The general public has not been educated in correct nutrition, and how could they be with the mixed messages sent out through the media and the scientific community.  People are overcome with faulty messages daily, playing on their desires and fears. They want to be able to eat what they want to eat, and they fear not being able to have those foods because they need to be healthy or look a certain way.  Large food corporations know this and put a lot of money and effort towards keeping you in this state of being.  Even the government standards for nutritional guidelines have changed, and adding to that the double personality of the science community both lends themselves to the confusion toward appropriate nutrition.

One powerful word in our culture that induces many emotions that are mostly negative is fat.  Fat is a much more general word than it should be as in our culture it encompasses the fat we eat as well as the fat on our body. Looking at Merriam- Webster’s Dictionary as a reference you will see that the definition of fat as a part of diet is completely absent, chiefly mentioned is fat in relation of how it looks and not what it actually is.  Even the term “dietary fat” it is not found.  This is just one significant sign of how our culture feels and thinks about fat.

As people become more aware of the health implications of eating at fast-food restaurants, they look towards media to tell them what to eat instead and they want to do this without sacrificing taste.  Their taste buds are used to eating processed sugars and artificially flavored starches and proteins. If they can find these kinds of items termed as “low fat” or “fat free”, then they can proceed to eat their favorite foods without having to change their dietary lifestyle. They begin to pay attention to nutritional data, but only highlighting the fat content, looking for as little fat as possible.  This leads them to the grocery store isles to find fat-free and low-fat dairy products, such as highly sugared yogurts, milk and cheese. They also find that many lead brands of crackers and chips are relatively low and fat, but high in high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). They are able to find many bread and cereals, as well as juices and sodas, are low fat or non-fat but ignoring the high sugar and HFCS content. In addition, they have probably not had much contact with such as healthy oils, nuts, seeds or wild salmon. These items are certainly not on their grocery list as these have entirely too much fat content and therefore may make them fat as well, or keep them from losing weight (which may be their goal).

What these people are not aware of, or choosing to ignore, is where there is an absence of fat in these shelf-friendly items, artificial or concentrated sugars (HFCS), artificial flavors and preservatives come in to save the taste. These are full of carbohydrates that quickly raise their blood glucose, which initially makes them feel amped but it lacks the nutrients and healthy fats that will satiate their appetite. Also, when they eat higher concentrated forms of sugar the lesser that it is going to be able to be used for fuel and instead it is being shuffled to produces higher concentrations of fat.

This negative cycle is reinforced daily by overloading the body from breakfast with non-fat, carbohydrate rich foods that make their glucose levels rise quickly so the pancreas pumps out insulin to try to stabilize this bump, then by 10 they have hit a low from their glucose levels falling, which puts stress on the adrenals, the pancreas and the liver.  To feel better they go grab a bagel and a non-fat Frappuccino, concentrated with refined carbs, which sends their glucose levels soaring once again. Two hours later they are ready for lunch because they have just hit another low.  This continues on throughout the day and the day after. Even if the person is prone to skip meals, as in hypoglycemics, the roller coaster of blood sugar handling is quite the same. The body can’t go on like this very long before you start to see implications of failing health.  The more Insulin they have to produce for the intake of sugars, it decreases the fat breakdown and mobilization from their fat tissue. The insulin wants them to store fat. Consequently if they are routinely taking in a high amount of carbohydrates every few hours they will be in fat-storage mode.

Also, when eating the products with HFCS, the fructose metabolism depends entirely on the liver. Fructose becomes free fatty acids (FFA’s) and VLDL’s (very low-density lipoproteins) and triglycerides (which get store as fat).  These FFA’s accumulate as fat in the liver and muscle tissues, in which 120 calories of fructose taken in results in 40 of the calories being stored as fat. So consuming these products with HFCS’s produces fat, and with this continual allowance of these products they are moving towards obesity. Quickly the person becomes insulin resistant, needing more sugar or carbohydrates to function throughout the day, never feeling steady. If we listen to our bodies and obeyed its needs we would see that something needed to be changed, but this usually goes on until eventually this person begins to hold on to weight or gain weight and unable to lower the number on the scale. They have already ignored the other symptoms that they deal with everyday, such as unstable mood and fatigue. Now neither their liver nor their muscles can store the sugars anymore, and it gets moved to the fat cells in which they quickly put on weight.

Without intervention of exercise and the reduction all sugars, as well as strict avoidance of HFCS, this could likely lead to Type 2 Diabetes.  It is extremely imperative for this person to address their blood sugar regulation before they come to the point of needing to take in glucose intravenously after which it’s extremely difficult to regain natural regulation.