Does the Food Industry Have a Dirty Little Secret?

Highlights:

• Americans gobble up over 50 billion pounds of sugar and 14.5 billion gallons of soda every year courtesy of monster food companies!
• The modern U.S. diet is nutritionally bankrupt and packed with refined sugars, high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, starches, gums and tons of artificial ingredients.
• Eating too much sugar contributes to obesity, heart disease, diabetes mellitus, and even cancer.
• Sugar is a big driver in insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, pre-diabetes, and type 2 diabetes.
• These 5 tips can help you improve metabolism, assist in weight loss, hold on to muscle and help you maintain healthy blood sugar levels.
• You can complement your new and improved diet and physical activity program with Almased, the low-glycemic and high-protein shake that helps us optimize our metabolic health!

Yes, it does. In fact, these corporations would much rather you didn’t know that the average American eats 152 pounds of sugar every year.

That’s well over 50 billion pounds — or 25,046,484 tons — of sugar every year!

That’s more than the weight of the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state!

To put this in perspective, nearly 200 years ago the average American only ate 6.3 pounds of sugar a year.

Not that a 19th-century menu was ideal — by any stretch — but at least we know it wasn’t loaded with refined sugars, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fats, starches, gums and tons of artificial ingredients we have today.

And in the place of nutrients, the food fat cats have made good and sure that they’ve replaced wholesome food with the nutritional version of gunk and goop — and at the top of the list is sugar.

In fact, these masters of manufacturing today add gargantuan levels of sugar to up to 74 percent of all food products!

While we do need limited amounts of sugar in our diet — our cells and brain do very much need glucose for energy — the problem is that the U.S. diet has become absolutely perverted into one massive sugar overload.

And if sugars and “badditives” in our food weren’t devastating enough, Americans also down 14.5 billion gallons of sweetened, empty-calorie soda each and every year.

This is especially bad because excess sugar is one of the contributors to diseases like obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even cancer.

If we don’t do anything to combat it, insulin resistance — along with its partners in crime, obesity and physical inactivity — often leads to pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes.

Pre-diabetes, which affects 84 million Americans, is the stage right before diabetes, when blood sugar levels are almost, but not quite, high enough to “graduate” our insulin resistance to full-blown disease.

In type 2 diabetes — what used to be called adult-onset diabetes and which is also called diabetes mellitus —your cells become resistant to insulin and your pancreas can’t make enough insulin to overcome this resistance.

Instead of being able to go into your cells, where it's needed for energy, sugar builds up in the bloodstream.

If diet and physical activity changes aren’t made, type 2 diabetes can lead to such serious problems as: heart and vascular disease; nerve damage (neuropathy); kidney damage; eye damage; slow-healing wounds that lead to amputation, hearing loss, skin infections, sleep apnea, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Certain foods can increase our metabolism through something called the thermic effect of food (TEF), which is caused by the extra calories needed to process some nutrients.

Protein gives us the biggest boost in TEF, increasing our metabolic rate by 15–30 percent.

It also makes us feel fuller, which makes us less likely to overeat, too.

And when we’re trying to lose fat, protein helps keep our metabolism primed so we can hold onto our lean muscle mass.

Making sure that we’re getting high-quality amino acids, the building blocks of protein (such as taurine), is just as important.

Fortunately, Almased, the low-glycemic, high-protein meal replacement and food supplement, provides us with not only a whopping 27 grams of protein per serving but also separately provides us with nearly 15 grams of essential amino acids.

And published research backs up the metabolic and healthy blood sugar benefits of Almased.

A 2012 study by Dr. Daniel König and colleagues tested Almased in a group of 11 overweight or obese men in a trial called “The Breakfast Study.”

The results? The authors saw several metabolic improvements, including significantly reduced levels of the hunger hormone, ghrelin, and a potential increase in something called protein YY, a peptide that makes us feel more full food-wise. The researchers saw benefits even up to several hours after breakfast, after lunch, a benefit known as the “second meal effect.”

The authors believe that the low-glycemic effects of Almased are due not only to the special amino-acid ingredients but also to healthy compounds, called, isoflavones that come from the product’s non-GMO soy ingredient.

Drinking more water is a great idea, partly because we’re then downing H2O versus all kinds of carbonated sodas and sugar-jacked juices.

But drinking an extra 17 ounces (about 2 cups) of cool, freshwater each day also boosts our resting metabolism by 10–30 percent for up to one hour.

And drinking water 30 minutes before a meal helps us feel more full, too, so we can eat less.

Stands to reason, but the benefits of increased exercise show up all over, including improvements in sugar metabolism and decreased insulin resistance.

Whether we’re using weights or doing high-intensity interval training (HIIT) classes — or both — we burn more fat, keep more muscle and hold onto our strength.

We’ve mentioned this before, but it can’t be stressed enough: Get more sleep!

Not getting enough sleep is linked to obesity, increased blood sugar levels, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.