Processed carbohydrates save millions from nutrient deficiencies

Yeah?

It’s true.  I’m going to ask you to step outside of your own situation for a minute and observe our food from a different angle.  I’m going to focus mostly on breakfast cereal but most processed carbohydrates have at least some of this feature.  First, breakfast cereal is not a health food.  It is processed carbohydrates in a box.  While this is true, there are millions of kids surviving mostly on breakfast cereal.  A bowl for breakfast, a bowl when they get home from school, and maybe a snack before bed.  Shoot, my childhood had its share of breakfast cereal.  It was a staple of my diet too. 

We have a nutrition program we use with our clients that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  I have never seen any others breakdown that many nutrients.  Usually it’s Calories, Carbs, Fat, Protein, Fiber, Salt, and maybe a couple more.  It scores you in 26 nutrients.  You need to know this because this was part of how I made this realization myself.  If you put breakfast cereal into the program it instantly jumps all your nutrients into pretty awesome levels except potassium.  This stuck out to me so I had to look into it.  Potassium as a concentrated nutrient is very powerful and having too much could throw your electrolyte balance off and even cause a heart attack.  So, they aren’t allowed to add it to multivitamins or add it to foods.  So the only way to get potassium is to eat it in REAL FOODS! 

Now this makes breakfast cereal seem like a great idea and can make people eat it more often.  Another point that made me ponder this was a talk by Dr. Joel Fuhrman where he mentions there are about 700 nutrients in a strawberry and 1000 nutrients in spinach.  That made me stop and take notice.  Wait?  There are only 26 in the most thorough nutrition program currently on the market and certainly only that many on the nutrition labels of food.  It was that moment I realized “CRAP!...we only know less than 10% of what we need to know about food!” 

Why is breakfast cereal so nutritious?  Because they grind up a multi-vitamin and add it to the batch. 

Why would they do such a thing?  The answer comes from some friends of mine who have studied poverty and inequality extensively and live in the city of Rochester around people who are very much so in a lower economic bracket than most of you who are reading this message.  It was through them that I was able to understand the concept of a food desert.  In bigger cities, there are not as many grocery stores that are as easy to get to and the produce (vegetables) choices are minimal when they get there.  Truthfully, many people in the cities do not have cars and do most of their grocery shopping at convenience stores and only occasionally take the bus for a big grocery trip.  Could you imagine trying to carry all your groceries on a bus with you? 

So what is a common food for kids growing up in this food desert?  Cereal.  Breakfast cereal.  They aren’t getting much fruit or vegetables and cannot afford multivitamins so those fortified cereals represent the majority of their nutrient intake.  It is essential that they do this for those kids!  It does prevent many problems but it still doesn’t solve the bigger and longer term health issues like cancer and heart disease. 

They are saving millions of low income children from basic nutrient deficiencies. 

Ok, how about you? 

Back to the 1000 nutrients in spinac that Dr. Joel Fuhrman mentioned.  If you are reading this it means you have, at minimum, a casual interest in your health, wellbeing, and longevity.  If most of your nutrition is coming from breakfast cereals, multivitamins, protein shakes, or bars then it is safe to assume you are short on about 974 nutrients.  You are welcome to continue this path but I’d like to recommend a better way. 

When they make a multivitamin:

1. they take one specific nutrient out of a food and concentrate it down to its essence
2. then add it to the other 2 dozen concentrated nutrients
3. and pop it into pill form or add it to a food.

This doesn’t work for optimal health because the cancer fighting nutrients are in the 974 missing nutrients.  How do we solve this problem?  Well we need to admit that we still, after years of research, understand very little about how food works in our bodies.  Then we need to look at food the way it naturally occurs, the way it was designed.  We need to eat food closer to how it grows.  Most importantly we need to eat more vegetables.  Massive amounts, at least they seem massive compared to SAD (Standard American Diet).  I just love that the acronym in SAD!  :o). If you want to be the healthiest you can be, you need to be willing to be a little weird. 

Work your way towards 1 pound of raw vegetables and 1 pound of cooked vegetables per day.  If you use our nutrition program and don’t bother with the multivitamins, protein supplements, or breakfast cereals and just add 2 pounds of vegetables to your diet you will see all your nutrition scores jump up (even potassium).  Do you remember above how I mentioned potassium score does not rise with breakfast cereals?  Potassium as a concentrated nutrient is very powerful and having too much could throw your electrolyte balance off and even cause a heart attack.  So, they aren’t allowed to add it to multivitamins or add it to foods.  So the only way to get potassium is to eat it in REAL FOODS!  That’s why I consider your potassium score your vegetable score. 

The jump in nutrient scores should be more comforting when you eat vegetables because the other 974 nutrients that we don’t understand will most likely be represented in part by the scores for the nutrients we do understand.  Good scores on stuff we understand with real food equals good scores on stuff we don’t understand. 

There are years of slow learning represented in this one little article.  I hope it speeds up your learning curve and inspires you to eat more vegetables and to understand that fortifying foods is essential for the part of the population that doesn’t have the choices you do. 

Choose wisely!

About the Author:

Jeremy “the tall trainer” Biernat is a Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Strength Coach, has his Bachelors in Exercise Science, and enjoys writing, speaking, and inspiring people online and in person. See his new book!  More importantly he is a husband, father, and follower of God. His practice is in upstate NY (Canandaigua) where he works with people in one on one and group sessions to make awesome changes in their lives. He doesn’t do everything perfect, cries in movies, and would love to hear from you. You can contact Jeremy by commenting to this post, emailing [email protected], or calling 1(800)380-7047. 

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