The food processing industry and its raw food supplier allies have been clever at marketing their products as healthy while attacking the foods they replace as unhealthy. And it has worked both ways.
Saturated fats including coconut oil and real butter were demonized as obesity producers and heart health hazards while trans-fatty acid hydrogenated vegetable oils and margarine were marketed as substitutes that prevented both obesity and heart attacks.
Yet both agencies are quick to jump on scientifically confirmed health claims from whole food providers such as those who grow and distribute cherries and walnuts (http://www.naturalnews.com/029698_censorship_FDA.html).
So we are forced to separate fact from fiction and see our way through the blizzard of lies and contradictions within the health foods field. As basic rules, moderation and different foods for different folks makes sense.
But marketing disinformation has vaulted questionable foods into undeserved health food status.
Foods to avoid that are marketed as health foods
Canola oil is not a healthy substitute for olive oil even if you can find an organic cold pressed version of it without GMO contamination. It’s ubiquitous in processed foods and health food stores cafes because its cheap.
Up until the 1970s, there was no such thing as canola. They were originally only rapeseed plants that produced a highly toxic oil suitable for industrial purposes.
Through a nationally funded Canadian effort to stimulate its agricultural export commerce, the rapeseed was genetically engineered to remove most of its toxic erucic acid.
Dr. Baldur Stefansson and his team at the University of Manitoba were the early pioneers of plant genetic engineering by creating LEAR (Low Eucic Acid Rapeseed) in a lab in lieu of normal generational plant hybrid breeding.
The more marketable name Canola was synthesized from Canadian oil (http://www.naturalnews.com/029516_canola_oil_fraud.html).
Dr. Stefansson went on to join Monsanto to develop glyphosate resistant Roundup Ready canola seeds that have almost eliminated non-GMO canola from agriculture. (1)
Questioning soy is comparable to kicking a hornet’s nest. It’s pro and con camps are uncompromising. Here are some facts. Soy is not consumed as a meat or milk substitute in Asia. It’s a moderately eaten side dish that is usually fermented.
Traditional Ayurveda medicine frowns on soy’s digestibility unless it is fermented. Tempeh, natto, miso, and some soy sauces are fermented. Most soy is processed and GMO for starters. Roundup Ready soy plants can pass on the most toxic form of glyphosate herbicide ever.
Be wary and cautious with fish and other sea foods. There has already existed a lot of mercury and PBC contamination of seafood. That’s been joined by BP’s Gulf oil and Corexit contamination and Fukushima’s nuclear disaster spilling into the Pacific.
Farmed fish and shrimp are akin to factory farmed beef and pork, full of antibiotics to keep overcrowded and poorly fed creatures from becoming diseased.
Here’s a list of relative mercury contamination in wild fish (http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/walletcard.pdf).
Agave nectar is another hornet’s nest. One side claims it’s a traditionally used and naturally derived syrup from agave plants. The other side claims it’s not traditional and that it’s processed from the plant to leave out the fiber that would make its high fructose level less harmful.
It cannot be disputed that agave’s fructose level is high, and the liver does have issues processing concentrated amounts of fructose beyond what normally appears in whole fruits.
Let’s just say it would be wise to stick with raw organic honey, molasses, and organic maple syrup as sweet and healthy syrups.