Calories vs Chemicals

Health Vietnam, Nutrition Ho Chi Minh

August 1, 2014

Calories vs. Chemicals

(published in The Word Magazine)

The calorie myth is a hard one to kill. Calories are not the most important issue when striving for effortless fat loss and health. Every organism tries to maintain homeostasis (state of balance) automatically. It is a fundamental part of our being to try and maintain balance. For example, if we drink a lot of water we urinate more and visa versa, if we don’t drink enough water our body redistributes what you do have to vital functions. However, the common misunderstanding is that when we consume more food we will automatically store more fat, but this is not the simple case. Our bodies try to regulate our weight just like it tries to regulate hydration (water), your blood sugar levels, and like it tries to regulate your blood pressure. This process is called the Homeostasis Regulatory System (HRS).

For more reading on the calorie myth and hormonal function of the body see these articles:

The HRS system can be broken by the wrong quality of foods. Those foods break the HRS and once broken it doesn’t matter how little you eat or how much you exercise the system is broken and we need to fix the system. Diabetics, for example, are not told to eat less, they are generally told to not eat certain foods. The same is true for heart attack patients and most other ailments.

The importance of reading labels is essential for your health. Lets take peanut butter for example. What should the ingredient list be to make peanut butter? One item is all that is needed… peanuts! But we live in a society where advertising makes false promises. Food packages make amazing claims… Skippy reduced fat peanut butter promotes 25% less fat and that their product “fuels the fun”. Must be healthy right?? Far from it… They list 22 items in the ingredient list, the majority of which are hazardous to your health!!

All these chemicals build up in your body. Your internal system can only process and eliminate so much at a time, so the excess is pushed to and stored in body fat. If toxins and chemicals remain at higher levels than your body can process you acquire more body fat to take these harmful substances out of circulation. Our bodies can take a lot of punishment before we get into the red-zone and develop chronic diseases. Gaining health and effortlessly staying lean has a lot more to do with the quality of our food rather than the quantity… when was the last time you heard of someone getting fat and becoming sick from eating too many vegetables?

Frightening Pho

Pho is one of the most well know and popular Vietnamese dishes. Consumed regularly and loved by both locals and foreigners. A few months back the Centre for Study and Consultation on Consumerism (CESCON) randomly tested 9 major food suppliers in Saigon (including well know supermarkets and markets, such as Big C and Co.op Mart) and found that a massive 80% of Vietnamese rice vermicelli contained a banned and highly hazardous chemical – Tinopal

Tinopal is a fluorescent whitening agent found in detergents! It gives a brilliant white effect on cellulosic fibres and is, not surprisingly, stable over the whole temperature range. It is well know that long-term regular consumption of tinopal causes stomach and digestive harm, damages the neurological system, causes cancers, as well as kidney and liver failure. It effectively bleaches your insides.

The six types of Vietnamese rice noodles tested 100% positive for tinopal. That’s pho, bun, banh canh, banh hoi, banh cuon, and banh uot. Do Ngoc Chinh, deputy director of CESCON states that “using this banned and hazardous chemical in making rice noodle is against the law while causing harm to consumers”.

Measures are said to have been taken but all suppliers stated they were unaware of the contamination and conduct regular testing.

Coconuts have also been known to be bleached to improve the whiteness of the shell and therefore be more appealing. These harsh and hazardous chemicals can leak into the flesh and juice of the coconut and therefore be consumed with the product. When buying a coconut always buy one with the green husk. Therefore, you know it has not been tampered with. As far as Pho and rice noodle products it is much harder, almost impossible, to know if it contains tinopal. The only answer is to consume these foods less regularly and boost your body’s detoxification systems so that if you do happen to digest toxins your body will be capable of eliminated them as soon as possible.

Body Expert Systems have clear detoxification protocols that can help you if you are unsure of how to accomplish this process. We should all endeavour to limit the amount of chemicals we eat and drink, which will result in effortless fat loss, increased energy and wellness.