In case any more proof is required...

Just read something in Outlook that I thought I should share (extract attached at the end). 

"Processed foods—fatty, sugary and salty—" are most responsible for plummeting health across the world. And it is not just Obesity - there's a litany of other ailments that processed food causes, and they are all of the long-lasting damage to body variety, not just had-virus-here-today-gone-tomorrow type.

And no, don't delude yourself by thinking that only  "fatty, sugary and salty" processed foods are the culprits. All processed foods are unhealthy and there is  enough real evidence that says so. The reason processed foods are unhealthy is because they are processed in the 'food factories' which take away all the "life force" in any food and replace it with empty calories which actually leach nutrients from the body rather than supply it with nutrients.

The "scientific" types are fond of looking at lists of vitamins and minerals and other constituents - breaking down the food into some known list of ingredients; their solution to the problem will be to replace the "fat, sugar and salt" with substitutes that are zero cholesterol, or zero something else. That's the kind of reasoning that will enable them to come up with gems like 'diet coke' must be healthy because it has zero calories. When it comes to food, "science" is the road to perdition, since it does not even know what to look at.

If this sounds like a diatribe, it is!

dinesh

(extract from Mexico City Diary by Deepak Sapra in the Outlook issue dated 19 January, 2015)

Thorn in the fat side

Mexico is one of the fattest nations in the world, with a third of its population obese. Many Mexicans love American fast food, and wash it down with drums of Coca-Cola. This led a TV channel to say that Mexicans have speedily transformed their diet from one which has maize and beans to one which bursts at the seams. This impending health disaster has forced the government to introduce a tax on sugary drinks like Coca-Cola in order to cut consumption. The paradox is that these changes in eating habits are driven by low incomes. With high prices of fruits and vegetables, obesity is fast becoming a disease of the poor. Processed foods—fatty, sugary and salty—dominate the platter. Quite a shame, for there's an incredible variety of local food on offer. Traditional Mexican food is healthy, aromatic and enticing. I feasted at a 'Vegetarian Only' Mexican food at a joint in the upscale Palmas area. For dessert, I was given cactus fruit, a Mexican speciality.