The main reasons you MUST avoid sugar & vegetable oils

Poor utero nutrition can contribute to childhood obesity. This applies to both women who do not eat enough nutrition and those that eat too much of unhealthy foods such as junk food. Children born to overweight mothers are epigentically programmed to build adipose tissue at birth because in both cases the babies experience nutrient deficiencies. When the mother is not getting enough of the right nutrients for health the child inside is programmed to feel that there is not enough. If the intrauterine environment is lacking when the child comes out he or she will always be feeling that scarcity on a cellular level and consistently be desiring more food. The mother actually programs the child to be overweight because in utero the child never had enough.

Many of the women who are eating fast food in pregnancy could actually be significantly harming their child. Research showed that a high level of endotoxin, a word that means inner poison, was found in individuals after eating McDonalds. When endotoxin is found in the body the immune system immediately believes that a foreign invader has arrived which results in a significant amount of inflammation. Inflammation in turn negatively effects your microbiome and thus the DNA of your cells affecting your entire health. One in four Americans eat fast food regularly and reducing this high carbohydrate, sugar and trans fat diet during pregnancy could be as critical to pregnancy as stopping consumption of alcohol or drugs.

“The latest generation of children has accumulated the epigenetic damage of at least the three previous generations due to lack of adequate nutrition. Along with overconsumption of sugar and new artificial fats found in vegetable oils. The family genome has been getting battered relentlessly for almost a century – even during key, delicate periods of replication. The physiological result of these accumulated genetic insults? Distorted cartilage, bone, brain and other organ growth.” – Catherine Shanahan

Here is what sugar and trans fats do to your health….

• Block signals to our bodies to run our metabolism smoothly.

• They disrupt maternal metabolism which can lead to gestational diabetes, pre –-eclampsia, and other complications of pregnancy.

• They interfere with signal transmission.

• These two foods cause inflammation

• Cutting both of these foods out of your diet will help to protect your heart and every other major organ from disease.

The Problem with Vegetable Oil:

Sometimes it takes the government years to catch up to protecting society in the way it should. This can be seen with gun control, cigarette smoking, tanning beds, or asbestos. Commercial interests often win over health and that is what has happened with vegetable oils or trans fats. Vegetable oil is temperature sensitive and is extracted from corn, canola, soy, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed or rice bran. These products should not be heated as the rise in temperature breaks up the fatty acids creating a toxic effect on cells. Even if you just consume a small of amount of trans fat it can reproduce inside of you and form free radicals that damage and inflame your cells and arteries.

In fact, vegetable oil can affect and interfere with any cell in your body leading to all sorts of diseases. This is absolutely critical to understand when it comes to the development of the baby in the womb. Studies have shown oxidative stress and disruption of hormonal responses to the fetus in women who consumed vegetable oil. It causes inflammation of the gut and negatively affects the immune system causing nerve degenerating reactions. Do you have heart burn or digestive discomfort? This may be the cause.

The oil is known to attack the brain and has been linked to autism and Alzhiemers. It can impair brain development altering DNA and genetic expression. Trans fats directly mutate DNA and make DNA more susceptible to environmental pollutants. We have no idea the amount of damage it is truly doing to our bodies because companies do not want to fund research that will show us.

The effects of sugar on our diet:

The body knows sugar is a toxic substance: it jams hormonal signals, clogs up nutrient channels, impairs mood and memory. It also stiffens collagen in tendons joints and skin. This can cause arthritis and premature wrinkling. When it binds to hormone receptors and blocks them it can make you insensitive to insulin causing you to age and gain weight as you grow older. Do you suffer from headaches? It is not uncommon for people who have cluster headaches (often mistaken as migraines) to eat too much sugar.

Sugar can damage brain cells and it is super addictive. Studies have shown that it surpasses the desire for cocaine with a high level of addiction matching that of the desire for heroine in many people. Sugar consumption increases the likelihood of diabetes and if you have this disease during pregnancy you are ten times more likely to develop a child with a major birth defect. Diabetes has a profound effect on prenatal growth. Even if you are borderline diabetic or insulin resistant you need to get this in order before conception.

What to eat and not to eat that is the question: :

Good Fats: olive oil, peanut oil, butter, macadamia nut oil, coconut oil, animal fats,

Bad Fats: Canola oil, soy oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil, grapeseed oil, safflower oil, non-butter spreads (margarine) and trans fat spreads.

Foods that tend to be loaded with inflammatory fats that you should avoid:

Salad dressings – loaded with both sugar and vegetable oil

Margarine: Interferes with normal bone growth

Rice Milk: contains vegetable oil

For more read Catherine Shanahan’s book, Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Nutritional Food
Or Watch The Video!