s seeds are eaten, its genes cease to exist.
So plants tend to concentrate their defenses in seeds to protect the family jewels. Over time through evolution, the plants that were best able to protect their offspring survived. Thus, the plants and vegetables that exist today are hyper optimized machines to protect their seeds.
Lectins are highly inflammatory, and resistant to cooking and digestion. Thus, they pass right through the gut where they wreak havoc.
Yet humans continue to try to eat them…
Gluten is the most renown lectin however there are many others that are just as damaging, if not more.
The other lectin that’s especially pernicious is Wheat Germ Agglutinin. An agglutinin is a protein that is in seeds to protect against insects. Crops today are modified to contain higher levels of agglutinin to make them even more resistant to insects.
Wheat Germ Agglutinin is an especially small lectin. So even if the gut wall isn’t compromised, it can still pass through the walls of the intestine easier.
Some of the damaging effects of WGA include [*]:
- Disrupting endocrine dysfunction by binding to insulin receptors
- Blocking sugar from getting into muscle cells
- Interfering with protein digestion
- Increasing inflammation
- Crossing blood brain barrier
- Stimulating weight gain.
One of the biggest reasons the damage from WGA is so insidious is because it is in the bran.
For this reason, whole wheat actually has more and can actually be more obesogenic than white flour.
Lectins are especially damaging to humans because we haven’t adapted to handle them.
For instance, in 1988 a hospital launched a healthy eating day for staff. One dish had red kidney beans. Over the next 4 hours, over 10 people vomited profusely and had diarrhea. It was not a pretty sight in the hospital. No pathogens were found.
The culprit: the lectin phytohaemagglutinin .
Who would think it’s riskier to eat a plant than an animal that’s’ alive? How does something that’s supposedly so innocent cause so much damage?
The challenge is that lectins are not acutely toxic. Unlike chloroform, if you consume lectins in low doses you’re not going to die immediately. The damage occurs over years..
Because of this, it’s hard to link these diseases directly to lectin consumption. But if you cut them out, you’ll notice the fog starts to clear.
Some issues that have been tied to lectin consumption include insulin resistance, leaky gut, autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular disease and depression.
There are 5 main categories of foods highest in lectins
- Beans and legumes
- Squash: pumpkin, butternut, zucchini
- Grains: new food to us. Lectin bombs. Even gluten free
- Nightshades: tomatoes, potatoes, peppers
- Fruit: out of season. If it has a seed it’s a fruit. Peppers and cucumbers.
#4 Glyphosate & Pesticides — Watch out for Cereal and Kale
Another reason vegetables aren’t as healthy as you think is because of all the pesticides they contain.
Unfortunately Kale doesn’t have claws, so the only way for farmers to protect it from insect invasion is with substantial amounts of pesticides.
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world. In 2015 the WHO classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. However, glyphosate is still ubiquitous in foods.
It’s almost impossible to avoid this poison today. According to a recent report, even after washing Kale, 92% of specimens had pesticide residue .
This study shows that exposure to glyphosate increases the risk of some cancers by 40%
Here is where ruminants shine – unlike something like kale, which has no choice but to drown in the pesticides it’s exposed to, the ruminant digestion system can expel glyphosate. According to this study, there is no evidence that the glyphosate cows consume bioaccumulates in the cow’s meat .
Many common vegetables are very high in glyphosate residue. “Superfoods” like almonds, carrots and quinoa are really super-full of pesticides. Soy based products also tend to be high in this pesticide. A recent study showed that the Impossible Burger tested positive for it.
Glyphosate can even contaminate drinking water
A recent report on “health foods” showed that out of 45 oat products studied, 43 had glyphosate. 33% of the ones labeled “organic” did too. Cheerios and Nature’s valley bars were highest in this toxin .
Almost everybody has been infected by this pesticide. This study showed that 93% of American’s tested had glyphosate in their urine .
We have no idea how much damage this pesticide is doing to our bodies. The only way to protect yourself is to eat more meat.
Conclusion
Part of the reason people are so unhealthy today is because of all the silent killers in the diet.
For millions of years humans ate a diet that was predominantly animal protein. And only in the last 10k+ years did that change.
In an evolutionary context, all of the foods mentioned above are equivalent to giving a hunter gatherer an iPhone. They’re completely incomprehensible and cause your immune system to react negatively.
If you’re interested in cutting these hidden killers out of your diet, the best way to do so is with the carnivore diet. Sign up below for a 30 day guide to mastering the carnivore diet.
Your healthier future awaits.
