Eat To Live

Eat To Live will help you lose weight, feel better, and live longer by identifying the flaws in what we think is true about nutrition and using science and case studies to reveal how certain foods affect us for better or worse.

We all have access to foods that we know are good for us. But that burger just sounds so much better than a salad, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, we make the bad decision in these cases all too often. And each one takes a toll on our health, eventually adding up over the years.

You probably don’t like all of the negative side effects of food that you know is bad for you, but it’s hard to resist. On average, American’s caloric intake is 62% from processed carbohydrates and oils.

Why are these foods so bad for you anyway?

If your stomach is the size of the average person’s, then you can hold about one liter of food in it. If your stomach was completely full of calorie-dense foods like meat and cheese, it would contain about 3,000 calories!

Consider that a liter of fruit and vegetables has only 200 to 500 calories and it’s easy to see why so many people are overweight and have health issues. But what about the energy we get from that delicious burger?

Well, you might get energy from it, but it isn’t going to give you any nutrients. That will leave your health in a place where you don’t want it to be.

Remember it this way. We get calories, or energy, from fat, protein, and carbohydrates. But nutrients are the vitamins and minerals that make sure that energy is keeping our bodies running properly.

Having a diet built around animal products is dangerous and can have disastrous health effects. According to the best wisdom, the healthiest, most nutritious diet is a plant-based one. This is because all of those vitamins and minerals are in the highest concentrations in plants. Compare 100 calories of broccoli to 100 calories of steak. The broccoli has 118 mg of calcium, 46 mg of magnesium, and 2.2 mg of iron. The steak, on the other hand, has 2 mg calcium, 6 mg magnesium, and 0.8 mg of iron! Diving into our earlier discussion of nutrient-dense foods, it all boils down to an equation: Health = Nutrients/Calories. You can also call this nutrient density. If a food has a higher number on this scale, it’s better for you. Fruits, beans, legumes, and green vegetables are the very best of everything. They come in with nutrient densities of anywhere between 50 to 100. Refined sweets, on the other hand, have a score of 0, while whole grains only…