What Foods Should You Cut From Your Diet?
Bacon, party pies and two-minute noodles might taste delicious, but are they worth the health risk? Dietitian Susie Burrell takes a deeper dive. It is well documented that ultra-processed foods, or foods that bear little or no resemblance to whole, natural foods are bad for our health.
Not only does a high intake of these foods increase the risk of developing a range of lifestyle diseases, but on a day-to-day basis these foods negatively affect our brain health, mood and weight. Specifically, there are also some ingredients and chemicals used to make these foods that are known to have serious health consequences when consumed regularly. As such, they are ultimately best actively avoided in the diet.
Processed meats: The World Health Organisation (WHO) has classified processed meats as a group 1 (known to cause cancer) carcinogen. These include salami, sausages, ham and bacon. There is increasingly strong scientific evidence to show that the nitrates used to cure and preserve meat cause damage to the digestive system wall, increasing the risk of developing a number of types of cancer including bowel and stomach cancer. As such, it is also surprising that supermarkets continue to promote processed meat snacks as new and emerging ranges on supermarket shelves. With digestive cancers some of the fastest growing rates of aggressive cancers in young people, an easy step to take is to minimise your intake of processed meat in the diet, identified as food additives 249-252 on ingredient lists.
Excerpted from the Sydney Morning Herald
