Eating the three together is like mixing gin, beer, and wine during a night on the town. The combination does far more damage than any one alone, and a fat hangover lasts much longer than an alcohol hangover. While fat by itself is an obvious waist expander, adding salt and sugar will increase the release of the storage hormone insulin. And consuming a Fat Cocktail, like having one drink, can leave you wanting more.
Here’s why: The pure sugar found in foods like candy, cake, and doughnuts give your body a 100 percent shot of simple carbohydrate.
Unlike complex carbohydrates (the kind we get from vegetables and some fruits) that trickle into the bloodstream, simple carbs make a mad dash through your body, kicking insulin into overdrive. As noted in Principle No. 2, the normal glucose bell curve peaks higher and drops faster with simple carbs, which makes you crave more carbs. It also creates an “energy rush,” which is why many people crave sugar products in the first place. To add insult to insulin, most of the processed products that contain the simple carbs also contain salt.
When salt and sugar enter your system together, they turn on a specialized protein in the intestines that literally pumps more sugar in to the bloodstream; even if your blood stream contains as much sugar as it can normally handle from a large meal or sweet dessert.When this happens, the body responds as if you ate more food than you really did and releases more insulin. This means everything you ate—not just the sugar and salt, but also the extra protein, fat and other carbs—will be more easily stored as fat. Remember that a high level of insulin also temporarily disables the body’s fat burning
Salt and sugar … turn on a specialized protein… that literally pumps more sugar into the bloodstream.
capabilities.In biochemical terms, the high levels of insulin being forced into the bloodstream shut down the very enzyme that works to break down fat so the body can burn it. In the end, the fat from your meal or any extra calories still hanging around from an earlier meal, are then easily escorted into your fat cells.
The result: Fat storage is maximized—the Fat Cocktail!
TheFat Cocktail Is Everywhere
Unfortunately, you don’t have to show your I.D. if you want the Fat Cocktail. Anyone can get it anytime they want. The Fat Cocktail is available in many forms including all the snacks and processed foods found on grocery store shelves.
Desserts are the main offenders but other manufactured food can yield the same chemical makeup.
Potato chips, crackers, white bread, breakfast cereals, frozen dinners, cheese puffs, doughnuts, cookies, cakes, brownies, candy, chocolate bars and ice cream makeup some of the more popular Fat Cocktails.
Just a few indulgences during the week can negate your weight loss efforts or even worse add a few more unhealthy pounds. The body is simply not built to process foods that counter MotherNature’s design. This is why there are only a few natural foods that contain the combination of high fat, carbohydrates and salt.
The brain stem says, “Mmmm, good.” Sour and bitter, which most of us have been programmed to be less interested in, are located on the sides and the back of the tongue
Our taste for sugar and salt is inherited from our ancestors who needed them to survive because fats and sugars do such a great job at helping the body accumulate calories and store fat.
To insure that this instinct remains in- tact, we were wired with a mechanism to sense their presence—the tongue. The salt and sugar taste buds are concentrated right up front to better greet these substances as soon as you open your mouth. The signal they send goes directly to one of the most primitive centers of our brain stem and causes a positive response to eat and want more.
Whole milk for example (has fat, carbs and sodium), is designed for young mammals to gain weight during periods of growth and development. High-fat, high-carbohydrate foods, a predominately man-made design, constitute the foods found in Group 6 of the BOK Six Fuel Groups.
These are the foods you should watch out for. I try to completely avoid them—not only be- cause of the way they store fat, but also because of the sluggish way they make me feel, both physically and mentally.The combination of fat and carbohydrate creates the perfect fat-gain environment. Pour on the salt and you’ve put fat storage in high gear.The Taste Cover-upFoods high in fat and/or high in sugar and added salt, account for many of the processed items that we purchase at the supermarket.
Why? Because combining these ingredients in one product may double or even triple its profit potential. The combination creates this demand because of how it affects your taste buds. There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs when we mix sugar and fat. Both make their presence known, but both decrease the sensation we receive from the other. The sugar covers up the fat sensation, and vice versa. The combination of sugar and fat tend to lessen the effect of each and cause you to eat more than if they were eaten separately. The same goes for salt. Salt can also cover up a sugary taste, and sugar can mask higher levels of salt. All three items hang out in the Fat Cocktail and they also do a good job of hiding out.
For example, you can taste the sugar in ice cream, cookies, and even some granola bars, but can you taste the salt? Probably not, be- cause the taste is overpowered by the Sodium only comes packaged naturally in animal products; plants do not have the ability to make it.
Once I found out about this phenomenon, I made the connection with my children on trips to the ice cream store. I never understood why my girls would cry out for water after they polished off their ice cream cones. I finally realized the salt was making them thirsty!
Remember that sodium only comes packaged naturally in animal products; plants do not have the ability to make it (just like cholesterol). Check out the sodium content in some of the processed food items that you like to eat and you will be surprised that almost all contain some salt. And that is the biggest challenge with
Principle 3. We usually choose What to Eat by the way it tastes. Principles 1 and 2 may be easy to understand on paper and truly work the best for your weight management, but we still have to choose the foods that support these principles. Taste, in reality, is the only obstacle between eating the “right” and “wrong” foods for health and weight management.
As we discussed above, it’s a powerful obstacle because it is literally “wired” to our survival instincts. We simply need to use a different wiring system to switch from our lower brain to our higher brain. Instead of sugar and salt driving our choices for food, choosing to eat healthy foods can actually change those taste preferences. For example a tuna melt sandwich is tuna mixed with mayonnaise and grilled between two slices of bread with added cheese.
Choosing to switch to tuna mixed with non-fat yogurt on whole grain bread or into red bell pepper halves with some seasoning, not only removes the fat, salt and simple carbs, but adds fiber, vitamins and minerals. Although I admit that the taste is different, it is quite good even using the old survival taste instincts.Now add to that the fact that with every savory bite, you are fighting disease, fortifying your health, maintaining your weight as well as prolonging your life and that meal could be one of the best things you have ever tasted. Before long your old survival instincts as well as emotions attached to comfort foods will be replaced with a new wellness instinct and healthy relationship with food.Nothing’s Free in LifeI don’t want to go on a rant here, but if the Fat Cocktail that suffuses our American eating habits isn’t bad enough, our food manufacturers made matters worse by trying to “help.”
A considerable number of products hit the shelves in the 1980s specifically targeting people who wanted to lose weight. They removed the fat and replaced it with among other things, more sugar and salt. Some “fat-free”products are still on the shelves today—all with weight-loss slogans and good-for-you innuendos. Again, we’re dealing with a double-edged sword. Yes, manufacturers have been successful at extracting the fat from such items as cookies, crackers, cakes, and even T.V. dinners without losing all of the texture and flavor.
Reduced calories are the selling point and their packaging makes them seem healthier than comparable products containing fat.The intention may have been a good one, and the products could be nice treats for consumers if they approached them cautiously to satisfy an occasional craving or to enhance an other wise nutritious snack. But this isn’t what usually happens. For the most part, the fat-free logo acted as a hall-pass for bingeing or became the focus of an obviously misguided weight-loss program.
Whether its cookies, crackers, potato chips, cereals, prepared meals or vitamin-enriched meal replacement bars, the large portions once ingested during an occasional overindulgence have been replaced with“guilt-free” inhalation of the whole package, box, tub, or bag—all without a speck of fat!
Well, here’s the real deal. When manufacturers take fat out, they have to put something back in to satisfy our taste buds. It is usually sugar, high fructose corn syrup, concentrated fruit juices, maltodextrin or alcohol sugars; usually accompanied by enriched flour products, modified food starch and added salt. It may be fat-free sitting on the plate, but it will become fat in your body if you provoke insulin with the dangerous sodium and simple carb duo. In the end, you’d be much better off eating an ordinary portion of a particular snack’s fat-containing and/or lower-sodium counterpart.
This is not finger-wagging time. I too have fallen prey to the no-fat, low fat temptation. I’ve been known to inhale an entire family-size bag of salty, baked, low fat tortilla chips while watching a football game. And I’ve paid the price. I usually wakeup after half-time with my cheek stuck to the couch in a puddle of drool ready to tear into another bag. Hell hath no fury like a pancreas scorned!
You too may have been as clueless as I was then. But now you know that the fat-free trend is no free ride. Getting fat-free products to work for, instead of against, your weight loss goals require just two things: realistic portion control and insightful label reading. Let’ stake a look at the label on one of the more popular fat-free confections that flew off the shelves when first introduced— fat-free chocolate chip cookies.
The nutritional facts on this label make this fat-free snack look pretty good— until you really look closely at the ingredients. The first two ingredients listed are sugar and enriched flour; and corn syrup, fructose and modified food starch are also quite high in the line-up. Five major ingredients are processed carbs! And all are high glycemic index carbohydrates, typical for this type of product. It almost doesn’t matter which ingredient comes first, since they combine to release more insulin than foods containing more natural carbs.
But hey, it’s just one little cookie, right? Unfortunately, we know that it would be easy for five or ten of those neat, tasty little snacks to disappear from the box in one sitting. Do the math: 5 to 10 little cookies are 250 to 500 calories and 150 to 300 mg of sodium.
There are other fat-free and low-fat foods, even ones high in protein (lunch meats, prepared meals, etc.) that have different amounts and types of carbohydrates and a lot of salt. As you know, the thirst caused by salty foods can masquerade as hunger and tempt you with another trip to the pan-try. The resulting blood sugar crash after your cells do the backstroke in a pool of insulin, gives this violent cycle of hunger another kick start.Let’s look at a popular lowfat turkey chili food label (see page 90). Ata glance, it appears that this product has a good mix of the fuels we need. But a closer inspection reveals a very high amount of sodium and questionable ingredients. I’m not clear as to what“mechanically separated turkey” is, but the four-figure amount of sodium is very disturbing. Moreover, this value is only for one serving. If you were to eat the whole can (only about 380 calories)that would be 2,500 mg of sodium— the maximum amount you should have for an entire day! I’m feeling thirsty just thinking about it.
A safe and consistent way to avoid the repercussions of high carb, high salt processed foods is to eat only fat-free and low fat products in smaller amounts and to look for products with less sodium.
Add some unprocessed protein, complex carbs or even a little unsaturated fat to your snack to balance out the effects of the processed food. This will help override the potential second wave of hunger. Bottom line: Get in the habit of inspecting food labels because ingredients can differ from brand to brand even if the food is the same.Manufacturers are just reacting to consumer demand. Initial tests of fat-free products got thumbs-down ratings.
Initially, when the fat was removed and replaced with thickening agents and other preservatives, many of the products lost their familiar taste or developed an unpopular “tangy” aftertaste. The egregious ingredients were only added to appease our taste buds. Consumer response cried out for better taste, so in went the sugars, salt, MSG (monosodium glutamate) and other taste enhancers. And it worked.Consumers loaded up on fat-free “diet food.” It became the ultimate have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too scenario. In the end, people discovered that nothing in life is free
Processed products, whether they are low carb, no-carb, or sugar-free, have also fostered their share of misconceptions. They are not always as “low” or “free” as you are led to believe.
Let’s scrutinize the food label shown here from a package of “sugar-free” chocolate chip cookies. What's particularly confusing about this product is the “sugar free” emphasis. I assume the point of these products is to minimize simple carbohydrates, but the label shows that half of the total calories are from enriched flour (number one ingredient) and maltitol (a “sugar alcohol”). The glycemic indexes for processed flour and maltitol are high (over 70) and both will influence carbohydrate me- tabolism and insulin release. Other-wise uninformed consumers might think that they can eat more of this product and still avoid the negative effects of consuming simple carbo- hydrates. The sodium content is disturbing and the rest of the ingredient list looks like a lesson from one of my old organic chemistry classes. There are also some of the unhealthy hid- den items that we identified earlier.So how does all of this get monitored, and by whom?
Fortunately, the government has issued guidelines as to what manufacturers can claim when declaring a food “low,” “light,” or “free” of any item. But again, there is room for deception, since the claims are made on a “per serving”basis. This means that a food that is too high in certain ingredients to qualify as “lite” at a cup per-serving could qualify if the serving size is reduced to one-half cup. So you must use your math skills and check the Nutritional Facts, regard- less of what the front of the package claims.Following are some of the guidelines for manufacturing claims as defined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:
Processed products, whether they are low carb, no-carb, or sugar-free, have also fostered their share of misconceptions. They are not always as “low” or “free” as you are led to believe.
Let’s scrutinize the food label shown here from a package of “sugar-free” chocolate chip cookies. What's particularly confusing about this product is the “sugar free” emphasis. I assume the point of these products is to minimize simple carbohydrates, but the label shows that half of the total calories are from enriched flour (number one ingredient) and maltitol (a “sugar alcohol”). The glycemic indexes for processed flour and maltitol are high (over 70) and both will influence carbohydrate me- tabolism and insulin release. Other-wise uninformed consumers might think that they can eat more of this product and still avoid the negative effects of consuming simple carbo- hydrates. The sodium content is disturbing and the rest of the ingredient list looks like a lesson from one of my old organic chemistry classes. There are also some of the unhealthy hid- den items that we identified earlier.So how does all of this get monitored, and by whom?
Fortunately, the government has issued guidelines as to what manufacturers can claim when declaring a food “low,” “light,” or “free” of any item. But again, there is room for deception, since the claims are made on a “per serving”basis. This means that a food that is too high in certain ingredients to qualify as “lite” at a cup per-serving could qualify if the serving size is reduced to one-half cup. So you must use your math skills and check the Nutritional Facts, regard- less of what the front of the package claims.Following are some of the guidelines for manufacturing claims as defined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:
With a little investigation, you may find that some of your old favorites or other products you were avoiding actually may have better label profiles. A little extra time spent reading labels can help get you the results you want without totally giving up the lifestyle you enjoy