11 Charts That Will Give You a Clear View of the Modern Diet

Waking Times

Images – Compared with shoppers 30 years ago, American adults today are twice as likely to be obese, and children and adolescent three times as likely to be overweight. Here are 11 charts and graphs that illustrate how the modern diet has led to an avalanche of ailments and disease.

“The modern diet is the main reason why people all over the world are fatter and sicker than ever before. Everywhere modern processed foods go, chronic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease soon follow.” ~ Kris Gunnars

Refined Sugar

Refined sugar in general, and processed fructose in particular, win top billing as the greatest destroyers of health. The amount of refined sugar in the modern diet has ballooned, with the average American now getting about 350 calories a day (equivalent to about 22 teaspoons of sugar and 25 percent of their daily calories) from added sugar.

Calorie Intake

Average calorie consumption has skyrocketed as well, having increased by about 20 percent since 1970.

Soda

A primary source of all this added sugar is soda, fruit juices, and other sweetened drinks. Multiple studies have confirmed that these kinds of beverages dramatically increase your risk of metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and mortality.

Hydrogenated Fats

The healthiest fats, including animal fats and coconut oil, both of which are saturated, have been long portrayed as a heart attack waiting to happen. Meanwhile, harmful hydrogenated vegetable oils such as corn and canola oil have been touted as “healthful” alternatives. Ditto for margarine.

Fat Aversion

Conventional recommendations have called for dramatically decreasing the overall amount of fat in your diet, and this fat aversion is yet another driving factor of metabolic disease and chronic ill health. The anti-fat message essentially put the blame on saturated fat and cholesterol (harmless), while giving sugar and refined carbs (very unhealthy) a free pass.

Vegetable Oils

The increased consumption of processed vegetable oils has also led to a severely lopsided fatty acid composition

Soybean Oil

About 95 percent of soy is genetically engineered to have resistance to glyphosate and is loaded with this highly toxic herbicide. But even if you have organic soy, most of it is hydrogenated. Hydrogenated soybean oil has, like sugar, become a major source of calories in the US diet.

Wheat

Modern wheat is not the same kind of wheat your grandparents ate. The nutritional content of this staple grain has been dramatically altered over the years and is now far less nutritious than the varieties of generations past.

Egg Consumption

Like saturated fats, many naturally cholesterol-rich foods have also been wrongfully vilified. Eggs are actually among the most nutritious foods you can eat (provided they come from organically raised, pastured hens) but have long been accused of causing heart disease simply because they’re high in cholesterol.

Processed Foods

When looking at the ratio of money spent on store-bought groceries only, Americans spend nearly a fourth of their grocery money on processed foods and sweets—twice as much as they did in 1982—according to Department of Labor statistics.

Read the full article by Dr. Mercola: 11 Charts That Show Everything Wrong with Our Modern Diet

Like Waking Times on Facebook. Follow Waking Times on Twitter.

~~ Help Waking Times to raise the vibration by sharing this article with friends and family…

The post 11 Charts That Will Give You a Clear View of the Modern Diet appeared first on Waking Times.

Source: http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/06/27/11-charts-that-will-give-you-a-clear-view-of-the-modern-diet/