Standard American Diet

So it should come as no surprise that denatured food creates disease-prone, disease-laden, and overweight bodies. Even cooking food at temperatures higher than n8°F destroys its enzyme content. Yet millions continue to eat denatured food as part of the Standard American Diet (SAD). 

The Standard American Diet truly is SAD when it comes to preventing disease and maintaining great health. Our excessive consumption of fast food, sugar, trans fats, meat, and food additives is the fast track to disease. We need to make simple changes to break free of the Standard American Diet or risk suffering one or more of the many diseases finked to it, including obesity, heart disease, brain disease, and many forms of cancer. 

The diet of our pre-agricultural ancestors was rich in salt—not the salt now found on almost every table in small glass shakers, but potassium alkali salts, which are found in abundance in non-grain plant foods. These salts were eaten in their naturally occurring form. The salt we know today (and which some people love, to their detriment) is processed sodium chloride (NaCl), an addictive and overly used substance found in virtually every food choice in the Standard American Diet. Our SAD diet is also dangerously low in potassium alkali salts. Sodium chloride is acid-forming potassium salts are not. The combination of a sodium chloride excess with a potassium deficiency further contributes to the acid load on our systems. 

The Standard American Diet and the stressful lifestyle most of us follow tip the scale in favor of acidity, creating an imbalance and forcing our bodies to deal with a continual—or chronic—state of acidity at the metabolic level. It is not so severe that you would be hospitalized because your body is acidic. That condition, known as metabolic acidosis, does occur but is usually associated with a pre-existing disease. We won t be delving into this severe disorder in The Ultimate pH Solution, but will instead focus on smaller, more gradual changes and the effects they have on our health, our sense of well-being, and our vulnerability to disease over time. 

You may already be experiencing symptoms of an unbalanced pH, such as fatigue, infections, inflammation, digestive problems, and allergies. You are eating the textbook Standard American Diet. You need to address diet and lifestyle issues to decrease your exposure to acidic foods and habits. The Ultimate pH Solution will show you how. 

Calcium withdrawn from our bones to combat acidity is dumped into our urine along with the acid expelled by our kidneys. A 2001 study by Dr. David Bushinsky proved that chronic acidity causes an increase in calcium excretion through the urine however, no change in intestinal calcium absorption was observed (we absorb most nutrients, including calcium, through the walls of our intestines).5 Because bone contains most of the body s calcium, it is widely regarded as the source of the increased calcium excretion in urine. This net loss of calcium is rarely reversed on the Standard American Diet. Nor can it be resolved simply by popping calcium pills. Unless we address the cause of the calcium loss—acidity—it is a lost battle. 

Those of us who eat the Standard American Diet have a calcium deficiency for two main reasons we don t eat enough biologically available calcium (that is, calcium that our bodies can use effectively to benefit our health), and we eat too many acid-forming foods, forcing our bodies to use up stored calcium to offset the acidity. 

Whatever your view on cancer, an abundance of research links the Standard American Diet and its inherent acidity to numerous forms of cancer. Food and water provide fuel for our bodies and feed us on the cellular level. If the fuel is excessively acidic, it builds an unhealthy cell environment, opening the door for mutations. Acidity reduces oxygen, and cancer thrives in an oxygen-poor, acid-rich environment. Cancer cells can obtain energy through fermentation, a conversion process that does not require oxygen. While normal cells can no longer divide and survive in this type of environment, cancer cells flourish on the few available nutrients. 

In chapter i, you learned about the inherent problems with the Standard American Diet. And if you took the quiz in chapter 2, you now know how much of your food is acidic. We discussed the acid-forming nature of sugar, artificial food additives, rancid and trans fats, meat, dairy products, table salt, and soda. Some of these items, such as artificial food additives and trans fats, you would do well to avoid altogether they have no redeeming qualities. They not only take the space of potentially healthier foods in our diets but are also linked to a lengthy list of diseases. 

CHAPTER 1 The Fatal Flaws in Our Standard American Diet (SAD)... 

Table 5.15 Experimental diets in nutritional study comparing NuSun with olive oil and die standard American diet...

In a three period cross-over study the subjects are to be randomly allocated to one of the three groups of diet 1) NuSun, 2) olive oil, and 3) standard American diet. The subjects will consume the experimental diet for four weeks with a two-week break before crossing over to the other diets. Two sequential blood samples will be taken at baseline and during the last week of each experimental period. 

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