Hamburger Day
Mar 06, 2019Hi. I am Andrew from the Foolish Couple. We believe that healthy relationships start with health and we help couples achieve total success in health and in relationships through nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle.
I grew up in a very traditional Chinese family, where pretty much every meal was Chinese food, so when I was a kid, like, 6 or 7 years old, having a hamburger was a treat.
When I was in elementary school, about 2 or 3 times a year, this giant hamburger company called McDonald’s would deliver hamburgers and cheeseburgers to our school and sell them to the kids for about 15 to 20 cents a burger. Yeah, I know, you probably think that I am really really old. What can you buy for 15 to 20 cents nowadays?
My friends and I, we always looked forward to hamburger day. We savored every bite, especially because we knew that we won’t get to eat another hamburger until the next hamburger day. I still remember how that hamburger tasted, the patty was moist and juicy and the bun was slightly toasted but soft. It was like a slice of heaven… That was over 40 years ago.
Fast forward 40 years ago. To quote every old person in the world, the world has changed. Things are not as good as the good old days.
But in this case, it’s true.
A recent study shows how Fast food has changed over the last 30 years, and it is not for the better. Sure, the price went up, it’s now $1.00 to buy a cheeseburger instead of $0.20, but a 500% increase over 40 years isn’t that bad.
But studies show that fast foods have gotten bigger, saltier and more fattening than 30 years ago.
Whereas McDonalds’ used to be a treat once every few months back in my childhood days, it is now a go-to place for parents to get a fast, convenient meals for their children.
But wait. Before you start salivating and go and get yourself a hamburger. I want you to really sit down and think about it. Think about the cost of living nowadays.
You know the old saying if it is too good to be true, it’s probably true.
Cheap and larger plates usually mean they are using inferior ingredients and more salts, sugars, MSG or chemicals to make something taste better.
Just how healthy do you think that $1 cheeseburger is? How much ‘REAL’ food can that restaurant really give you for $1? Think about the cost of groceries, labor cost, price of rent, insurance, electricity. If you factor that all in, what do you think you are really getting for a $1 hamburger?
Sure, these days, cows are literally mass produced on factory farms. What kind of antibiotics and medication are they feeding these cows?
What type of chemicals are used to make those hamburger buns so soft? What chemicals are in our fast foods nowadays that make them so addictive that you have to keep going back for more. I have to admit, up until 6 years ago, I was guilty of occasionally visiting a fast food joint. The chicken nuggets were my poison.
But there is a point in time when things get so bad, it tips you over and you have to make some drastic changes. For me, that was 6 years ago.
My health has gotten so bad that I had to re-assess my life and see where I was going to be 10 years from there. I was in so much chronic pains from my chronic degenerative arthritis, that I was on pain meds just to get out of bed. To be honest, I couldn’t even envision how life would be like 10 years later.
Right around my birthday in April, I decided to change my life. What tipped me over was the time when I had to sell my beloved Lotus Elise. Now I love cars, especially fast, nice exotic cars. And that Lotus was my pride and joy. But my body was in so much pain that I could no longer get in and out of the car. That was a sign to me that things had to change.
I decided that I didn’t want to go down this slippery slope, I didn’t want to be in pain and suffering for the next 30 to 40 years. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and change my body, change my life.
Since then, I have learned from the best doctors, scientists, nutritionists and functional medicine practitioners to completely change my life and many others lives. It was also 6 years ago since Minna and I ever ate fast foods from chain restaurants. Over the last 6 years I have learned how foods can heal or potentially kill your body from the inside out.
How foods are manufactured, processed, cooked or even grown nowadays are slowly aging and deteriorating our bodies without us even being aware of it.
Rather that drug addicts, we have become food addicts.
What we thought as being healthy 30-40 years ago is not as healthy as we think. Eating out nowadays is like a game of roulette, a roll of dice if you are actually eating food with nutrition or food filled with chemicals. The types of oils restaurants use are usually highly inflammatory, the produce laced with chemicals and pesticides and meats with growth hormones and antibiotics. The cheaper and larger the portion, the more you should stay away from those restaurants!
Now before you guys call me a food conspiracist, I am not going to go into how big pharma and big farms dominate everything that we eat. That’s another topic for another day. I am just going to lay down the facts. Fruits and vegetables nowadays just don’t have the nutrition they use to have. This is due to over farming, losing vital vitamins and minerals in the soils they grow in, excessive chemicals for fertilizers and pest control, pollution in the air and the water and Genetic Modifications or GMO’s. You literally need to eat 5-8 times the same amount of produce to have the same nutrition that you would have had 30-40 years ago. You know that saying an apple a day will keep the doctor away, literally you need to eat 5-8 apples a day nowadays.
But eating that many conventional grown non-organic apples a day may hurt you more than help you. Apples are generally on the top of EWG’s Dirty dozen list because they contain an average of 4.4 pesticide residues, some in high concentrations. Tests done by US department of agriculture found that US conventional apples are also sprayed diphenylamine a chemical that is banned in Europe. This chemical prevents the apples essentially from bruising during cold storage. So, you might want to think twice before you eat an apple in the future.
Another hint that the all these chemicals may be hurting our bodies is the rise in colorectal cancers. A study published by the Journal of the National Cancer institute identified that even though Colorectal cancer appears to be dropping for 50 Year old’s and above they are increasing for people in their 20’s to 30’s. People born in 1990’s have twice the risk for developing colon cancer and four times the risk for rectal cancer than people born in the 1950’s. A thought to ponder, maybe the generation born in the 1990’s are at higher risk because of the foods they have been eating growing up.
Recent studies have found that Glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide and primary ingredient in the weed killer Round up and other pesticides are showing up in a lot of the foods that we eat including Children’s Cereals, oatmeal’s and granola bars and now they are found in Wine and beer.
The center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that there are traces of 29 different Pesticides in the average American’s Body. Maybe it’s because conventional farmers use Glyphosate as an herbicide to grow their fruits and vegetables. It leaches into the soils and kills beneficial bacteria in the soils. Eating produce with Glyphosate and other chemical pesticides have shown to kill our gut bacteria in our digestive systems. And our general being and immune system starts in our gut and when our gut is jeopardized, that’s when all sorts of problems start arising over the years. Long term exposure to pesticides can lead to Increased risk in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease, Prostate, Ovarian and other cancers; depression, low IQ in kids, fertility issues and respiratory problems.
Here are the three things you can start to improve on the food you eat:
- Eat whole unprocessed foods, stop eating out at fast food restaurants, if you don’t recognize what animal or plant that the food you are eating came from, don’t eat it.
- Cook more at home with healthy fats full of Omega 3 oils such as Olive oil, coconut oil and avocado oils and avoid the oils that restaurants use that are full of inflammatory Omega 6 oils. Check out our previous blogs on the Demystifying Fats for more info.
- Eat organic and support local organic farmers for all your Vegetables and produce you buy. Choose wisely from the Dirty Dozen and the Clean fifteen when eating Fruits and vegetables. And try to eat wild, grass fed meat as they will not have antibiotics and Growth hormones in them.
As a bonus, I would supplement with a high quality Multi Vitamin and other optimizers if you had chronic problems in the past. After all it is pretty hard to eat 5-8 servings of vegetables and fruits a day.
Over the last 6 years, we have changed our lifestyles starting with the foods we choose to eat or more importantly not to eat and supplementing with High quality Vitamins. This has completely changed not only my health but my outlook in life too. Now Not only do I look forward to the next 10 years, but the next 20-30-40 years knowing I will live a life of longevity full of energy and well-being, rather than the bleak future I used to envision myself living.
Remember. It’s not what we eat but what our bodies can do with what we eat.
Till Next time Love what you live and Live what you Love.
We believe that healthy relationships start with health and we help couples achieve total success in health and in relationships through nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle. If you know someone who can benefit from this blog, share with them. Let them know that you care about them. And of course, leave us any comments below. We love to hear from you.
PS: Our ebook ‘Gut Matters’ goes deeper into the issue of our gut and the action steps that we can take to repair our gut and bring our bodies back to an optimal, healthy state.
This ebook is free for you to download and all you have to do is follow the link below and we will send you a copy.
If you like this video, make sure you share this with your friends using the Facebook link below. And we’d love to see your comments as well. Just go ahead and leave us a quick note below so we know whether you like this blog or not.
Follow us
youtube at https://www.youtube.com/thefoolishcouplenewark
Podcast at https://thevalentinecode.podbean.com
We are not medical doctors. This blog is not intended to diagnose medical condition, or replace your health care provider. The contents of this blog are for informational purposes only. Statements on this website have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Always consult your personal physician before starting any fitness or exercise program or changing dietary habits. The content of this site is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. It is not a substitute for a medical exam, nor does it replace the need for services or counsel provided by medical professionals. However, we do hope to inspire you to become healthier, more self sufficient, and more aware of options.
