Six Pack Abs Expert

The soy myth

Finally the soy myth needs to be exposed. This is another persistent one among alternative circles. An often-used argument is that soy has been used in Asia for thousands of years. Another half truth. While it is true that soy products were consumed as far back as the Ming Dynasty, only fermented soy was used. Raw soy products such as tofu, soy milk, soy lecithin and soy oil are only 200 to 300 years old. Once again they have been popularized by a powerful industry which has been pulling the wool over our eyes by emphasizing a healthy tradition in fermented soy use and confusing it with unfermented soy. Health food stores sell this as a health food!

Trans fats

The missing link between saturated and unsaturated fats is trans fats. A trans fat is an unsaturated fat which is heated, causing the fluids to evaporate and the fat to solidify. A hydrogen molecule is then added to the fat. This hydrogenation process alters the chemical structure of the fat. What was originally an unsaturated fat has now become a saturated fat. These fats are man-made and do not exist in nature. What’s their advantage? Take that cookie. Vegetable fats are cheaper and are used in place of butter. They are liquid, however, and don’t have the same semi-solid structure as butter has naturally. By hydrogenating vegetable fats they can be used as a direct replacement for butter. They also keep well. So what if butter is a natural saturated fat and trans fats are unnatural saturated fats? The consumer won’t even know the difference, right?

Unsaturated fats

Since the 1950’s, plant-based unsaturated fats have become the answer of the food industry and government to our health problems. Why then have these problems only increased since that time? Let’s first look at the financial benefits to using unsaturated vegetable fats versus saturated fats like butter. Take a cookie, for example. Butter comes from cows and cows cost money. More money than having a field of sun flowers or corn from which you can press oil. Butter also has a shorter sell-by date. That’s why cookies are no longer made from butter. You will often find the very vague description ‘vegetable fats’ on the label, meaning they chose the cheapest unsaturated fat available at the time.

Cholesterol

Being afraid of high cholesterol is totally unnecessary. In Japan, high cholesterol is seen as a sign of health! Have you seen the health of these people? Why is cholesterol okay in their book but not ours? Once again we need to turn to that single one-sided study done by Ancel Keys in the early 1950’s. We learned to measure cholesterol and divided it up into ‘good’ cholesterol (HDL) and ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL). Again an entire industry has been based on this, not just the food industry but also the pharmaceutical industry which tells us that their highly dangerous statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs) lower the ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol and up the ‘good’ HDL cholesterol.

I often get asked to write down some basic rules of what to eat and what not to eat. There’s a lot of information out there but it’s often fragmented and, even worse, contradictory. All I can do is give you my vision on fatal and vital foods. I base this on nothing but common sense. Here goes.

Sugars

I know that all of the elliptical and treadmill worshipers are probably fuming at me now after that article headline, but the fact is, ellipticals and treadmills are one of the least effective methods of working out in existence. With this article, I’ll show you how to get a much more effective fat-burning workout without wasting time mindlessly exercising on a boring elliptical machine or treadmill.