Most everybody indulges in junk food occasionally. My downfall is salted homemade brownies.
Everything Earth’s “You’re Not Gonna Eat That, Are You?!” is not meant to induce guilt, but to provide sometimes surprising information about what’s really in certain foods so that you can make informed decisions.
Pigs
They Can Play Video Games and Wag their Tails When Happy
If you are looking for a nutrient-laden, high-protein food, pork is one of the worst choices you can make. 68% of bacon’s calories come from fat, half of which is saturated. A single ounce of bacon slams a whopping 30 milligrams of cholesterol and 500 milligrams of salt into your system. Fiber? zero. Iron, calcium, B6, Vitamin D? Not surprisingly… zero.
Add processing to the equation-that includes bacon, hot dogs, sausage, salami and ham- and you have a powerful human carcinogen according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer. They found that eating just 1.7 ounces of processed meats a day would increase the risk of developing bowel cancer by nearly 20% – a statistic that increases with the amount of processed meat eaten.
When it comes to increasing the risk for certain cancers, things get downright scary for bacon lovers. Not only is bacon considered a red meat, it’s also a member of the dreaded “processed meat” group (even turkey bacon falls into this category. And NO amount of processed meat is considered safe to eat, according to the American Institute for Cancer Research.
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If health is of little concern, then please consider that “pork” is a pig when choosing to eat it. Pigs are more intelligent than any breed of dog and in some tasks have more cognitive ability than 3-year old children. Piglets learn their names at 2-3 weeks old and come when called. Scientists have found that pigs can learn to play video games with their snouts.
Pigs also carefully keep the “nests” where they sleep clean; even piglets only a few hours old will leave the nest to relieve themselves.
Unfortunately, when we think of pigs as “pork” it becomes easy to look away from the cruelty these sensitive creatures endure in factory farms. In the US alone, more than 75 million pigs are sentenced to factory farms for their entire life, confined to dark concrete enclosures, forced to live in their own soil.
Mothers are placed into tiny gestation crates so small that they cannot turn around. Piglets are separated from their mothers when they are as young as 10 days old, confined in dark factories with concrete floors fed until they weigh enough for slaughter.
Approximately 120 million pigs are slaughtered every year in the US alone.
Oatmeal
What could be wrong with oatmeal?! Nothing. If it’s actually oatmeal.
Some prepackaged brands are a meager few tablespoons of over-processed crumbled oats plus lots of sugar and salt. They throw in a teaspoon of dried sugared berries and feature that on the label.
A single serving (1/3 cup) of some instant oatmeals pack in:
- 280 calories
- 110 milligrams of sodium, and
- 15 grams of sugar (3 teaspoons!)
- … while providing only 6 grams of fiber.
There are some oats of course, but chopped fine, turning to the consistency of paste when boiled.
Why not eat real quick-cook oatmeal instead? It tastes better by a mile. And it can be just as fast and convenient as instant.
See Kitchen Hacks for a way to make serving delicious, nutritious oatmeal just as easy as opening a packet of nasty-sugary-pasty instant “oatmeal”.
We could stop there but if you need more convincing, here are the comparable stats for 1/3 cup oatmeal + 1 T. chia seeds and 1 T. flax seeds for extra flavor and fiber:
- Calories 190
- Sugar 0 grams
- Sodium 4 grams
- Fiber 12 grams
