Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Interestingly, that's only about one bag full of groceries from a typical whole Foods store.
The last time I visited, I ended up buying a hundred dollars worth of raw food snacks. Thanks to whole Foods, my monthly food bill now nearly exceeds my house payment! But I love every bite of it, and if it wasn't for this natural grocery chain being in Phoenix, I think I would literally have to move to California or Boulder, Colorado just to get near one. |
| It's in thousands of natural foods products, and many of them are sold at whole Foods. The store describes itself as a "hydrogenated free zone" (meaning they don't carry products with hydrogenated oils, and that's a good thing), but there are plenty of other toxins found on its shelves.
That's just the beginning of the whole Foods warnings. I recently purchased some potato salad from their deli and was later horrified to find myself chewing on a piece of bacon. Who puts bacon in the potato salad sold at a "healthy" grocery store anyway? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 High-density whole food concentrates provide real nutrition
In the world of holistic nutrition, we take whole foods from nature that are grown organically, or we take microalgae and other superfood supplements, and we dry them, grind them up, put them into powders, and then encapsulate those powders or shape them into pills or tablets. That's the way to get your nutrition in the modern world. That's the way healthy people do it, and that's the way I've been doing it for years. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I'm not big on recommending grains in general, but whole grains are certainly better than refined grains, and the fact that whole grains are getting more press these days, combined with the fact that manufacturers are reformulating their foods to use whole grains rather than refined grains, means that whole grain consumption is going up. This is a very encouraging number because when people eat more whole grains, they have better nutrition. They get more B vitamins and more minerals like calcium, magnesium and zinc... they also get more fiber and healthy oils. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Hopefully, YOU own shares in whole Foods, and you're earning some dividends off my repeat purchase of fresh produce priced like gold. |
| Why doesn't whole Foods just say 2 for $10? Because nobody in their right mind would pay five bucks for an avocado. Would you?
I got to thinking, why don't we expand this fuzzy math to other products? How about cans of soup sold at "5 for $2 each!"
Or, perhaps, gasoline: "10 gallons for $3 each!"
If you do this exercise enough times, you quickly realize that the formula of X for $Y each means the same thing regardless of the X. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| But, in fact, if you take lycopene by itself, it's not going to have nearly the positive effect of eating whole tomatoes or taking whole-food concentrates made from dried organic tomatoes. So getting these minerals in their full-spectrum natural ratios (ratios which they're found in nature) is very important.
It's also important to consider the density of these nutrients. If I were to ask you to eat 10 fresh tomatoes at one serving, you probably wouldn't be able to get through more than five or six without feeling full. That's because tomatoes have a lot of water, and they fill you up quickly. |
| High-density whole food concentrates provide real nutrition
In the world of holistic nutrition, we take whole foods from nature that are grown organically, or we take microalgae and other superfood supplements, and we dry them, grind them up, put them into powders, and then encapsulate those powders or shape them into pills or tablets. That's the way to get your nutrition in the modern world. That's the way healthy people do it, and that's the way I've been doing it for years. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
| I'm not big on recommending grains in general, but whole grains are certainly better than refined grains, and the fact that whole grains are getting more press these days, combined with the fact that manufacturers are reformulating their foods to use whole grains rather than refined grains, means that whole grain consumption is going up. This is a very encouraging number because when people eat more whole grains, they have better nutrition. They get more B vitamins and more minerals like calcium, magnesium and zinc... they also get more fiber and healthy oils. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Funny math at whole Foods
Fortunately, I also purchased a container of fresh fruit, which helped counteract the salt assault of the soup. (Kind of a tongue twister there. Say it five times fast: "Salt assault of the soup..."). The price of that fruit, notably, was enough to pay an entire crew of Southern California agricultural workers a week's wages. As far as I can tell, it's the most expensive fruit in the world. British royalty don't even pay this much for fruit. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| You don't want to take only the Alive! whole Food Energizer supplement and rely on that. You don't want to rely on any one brand; you want to have a variety of nutritional products so that you're getting whole food sources from three or four different manufacturers on a daily basis. This is the best way to be sure that you're getting a full complement of fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, microalgae, and other food sources that can provide peak nutrition for you. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| To avoid all the bacon and yeast extract, I decided to buy some fresh tortilla soup made by apparently famous sisters who are producing soup under the whole Foods brand. I bought a large container of the soup, took it home, warmed it up in a pan (I don't use microwaves), and took a sip.
The blast of salt caused my lips and half my face to shrivel into a human prune that looked like a shrunken head from the Jivaro tribe in Equador. It required two liters of fresh water to rehydrate my face back to a semi-normal shape. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Depending on how they're processed, they can also contain some of the healthy oils found in the original whole grain. The best grain to get, by the way, is sprouted grains. You've seen this at the health food store, perhaps. Ezekiel bread is a great example of this. I'm currently eating a cereal that's made with nothing but sprouted grains: Ezekiel cereal by Food For Life. This is a fantastic product.
So, if you were to stack these boxes against each other, what would happen? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 You know, it's a vitamin tablet times ten, but it's coming all from whole foods, so there's no synthetic vitamins or chemicals in the Miracle Greens.
Mike: All whole food concentrates?
Ortiz: All whole food concentrates.
Mike: No sweeteners, no fillers?
Ortiz: I put just a touch of stevia in it and that's it.
Mike: Ah, perfect. That's the best way to go. I like it. And can people purchase this direct from your website?
Ortiz: We have our website, it's miraclegreens.com. We're in most of the health food stores throughout the country, including whole Food stores and Ralph's grocery stores. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| That's why you want whole grains. There's another reason: when you consume refined grains, they actually strip nutrition out of your body. During digestion, it takes more nutrition out of your body to process those refined grains than you get from them. Basically, all you're getting when you eat white bread, white flour or breakfast cereals made with white flour is empty calories -- nothing but the carbohydrate, or technically the endosperm of the grain.
You also get some things you don't want in white flour. Sometimes you get pesticide, solvents or other contaminants. |
| They reach for that, and they repeat the whole cycle over again. During this cycle, they're getting mood swings and they're getting irritable when blood sugar levels dip down too low.
If you do this long enough, you're going to get insulin sensitivity problems, where you're no longer sensitive to your own insulin. It's called "Syndrome X" or metabolic syndrome. It’s a precursor to adult onset type-2 diabetes. This is especially true if you combine this behavior with a lack of physical exercise. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Raw ingredients are generally healthier than processed or cooked. whole grains are healthier than "enriched" grains.
6. Don't be fooled by the word "wheat" when it comes to flour. All flour derived from wheat can be called "wheat flour," even if it is processed, bleached and stripped of its nutrition. Only "whole grain wheat flour" is a healthful form of wheat flour. (Many consumers mistakenly believe that "wheat flour" products are whole grain products. In fact, this is not true. Food manufacturers fool consumers with this trick.)
7. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| And although I could dish out a whole lot of criticism directed at General Mills for selling such sugar-laden cereals to children over the years, I personally think it's more productive to point out the few things they're doing right and try to create more consumer demand for their healthier products.
General Mills is probably never going to be a health food company, but at least they can play a positive role in avoiding the most egregious nutritional mistakes (like making breakfast cereals with white flour and refined white sugar). What would the next huge improvement be for General Mills? |
| Maybe it's this Ezekiel cereal, or maybe it's the whole grain Total cereal. If it were me, I'd eat this Ezekiel cereal sweetened with stevia, because stevia is not going to have a high glycemic index load and it's not going to spike your blood sugar, whereas the sugar in this Total cereal will have more of a glycemic load on your body. So, I would prefer an unsweetened cereal that I sweeten myself with stevia, which is an herbal sweetener.
In due time, these carbohydrates are going to slowly get converted into blood sugar, so they're going to give you a steady, slow stream of fuel. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Whole leaf" means they grabbed the entire aloe vera plant, blended up the whole thing (gel, sap and leaf skin), then dried it into a powder and packed that into capsules. At first, it sounds great... until you realize that the sap of aloe vera causes diarrhea. It's true: The sap or resin (also called latex) of aloe vera is a dark brown liquid that was traditionally used by American Indians to treat severe constipation. That's why people who take "whole leaf" aloe vera supplements have such a terrible time with the pills.
The primary healing part of aloe vera is the gel, and only the gel. |
Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN
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 Old-fashioned whole soy foods that contribute to health if eaten in moderation have given way to ersatz products that lead inevitably to malnutrition and disease. Gigantic corporate farms and billion dollar soybean-crushing and food processing plants have driven out small farmers and cottage industries. The result worldwide is an epidemic of disease in humans and other life forms mirrored by a malignant increase in pollution and overall damage to the planet—a kind of cancer on the body of Mother Earth.
What will the coming years bring? |
| An herbal guide from 1406 (Ming Dynasty) indicated that whole pods of young soybeans could be eaten or ground for use with flour, but recommended such uses only during times of famine.20 Kinder words are found in a Materia Medica from 1620, which recommends edamame, but only for the medicinal purpose of killing "bad or evil chi."21 By 1929, Morse of the USDA reported that "as early as May, small bundles of plants with full grown pods were seen on the market. At the present time the market is virtually flooded with bundles of plants with full grown pods, the seeds of which are also full grown. |
| The larger, more expensive vegetable soybeans are preferred for making whole soy foods over the smaller, more widely available field beans, which are split into oil and meal. Food beans were bred to have a lighter seed coat, a higher protein level and a lower oil content. In the United States, all commercial beans are yellow or tan, as other colors are excluded by grading standards.2
Japanese manufacturers prefer large soybeans with a high protein content for tofu production, but round small beans with a soft texture for natto. |
| Lost in the hoopla has been the whole soy story.
HIDE THE SOYLAMI!
In his Far Side Collection Unnatural Selections, cartoonist Gary Larson appeals to tofu haters everywhere when he depicts a hunting scene with the punch line. "In sudden disgust, the three lionesses realized they had killed a tofudebeest—one of the Serengeti's most obnoxious health antelopes. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| You don't want to rely on any one brand; you want to have a variety of nutritional products so that you're getting whole food sources from three or four different manufacturers on a daily basis. This is the best way to be sure that you're getting a full complement of fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, microalgae, and other food sources that can provide peak nutrition for you. |
| For example, if you buy the Alive whole Food Energizer, you're not going to see on the label a listing of the B vitamins, the C vitamins, the antioxidants and so on, because it's not broken down like that. It just tells you what foods were used to make the product. From there, you have to understand that those foods provide those nutrients and much more in a full spectrum of great nutrition.
It's also important to take these supplements from several different sources. You don't want to take superfoods every day and rely on that as your only source of supplemental nutrition. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Then, a little bit above that you have General Mills’ whole grain Total cereal. That's much better for you; it's a step in the right direction. Then on top of that you have Ezekiel sprouted grains. This happens to be "Golden Flax" flavor sprouted-grain cereal from Food For Life. You won't find this in mainstream distribution. You will only get this in health food stores or natural grocers who have a health food section. So, in terms of what's available to the mass market, it's really only the General Mills products. And that's, again, why this decision by General Mills is such a big deal. |
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