<![CDATA[Gwen Isler MS RD LD

Would you take a BB gun into a war zone to defend your life? How about eating a plastic apple ornament, when you run out of real apples, would you eat that? Absolutely not, is the most likely answer.

Neither the BB gun nor the plastic apple is the real deal. Neither of them function in the same way as their real counterparts do, because their purposes, structures and composition are different from the real gun and the real apple.

Likewise, un-real food can not sustain real health or substitute for the functions that real food performs. Surprisingly, an overwhelming number of people consume huge amounts of un-real food on a daily basis, in the form of fast and processed food, as well as snacks and sweets. Added to that fact, annually, during end-of-year celebrations the consumption of un-real food skyrockets. Is it any wonder, then, that annually the death rate at the end of the year also skyrockets as compared to the death rate during the summer months? True story. What is going on?

Luckily, significant research has been done to find out what's going on! Let's take a closer look at what is happening under the surface where the material of un-real food miserably fails to meet the real needs of real-life. Take, for instance, a study that showed: when a single high fat meal is eaten by people who are in good health, having zero disease history, within 4 hours of that meal, it will trigger their body to start producing compounds that increase the risk of developing heart disease. You read that right. Within four (4) hours of eating a high fat meal the healthy human body will begin manufacturing compounds that cause increased tendency toward blood clotting, experience elevated triglycerides (simple fats in blood), along with malfunction of tissues within blood vessels leading to elevated blood pressure. For those who already have heart and vascular problems these physical responses caused by consuming high fat meals can not be good news.

Interesting observation here: this study used a mere 15 grams (1 tablespoon) of butter, 5 grams (1teaspoon) of olive oil, 2 sausages and 1 small egg for a total of 50 g (about 3.5 teaspoons) of mostly saturated fat in the test meal! You read that right! Three and a half teaspoons of mostly saturated fat wreaked this havoc in healthy subjects with zero history of disease. Looking deeper, when this same test meal was served with vegetable antioxidants (a fancy word applied to plant sourced nutrients, vitamins and minerals) many of the negative effects were partially blocked. Meals high in saturated fat but lacking in plant sourced vitamin and minerals were demonstrated in this study to create conditions that may be harmful to health. Vitamin and minerals to the rescue.

A rarely mentioned trait of high fat meals, revealed in another study, is their ability to make asthma worse. Some fats are actually more damaging than others when it comes to effects on asthma. The study examines the difference in response between asthma patients (normal weight and obese) versus healthy people when subjected to three different type meals: high fat test meals, low fat test meals and high fat plus trans fat meals. Having eaten the high fat test meal, asthma sufferers experienced increased inflammation in airways due to increased production of inflammatory compounds, diminished lung function, airflow obstruction, airway hyper-responsiveness. The outcomes were even worse when asthma sufferers ate the high fat plus trans fat meal. Eye-popping facts when considering the number of children suffering asthma who are also consuming huge amount of high fat fast food meals along with sweets and high saturated fat snacks.

Food has consequences, ideally, to strengthen and support life. Food, as a descriptive term, is generalized to include just about anything that can be chewed and swallowed that does not immediately cause death. Peanut very definitely is a term equivalent to food, has been for centuries. However, in this age of increasing occurrence of food allergy "peanut" no longer refers to food for some individuals. Rather, peanut now refers to poison which induces sudden death, for allergic individuals. The composition of peanut triggers the body to produce a series of compounds that, left untreated, immediately bring death to the allergy sufferer. In a similar way highly saturated-high fat meals trigger production of compounds in the body that have deadly consequences on a much slower more prolonged time course. Nevertheless, the outcome is food related toxicity leading to disease and premature death.

Food consequences are rooted in food composition. No question about that. Knowledge of what food is composed of is the real variable. Food consumers must be knowledgable of the composition of "food" and the effect of that composition, in order to make a REAL decision. For example, food labels must tell the food purchaser whether or not a food was even "manufactured in a facility where peanut has been processed" as a matter of life preservation. Dust from peanut or even the smell of peanut can be fatal to some individuals. In that sense, peanut is an "un-real" food source. For the person with peanut allergy "un-real can't heal"! The flip side of that coin, based on composition, is the fact that high saturated-high fat meals are "un-real" food sources. Particularly for those with heart or vascular problems "Un-real can't heal"!

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