 The number one food worse than sugar. Okay, by now you know that sugar is a huge contributor to poor health and serious illness. But there is another major offender that needs to be on your radar. In fact, it's equally dangerous, if not worse for you than sugar. I'm talking about highly processed carbohydrates like whole grain bread and bagels. Now here's why. Yes, these are all carbohydrates and for most of us sugar is a carbohydrate. But sugar is actually what we think of as sugar is table sugar. And table sugar is actually two sugar molecules bound together. One is called glucose and one is called fructose, which is fruit sugar. The combination of those two sugars bonded together is what we call sucrose or table sugar. Now, so much of our sugar in processed foods now comes from high fructose, corn syrup or other sources of high fructose sugar. Now, that sounds in a way like a good idea because well, fructose is fruit sugar and everybody knows how good fruit is for you. Well, not so fast. It turns out that fructose is significantly sweeter than table sugar. And so companies have found through the years that they can give you the sweetness you're looking for by substituting cheap corn sugar, high fructose corn syrup for, quote, real sugar, table sugar and get you to enjoy even more of that sweetness. But as I've shown in my books and has been shown now in humans, fructose and particularly high fructose corn syrup is one of the leading causes of obesity in Americans. It's a leading cause of obesity in rats and mice and it's now leading the charge of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a fancy name for fatty liver. And we're having an epidemic, particularly in our children of fatty liver disease and it's all from the high fructose corn syrup in so much of our processed foods. Now add to that the fact that we grind these grain products into a fine, fine powder, which are individual starch molecules. Now, starch is individual glucose molecules all bound together, which is quite frankly, slow to digest. But because of industrialized processes, we can now break all those bonds and you'll have an individual starch molecule, which is glucose, which is instantly absorbed into your bloodstream. Couple that with the fact that most of our highly processed foods are also processed with seed oils, particularly oils that are called linoleic acid. In my new book, Unlocking the Keto Code, I pointed out that all the evidence linking seed oils to ill health actually when you strip away the actual cause of ill health from these seed oils is because these seed oils are always used in combination with highly refined grain products and high fructose corn syrup. So it's a triple whammy, but the real culprits are the highly refined grains and in the high fructose corn syrup. So watch my episode. We had Dr. David Kessler, the former head of the FDA on Podcast 120 break down how the labeling laws were changed to hide the amount of these highly processed carbohydrates from your knowledge. And he uses the example of a bagel and a bagel looks like it has no sugar on the label, but in fact, the bagel has the equivalent of 11 teaspoons of sugar and it's hidden there in plain sight on the label. So every time you say, oh, wow, look at that. A healthy bagel, it's low fat, there's no sugar in it. What a great, healthy thing. It's organic, not so fast. It's been processed to instantly raise sugar in your bloodstream. And that's the worst possible contribution. What else is wrong with this process? Well, traditionally, when people eat whole grains, they ate grains, well, whole. Look at a piece of whole wheat bread sometime. See any whole pieces of wheat in there? Of course not. They've been ground up into a fine powder. That's the problem. There are no whole grains in whole grain foods. The second thing, as you know, is that grains in general contain lectins. And this is not the purpose of this lecture, but lectins are like swallowing razor blades. Finally, the more these starch molecules are bound together, the longer they take to digest into simple sugars. And back in the good old days, when people actually ate whole foods, these things were digested slowly. You didn't get this sudden sugar hit into your bloodstream. And a lot of these molecules of starch were never digested in your upper part of your intestine. And they made it down to the lower part of your intestines, your colon, where most of your good bacteria live. And they kind of ate the leftovers, which as we now know, was incredibly important, not only for those bacterial health, but more importantly, your health. But now, because we've refined even whole grains to a powder, instantly all of these sugar molecules are absorbed way up in the upper part of your intestines. And nothing is available leftover for those poor guys who are waiting down at the end of the line for what they need. So beware the words whole grain goodness. These are not good for you in so many ways because they become processed. Now, the other problem with these is that these sugar molecules do not have to appear on the label as sugar, even though that's exactly what they are. And so the Department of Agriculture, whose business it is to sell agricultural products to you, made a deal with the administration to hide the actual amount of sugar in products. So buyer beware, if you're reading a label on whatever you're going to buy, your eyes automatically go to sugar or added sugars. Take your eyes off of that, that's a distraction. Look at total carbohydrates per serving size. That tells you the actual number of grams of sugar in that product. Now, right below that is fiber. Take away the grams of fiber because fiber is indigestible and it doesn't count against you. But when you do that, you will actually have the actual grams of sugar in a serving size, not what's on the label. And as I've said many times, take those grams of sugar divide by four. There are four grams of carbohydrates in a teaspoon of sugar. And so when you do the math, you will be shocked with the number of teaspoons of sugar in a serving of what you're about to eat. And once you see that, really give a second thought, give a third thought, give, stop thinking and don't eat it because you're being lied to about the amount of sugar you're actually eating. And these refined carbohydrates are more dangerous than pure sugar. Keep that in mind. So why keep that in mind? Because there's far better ways to get filled up. So instead of having these refined foods, look for foods that are naturally whole and full of fiber. And of course my favorite as a snack, since we're kind of talking about snacky food, is nuts. Nuts are whole foods. They are loaded with fiber and they're quite frankly very poor in simple available sugars. And even if they do contain carbohydrates, which they do, those carbohydrates are tightly bound in that nut. And so it's gonna take an incredibly long time for you to digest down to those simple carbohydrates. But the good news is the fiber in those nuts and some of those carbohydrates are gonna make it all the way down to your gut buddies down in your colon where they're supposed to be. Nuts are by far one of your best ways of getting a snack into you without worrying about all that sugar. As you know, my favorites are pistachios, walnuts, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts are great. If you wanna have a few Brazil nuts, Brazil nuts are a rich source of selenium which is an essential mineral that we're quite low on. But here's the deal, you only need three Brazil nuts a day to meet your selenium requirements. So don't go have a giant package of Brazil nuts. Similarly, the object of the game is not to eat entire packages of nuts. Nuts are very filling and unfortunately very high in calories. And when I want people to gain weight actively, I have them eat large amounts of macadamia nuts. The Adventist health data, and most of you know, I spent most of my career as a professor at Loma Linda University and Adventist institution. The Adventist health data shows that one of the reasons the Adventists are the only blue zone in the United States, people with incredible longevity is the amount of nuts that they eat, either plain or as part of their meals. We make a lot of very interesting nut-based foods. And take nuts, put them in your diet, take the simple processed foods, the simple carbohydrates out of your diet and watch what happens. I think you're gonna love this one. It actually lessens ATP production and increases fatty liver. And so a fruit smoothie is the last thing you want for energy.