%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Salt And Sugar What About Salt? We only need 300 mg. of salt per day. Most people eat 13 times more than they need! Too much salt can cause hypertension, which is the number one cause of strokes. Excess salt can also lead to kidney function impairment and disease. It leads to water retention and may be a factor in weight-gain. The National Academy of Sciences recommends no more than 1,100 mg salt per day for people with hypertension. How do we lower our salt intake? Number one, eliminate all processed foods from the diet. Did you know that ounce for ounce, Kellogg's cornflakes have twice as much sodium as Planter's cocktail peanuts, or that a half-a-cup of Jell-o, instant chocolate pudding contains more sodium than three slices of Oscar Meyer bacon?! There are ways to cut down on salt, here are some guidelines: Do not salt food at the table; lower salt in cooking and eventually cut it out entirely; flavor with kelp powder, herbs and spices, lemon; use fresh or frozen vegetables with no salt added - avoid canned vegetables, they're high in sodium and low in nutrients; rinse off canned tuna, it washes away most of the salt; lower and gradually do without processed foods including potato chips (very high in fat, also - usually hydrogenated oils), pretzels, cured, salted, pickled, smoked and canned goods, soy sauce, celery, garlic and onion salt - use celery, garlic and onion powder instead, and avoid MSG - it's very salty. For a delicious salt-free soy sauce substitute, try Bragg Liquid Aminos - made from soybeans (contains most of the essential Amino Acids). Some people use a lemon squirt in place of salt. It's a great vinegar replacement, too. Increasing the potassium in your diet will help counteract the effects of sodium, such as high blood pressure. All fruits are good potassium sources. Green vegetables, grains, legumes (beans, peas, lentils), unsalted nuts and seeds have high amounts of potassium. Those who salt their food before even tasting it are often deficient in calcium, magnesium, zinc or B-complex vitamins. Once they add these supplements to their diet, the salt craving dies out. Here are some tips for making your food tasty without lifting the salt shaker: Editor's note: Use organic, herbs from your natural foods store when possible - better yet, use fresh herbs (find them in the produce section or even better, grow them yourself). Vegetable soups - Add a little lemon, liquid aminos, one of the vegetable and herb bouillon cubes or powders, basil, savory, marjoram, garlic powder and/or other spices. Cream soups - Sprinkle in cinnamon and nutmeg (use a light touch). Cucumbers - Marinate in lemon and tarragon or dill and lemon or use vinegar. Asparagus - Sprinkle tips and stalks with nutmeg before serving. Eggplant - Season with tomatoes, bay leaf, basil, oregano, rosemary and a touch of marjoram. Mashed potatoes - Perk up with garlic, parsley flakes and fresh parsley, a touch of cayenne and a bit of paprika. (Cook the potatoes with a clove of garlic and some fresh parsley. Discard garlic and parsley. Mash potatoes, add parsley flakes, cayenne and paprika. Dill is very nice, too. Experiment shake in some curry for a touch of India. Instead of butter, drizzle some organic canola oil on your baked potato, along with your spices and mix it all in with a few drops of amino acids (soy sauce replacer). Try grating a little skim-milk or soy cheese mozzarella on a baked potato along with a spicy-cooked tomato sauce for a pizza potato. for this, replace canola with cold-pressed olive oil. Green beans - Add nutmeg or savory. Look through your natural foods cookbooks for a creamy sauce made with nuts, flour and spices. Create your own "saltless" seasonings with herbs. Use attractive, labeled shakers containing oregano, basil, thyme, caraway, sesame and poppy seeds, celery seed, marjoram, summer savory and ground sunflower seeds. Or, choose one of the many the already prepared salt-free seasonings. If you want, add dried mushroom powder (you can buy it or make it yourself by drying a few mushrooms and pulverizing them). ************************************************************* What About Sugar? A question which is frequently asked is "Why is sugar hazardous to one's health, isn't it a natural substance?" Refined sugar, or more correctly, sucrose, is a chemical derived from plants. Sucrose is a combination of two simple sugars, glucose and fructose. The greatest refining that has taken place among foodstuffs occurs in sugar, 90% of the sugar cane is removed. Very often overeating refined sugar occurs because of its sweetness to the palate. It is quite conceivable that a person can gulp down five or six cups of coffee or tea. Each sweetened perhaps with one heaping teaspoonful of sugar, without satiety, however, it would be difficult to consume five or six apples - the equivalent amount of sugar in its natural form - without feeling stuffed (and a possible stomach ache to boot!) Refined sugar is a source of empty calories, it has no nutritional value. Approximately one-fourth of the American diet is consumed as refined sugar, resulting in an average yearly consumption of approximately 160 lbs. per person! Americans eat some 14 quarts of ice cream per year - a third of it vanilla! They also guzzle 75 six-packs of soda - that's 450 cans each. An average can of soda contains 9-11 teaspoons of sugar. Obviously, some people eat much less, while others consume more. The inclusion of refined sugar in the human diet is relatively new, occuring only in the past 150 years, with the result that we have not yet developed a tolerance for it, making us susceptible to certain degenerative diseases in relationship to the amount of refined sugar consumed. Unrefined carbohydrates (all carbohydrate is absorbed as glucose in the body) such as starch in cereals and vegetables, the sugar in fruit, sugar cane, and sugar beet, cause no harm in its natural state. Problems arise only when they are taken from their natural state and denatured by refining, (e.g. fructose in fruit is natural. When fructose is removed from fruit by a refining process and used as a sweetener in such food as yogurt and deserts, then it has been denatured). How did the human diet go from zero refined sugar to 160 lbs. per person in 150 years? To answer this, it's necessary to review a brief history of sugar. Sugar cane cultivation began around the 3rd Century, B.C., in India, in the Ganges Valley, believed to be the area known today as the State of Bihar. Sugar cane spread eastward to China by the 1st Century, B.C. Slowly, it reached the Mediterranean area by 600 A.D. Here, the Crusaders from Europe were introduced to sugar. They called it "honey from reeds." They then brought it to the European countries. Sugar was well known throughout Western Europe from the 11th - 15th centuries, but it was very expensive and difficult to obtain. (It is now known that Queen Elizabeth 1 of England's notoriously bad teeth were probably the result of her sugar addiction!) It wasn't until sugar cane was brought to the Americas that it was cultivated on a large scale on "sugar plantations" making sugar more plentiful and less expensive, although it was still beyond the means of the common man or woman. However, that changed by the 19th Century, when sugar beets were discovered as a sugar source. They were able to be grown in abundance in the milder climates of Western Europe and the United States, sugar easily accessible and affordable to the general populace by the latter half of the 19th Century. In the Western World, by the beginning of the 20th Century, refined sugar was common, readily available and relatively inexpensive. In 1900, there were 8 million tons of sugar available world wide, by 1980, it reached 93 million tons! No other foodstuff consumed by humans has increased at such a rate in so short a period of time. All of these millions of tons of sugar being eaten do not end up in millions of sugar bowls throughout the world. The majority is consumed as 'hidden sugar' through other foods such as ice cream, pies, doughnuts, danish, cakes, candies, cookies, soft drinks, and a large variety of snack and packaged, canned and frozen convenience foods. It can even be found in table salt - read the label, it will probably list dextrose, which is a form of sugar, as one of the ingredients. There's also a lot of sugar in desserts and cereals - read the labels! And, it is found in baby foods. Some 'health foods' also contain sugar, albeit under the guise of brown, date or turbinado sugar. To make it seem really healthy, honey or fructose is substituted for sugar. Is it possible that so much sugar in the diet may cause certain diseases? Yes, sugar consumptions has been linked with heart disease, obesity, dental caries, diabetes and certain cancers, especially colon. The association between these diseases and sugar intake is mainly based on diseases in population studies, showing sugar consumption and the incidence of a particular disease in that society. The evidence connecting sugar intake with the diseases above is circumstantial excepting dental caries. Concrete evidence supports the fact that sugar contributes to tooth decay. Technically, sugar itself doesn't cause tooth decay, however, when it combines with oral bacteria, it forms dental plaque, and subsequently dental caries in those who are susceptible. In unindustrialized countries where people do not consume refined carbohydrates, the disease, the dental caries is relatively unknown. Therefore, it seems like the less sugar is eaten, the less dental caries and vice-versa. This has been the consensus as far back as Aristotle, who supposedly inquired: "Why do figs, when they are soft and sweet, produce damage to the teeth?" The most prevalent disease in the U.S. is dental caries. An astounding 98 percent of the population is affected by this disease sometime in their lives. Having done damage in the mouth, is it not conceivable that sucrose may damage other parts of the alimentary tract on its way through as well as other parts of the body once it's been absorbed? Sugar in any form - table sugar, glucose, fructose, honey and excessive use of fruit juices - dramatically depresses our ability to fend off disease. It does this by inhibiting the cellular process which consumes foreign bodies for about five hours, beginning thirty minutes after consumption. Therefore, during times of stress, it's especially important to avoid or at least limit sugar intake. Sugar appears in so many processed foods it's difficult to avoid unless you scan labels or stick to a fresh, whole foods diet. In addition, sugar's many pseudonyms and forms - glucose, dextrose, sucrose, corn syrup, brown sugar - hide it from the unwary consumer. Children in particular are prime targets for sugar-laden foods as evidenced by the rows of showy, sweet cereals on display at grocery stores. Also, sugar is now implicated in hyperactive behavior, according to a Yale University study (Diabetes, 1991, 40:358-63). NOTE: High sugar intake is also linked to hypertension, according to John Yudkin, doctor and author of "Sweet and Dangerous". ***(Reprinted with permission from the November/December, 1992 issue of Delicious! Magazine, a publication of New Hope Communications in Boulder, Co.) When does a "sweet tooth" develop? A desire for sugar seems to be congenital. A study of fifteen 2-day old infants resulted inn the finding that they had a preference for something sweet. At different times they were given a sweetened pacifier, a dry pacifier, a water pacifier or simply rocked in their cradles. The sweetened pacifier was the preference of the babies tested of the four tasted - sweet, sour, bitter and salt. Infants can't taste sour bitter or salt, they can only define sweet. Is sugar necessary in the diet, after all isn't it our chief source of energy? Refined sugar is expendable since the body manufactures all the sugar, or more technically, glucose that it needs from complex carbohydrates. Unfortunately, however, for the majority of people, the starch in their diet would be unpalatable without adding the sweet taste of sugar. In countries where sugar consumption rises above 70 lbs. per capita, per year, it places the population at risk to degenerative diseases. In their book, "Orthomolecular Nutrition", Abram Hoffer, Ph.D., M.D., and Morton Walker, D.P.M., warn: "Refined sugar is particularly insidious since it produces addiction as severe as any drug addiction. The only difference between heroin addiction and sugar addiction is that sugar doesn't need injection, is readily consumable because of its availability, and isn't considered a social evil. However the strength of sugar addiction is just as strong as heroin addiction." Although there are no known vitamins that will counteract the damages of sugar, certain vitamins and minerals are essential to its metabolism. If your diet is high in carbohydrates, you need extra thiamine (B-1). Thiamine is necessary to convert carbohydrates into glucose, therefore the more carbohydrates you eat, the more need there is for Vitamin B-1. A B-complex must be taken with individual B vitamins otherwise and imbalance in the B-vitamins will occur. Vitamin C is an important vitamin in the utilization of sugar, also. It makes insulin more effective and has been shown to lower blood glucose levels in insulin dependent diabetics. Zinc is vital to the efficacy of insulin as well as glucose tolerance. Chromium is absolutely essential to normal glucose tolerance and carbohydrate metabolism. As little as 20 parts per billion are found in human blood. ============================================================== One dollar. That is the full registration price of this shareware! I will send you nothing in return for your dollar, you already have this file in it's entirety. Your dollar will go toward the creation of more "Dollarware." 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