Saturday, May 23, 2015

Evidence that artificial sweetener causes weight gain

weight

FDA, FTC asked to stop Coca-Cola, Pepsi from falsely advertising unhealthy "diet" soda

Saturday, May 23, 2015 by: Jennifer Lilley
Tags: artifical sweeteners, false advertising, weight gain

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/049820_artifical_sweeteners_false_advertising_weight_gain.html#ixzz3azwHai00(NaturalNews) How is it that a product that can make people gain weight is allowed to be labeled as "diet"? Doesn't that word imply that it aids in shedding pounds and is something that those hoping to lose or maintain weight should gravitate towards?

Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc.'s advertising and overall branding of some sodas as "diet" is misleading, so much so that the advocacy group U.S. Right to Know is asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate the companies for false advertising. The group says that the use of the word "diet" is a misnomer because the artificial sweeteners that are used in their diet products have been found to cause weight gain rather than weight loss. Diet Coke is sweetened with aspartame, while Diet Pepsi uses aspartame and acesulfame potassium to sweeten its soda.

Evidence that artificial sweetener causes weight gain

In fact, experts at Purdue University found that subjects given zero-calorie saccharin ate significantly more calories, put on more fat and gained more weight than those who consumed foods sweetened with glucose, a simple sugar similar to common table sugar. Additionally, they determined that trying to make up for the weight gain by cutting back on the saccharin later didn't greatly impact their ability to easily get their weight back on track.

"The data clearly indicate that consuming a food sweetened with no-calorie saccharin can lead to greater body-weight gain and adiposity than would consuming the same food sweetened with a higher-calorie sugar," the researchers noted.

The researchers theorize that this occurs because artificial sweeteners impede a person's ability to regulate food and drink intake; the sweet taste essentially disrupts the system's ability to resist high-calorie foods, making individuals more prone to ingesting items that cause them to gain weight.

Other studies, such as those published everywhere from the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine to the journal Nature, have made similar indications.

For example, information from the journal Nature says that non-caloric artificial sweeteners (NAS) lead to weight gain. That journal states that "...consumption of commonly used NAS formulations drives the development of glucose intolerance through induction of compositional and functional
alterations to the intestinal microbiota...We identify NAS-altered microbial metabolic pathways that are linked to host susceptibility to metabolic disease, and demonstrate similar NAS-induced dysbiosis and glucose intolerance in healthy human subjects. Collectively, our results link NAS consumption, dysbiosis and metabolic abnormalities, thereby calling for a reassessment of massive NAS usage."

"Lots of scientific evidence suggests that artificial sweeteners are linked to weight gain, not weight loss," says Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right to Know. "So how can Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi be advertised as 'diet' products? Obviously, products labeled 'diet' shouldn't cause weight gain."

Weight gain aside, the use of artificial sweeteners has also been linked to a bevy of other health problems including the risk of premature birth, heart disease, diabetes and stroke. Even other sugars, such as brown, white or high-fructose corn syrup, contribute to health issues such as inflammation, autoimmune diseases, sleep disorders and anxiety. Add to this the fact that Americans ingest about 152 pounds of it annually, and it's a huge cause for concern.

The best bet?

Avoid all unnecessary sugars like those found in all soft drinks (diet and otherwise), desserts, sweets and convenience foods. These foods are filled with large quantities of sugar that can put your health at risk.

If you do eat such sugars, do your best to drastically cut back on their use. Resist products with "diet" labels, and check ingredients to see if artificial sweeteners are used. Instead of desserts, choose foods that have natural sugars that are healthier for you, such as fruits and vegetables.

Sources for this article include:
http://usrtk.org/sweeteners/diet-soda-fraud/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080210183902.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25231862
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.naturalnews.com/049734_sugar_addiction_food_additives.html

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/049820_artifical_sweeteners_false_advertising_weight_gain.html#ixzz3azwDiQiR
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Friday, May 22, 2015

European food labels warn of "adverse affect on choldren", why doesn't the United Sates?

Separating Food Facts from Food Factoids

MAY 22 • "FOOD" TO AVOID, DIET, GOVERNMENT WATCH, HEALTH • 52 VIEWS • COMMENTS OFF
by PAUL FASSA
Food factoidsA factoid is a datum that is unproven and probably false, but repeated so often by assumed authorities that it’s accepted as true. Regardless of how many authorities think their dietary suggestions are factual, there are still some mythical factoids that are included in many articles on health, especially but not exclusively from mainstream sources.

Many of the mythical factoids presented benefit the processed food and medical business models. The idea that dosage determines toxicity is a centuries old standard that is false.
American Jell-O sold in Europe says, “MAY HAVE AN ADVERSE EFFECT ON ACTIVITY AND ATTENTION IN CHILDREN”
It is still used today by a majority of health “experts” and government agencies to assume that if you don’t get violently ill or die immediately after consuming toxic ingredients, those ingredients are safe. The gradual disintegration of our immune systems and inner-terrain homeostasis is ignored, so those ingredients are considered safe for processed foods and beverages, including tap water.

LET’S TAKE ON A FEW BASICS ONE BY ONE


Salt (sodium chloride): It’s assumed that all salt is bad for you and you should avoid it, especially if you have cardiac issues or high blood pressure. There are issues with this.
* Our bodies need sodium and a balance between sodium and potassium is vital.
* Table salt is processed with bleach and during the process several important micro-nutrients are lost.
* Most of the processed sodium chloride that people consume is hidden with sugar in processed foods. Consumers can’t detect it, but it’s vital for the processed foods’ shelf-life and overall flavor.
* Recent studies have determined that the high blood pressure salt connection is virtually non-existent.
Unprocessed sea salt, Celtic salt, or Himalayan salt contain many micro-nutrient trace minerals that bodies can use. That’s what should be added to our whole unprocessed foods. A pinch of this in purified water adds back the trace minerals lost with reverse osmosis.

Fats: Saturated fat was the big taboo long enough that despite current analysis indicating the taboo is wrong, many still cling to it, even health writers and medical professionals. The fact is that greater public health harm resulted from using substitutes such as hydrogenated vegetable oils and margarine instead of butter and coconut oil.
Our cell walls are made of fat. Cholesterol in our skin is needed to begin the transformation of vitamin D3 from sunlight’s UVB rays. Our nervous systems and brains are composed largely of fat. People who take statin drugs to lower cholesterol wind up with dementia faster, along with other health issues.

Refined sugar and HFCS: The item that has caused more obesity and cardiac issues than pure unsaturated and saturated fats, which our bodies need, is sugar with its more pernicious cousin high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). They create metabolic syndromes leading to obesity and diabetes, and create enough inner-wall arterial inflammation to lead into cardiovascular disease.
Ironically, cholesterol is created to patch the areas of arterial damage from inflammation. But it’s blamed for causing the inflammation. Refined sugar and HFCS, which also contributes to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, are much more serious issues that low or no-fat diets, with their added sugars and texture enhancing chemicals create, not solve.

Dairy and Meat: Almost all studies on milk or meat are done with factory farm products. Raw unpasteurized milk isn’t studied because it’s mostly illegal and inaccessible. Yet raw milk from pastured grass fed and not injected into cows or goats is very beneficial. Even lactose intolerant folks usually handle raw milk.
It’s the pasteurized stuff with enzymes eliminated from the heating process and forcibly milked from cows fed GMO grain mush, loaded with genetically modified hormones, and injected with antibiotics that destroy health over time.
Ditto for meats. Only meats from free roaming grass fed livestock treated like their raw milk producing cousins offer health benefits with moderate consumption.

Eggs: Once considered taboo and full of (gasp) fat, true nutritional experts are now raving over the health qualities and omega-3 offered by eggs from, yep, only from free roaming hens that pick and peck natural foods and are not injected with anything.

Bread: Despite the current aversion to gluten, there is a way to have your bread and eat it too. You see, bread has been made toxic with mass production techniques: Chemically bleached white flour is toxic; bromides used in baking block the thyroid’s iodine receptors.
The way around this is to find bakeries that offer whole grain non-brominated, unbleached flour, fully fermented sourdough based breads or sprouted grain breads. Even Whole Foods bakeries, not their off the shelf stuff, offer this.
Ezekiel offers sprouted grain breads usually located in freezer sections. I like their English muffins and use a local artisan bakery where the owner was trained in France to get my unbleached white and spelt breads sourdough breads, freshly baked without bromides.
Tests in Europe and Canada have discovered that breads like these are usually well tolerated by normally gluten sensitive folks.
Running out of space here, so ciao for now. More later maybe. There’s a lot to cover.

Paul Fassa is a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com. His pet peeves are the Medical Mafia’s control over health and the food industry and government regulatory agencies’ corruption. Paul’s valiant contributions to the health movement and global paradigm shift are world renowned. Visit his blog by following this link and follow him on Twitter here.

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The 10 Most Addictive Foods in the World

This explains why one slice of pizza is never enough.
ByJULIE STEWART FOR MENSHEALTH.COM MAY 8, 2015WRITE A COMMENT
addictive foodsPHOTO BY PHOTOLYRIC/GETTY IMAGES
If you've ever thought you were addicted to pizza, you might just be right. A new study from the University of Michigan suggests that some foods really are more addictive than others.
Researchers surveyed people about the foods they can't put down. The most habit-forming foods typically had two things in common—a high fat content and a high glycemic load, meaning they spike your blood sugar quickly after ingestion. Foods with a high glycemic load tend to be rich in sugars and refined carbs.
These items were most addictive, in order:
most addictive foods chart()

(While soda and cheese don't have the combo of high fat and a high glycemic load, they each score high in one of the categories.)
Meanwhile, the least addicting foods in the study were cucumbers, carrots, beans without sauce, apples, plain brown rice, broccoli, bananas, salmon, corn without butter or salt, and strawberries.
"We found that people who indicated experiencing symptoms of food addiction reported the most problems with foods with a high glycemic load, where the refined carbs hit the system in a rapid, rewarding manner," says lead study author Erica Schulte, a doctoral student. "It may be that people who consume food in an addictive manner find the blood sugar spike more rewarding than those who don't report addictive-like eating."
Previous research suggests that eating sugary foods activates brain regions involved in processing reward.
Fat then adds to the problem. Research shows that eating fats activates brain regions involved in taste and touch, perhaps because the oily and greasy foods feel good in your mouth. "It may be that the combination of the highly rewarding blood sugar spike, with the pleasurable mouthfeel of fat, creates the most 'addictive' potential for a food," Schulte says.
Schulte adds that while you can find plenty of high-fat foods, such as nuts, and high-sugar foods, such as bananas, in nature, you won't find a naturally occurring food with high levels of both sugar and fat.
"This underscores that highly processed foods like chocolate and French fries may be made to be artificially rewarding by containing high quantities of both fat and rapidly absorbed refined carbs," she says.
Food policies that tax highly processed food or restrict their marketing to children might help curb addictive eating, says Schulte.
In the meantime, if you think you have food addiction, therapy might be the best route (find a therapist at locator.apa.org). If you just occasionally overeat these foods, consider mindful eating. It will slow you down and help you avoid overdoing it, says Schulte.
And for a complete cutting-edge exercise and nutrition guide that you can use on your computer, tablet, or phone, check out The Lose Your Spare Tire Program. It's the easiest and most effective way to drop 20, 30, or even 50 pounds (and flatten your belly forever!).
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Exposé Book Reveals Shocking Secrets of the Processed Food Industry

Exposé Book Reveals Shocking Secrets of the Processed Food Industry

May 03, 2015 | 177,641 views
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By Dr. Mercola
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You've probably heard that avoiding processed foods is one of the keys to staying healthy, but do you understand why, exactly?  
Scottish author Joanna Blythman has written a behind-the-scenes exposé book,Swallow This: Serving Up the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets, that delves into the details of what makes processed food the antithesis of a healthy diet.
If you have any concerns about the food you're eating, this is a must-read book. It will radically increase your appreciation of just how processed your food really is and enlighten you to many of the deceptive tricks the industry uses to fool you.
It's quite challenging to avoid processed foods as nearly all of us eat at restaurants occasionally. The only question is how much? After you read this book, I guarantee your motivation to avoid processed food will skyrocket.
Joanna is an award-winning investigative journalist, and that background served her well as she literally went undercover to get the inside scoop on what's really going on in the processed food industry. She actually carefully worked her way in and became an insider able to attend many of the member-only conferences.
"I have been writing about food for over two decades," Joanna says. "I've written six other books. They've dealt with the production side of food: how and what goes on in fields, what goes on in farms, how to tell a good chicken from a bad chicken, that kind of thing.
But I just knew that we weren't getting the full story. It wasn't about the production end. It was at the processing end.
We know quite a lot about how chickens are reared for our tables, but we don't know very much, or anything really, about how chickens nuggets are produced in a factory. I knew that we had to get to this information about processed food."

Going Undercover...

Getting such information is easier said than done, considering how the food industry has created a near-impenetrable wall of security around its manufacturing activities.
Companies hide behind the rationale that processing methods are trade secrets, and that they're merely protecting proprietary information from competitors.
"They've gotten away with that for years. What that means is that unless you're a food industry insider, you're just not going to know what's happening behind the scenes," Joanna says.
So, to get the inside scoop, Joanna assumed a fake identity and managed to convince a smaller food manufacturer to provide her with a professional cover. Using that cover, she got an inside look into the "core" of the food manufacturing industry. And what she learned was surprising to say the least.
For starters, what non-insiders do not know is that there are a multitude of chemicals used in food that do not have to be in any way disclosed, as they're considered "processing aids." So besides preservatives, emulsifiers, colors, and flavors, which are generally listed, there are any number of others that you'll never find out the details about.
"I realized that there's so much going on behind the scenes of food manufacturing. Most consumers, we haven't got a clue, and we are not allowed to know. You can't even trust things that would seem to be the healthy choice," she says.
This is disconcerting, as many health conscious consumers now take the time to carefully read food labels. But what Joanna's research reveals that there's anarray of additives that will never make it onto the label.

Surprising Truths the Processed Food Industry Hides from You

Do you eat processed meats like hamburgers, thinking you're eating mostly real beef? Chances are you're way off in your assumption. One type of meat process involves soaking butchered carcasses in hot water with added enzymes. This has the effect of releasing about another five percent of meat-like substance from the carcass.
This is then added into cheap burgers, sausages, and other processed meat products. Enzyme-treated blood products are also routinely added to lower-end processed meat products.
"What really got me were the things that seemed to be really natural... For example, I was amazed to find that there is a kind of coloring known as the cloudifier. It makes your juice look as though it's got more real fruit juice in it because it creates that hand-pressed, natural look," she says.
Enzymes are used in a number of different ways in food processing. For example, when eggs are pasteurized, they lose their color. An enzyme is therefore added that brings back the color of the egg.
There are at least 150 enzymes being used in food manufacturing, and they're rarely ever listed on the label. According to Joanna, there's typically at least one enzyme-modified ingredient in every processed food. Breads usually have five enzyme-modified ingredients.
Enzymes by themselves aren't intrinsically toxic. They're merely functional proteins composed of natural amino acids. But what they do is they mask and deceive you about the underlying process, fooling you into believing that you're buying something that you really aren't. 
"The classic one is a mature cheese flavor. If you matured cheese the proper way, then you have cheese. You keep it for three months or six months, even longer, to develop that nice, mature flavor. But you can do that in a few days with an enzyme. You can create a fake flavor."

Most Processed Food Is an Imitation of the Real Thing

The goal of food technologists is to reduce the amount of real ingredients by finding cheap substitutes that mimic the authentic food. In doing so, chemicals and processes are used that turns the end product into something that looks, smells, and tastes like "good food," but really is anything but. Rarely is real butter used for example, because it's expensive. So they use additives that make the food taste like butter, but at a fraction of the cost.
"But they will still put in enough butter that they can put on the 'made with butter' label," Joanna notes. "Another thing I discovered is that most processed food wouldn't look at all attractive if it didn't have colorings added. It would be gray and beige...
Flavorings do two jobs in processed food. They cover up the unpleasant taste that comes as a result of processing. Flavor masking is one of the main reasons why food industries use flavorings. But they also use flavorings to try and give food flavor when it's been through a manufacturing process that has totally stripped it of flavor.
They have to try and add back something that sort of resembles the flavors that have gotten lost. Because food processing is high temperature and high pressure. Something has to be done to them to make them taste better again. That's the logic of flavoring and coloring."

What You Need to Know About the Clean Label Concept

She also exposed the industry concept of "Clean Label." The food industry realizes that consumers don't like long chemical-sounding names on the ingredients list. These names are known as "label polluters."
To avoid having to list the chemical names of additives, they invented a Clean Label concept, which is aimed at removing all the old additives and long chemical names, and replacing them with ingredients that sound better. "Carrot concentrate" instead of "coloring" is one example of a Clean Label swap. 
A related issue is the extraction methods used for these healthy-sounding extracts. While antioxidants are healthy, plant-derived antioxidants are typically extracted from the whole food using toxic organic solvents like hexane, which you cannot remove. Those solvents remain in the ingredient, and they're not required to disclose any of this.

Perception Is Everything

The processed food industry is primarily driven by the perception of wholesomeness. The moment the food industry finds out that a labeled ingredient is perceived poorly, they will either rename it, or find an alternative that may be just as bad, or worse, that doesn't have that negative association.
"Perception is a really good word for understanding what the food manufacturing industry is up to," Joanna says. "They have this thing called perceived naturalness. Their whole job is to try give you ingredients that sound natural, but actually aren't the same as natural. Another one is fresh-like quality. The industry doesn't talk about fresh any longer. They talk about a fresh-like quality. 
There are number of technologies that they can use behind the scenes and mainly on labels that will give products this fresh-like quality. Everything [related] to naturalness and freshness is being manipulated constantly.On my desk, at the moment, I have some chocolate chip muffins that I bought six weeks ago. I've got them on my desk and they have not changed in any way. They look identical. I'm keeping them as a sort of science project to see how they eventually, if they ever, change."
There's actually a whole section in the book dedicated to processed baked goods. Many grocery stores now have bakeries, where fresh bread is baked every day. But what many do not realize is that nothing is baked from scratch.
As Joanna says, these bakeries are little more than "tanning salons" for processed frozen products pre-cooked in factories thousands of miles away. Another factoid: When baked goods are sold loose this way, they do not require an ingredient label. So that's another way they can get away with not disclosing what the ingredients are.
"One of the reasons I started writing the book is because I knew that if I made a muffin at home, it didn't taste anything like a bought one. I wanted to find out why. It's really interesting to find out why because the ingredients are completely different and the processes are completely different. And these are great lies perpetuated by food manufacturers—that what goes on in the factory is just a scaled up fraction of home cooking. But that really is a lie. It's quite a different activity."

The Foxes Are Watching the Hen House

If you're like most people, you probably think there's someone somewhere looking out for the consumer's best interest. If something is sold as food, it surely cannot be hazardous. Can it? In truth, it just might be... More often than not, government oversight committees are usually manned by members of the industry, who have a vested interest in commercializing these chemical ingredients; or they're academics who appear on first glance to be independent but actually, in their day job, are getting a lot of funding from food companies. 
Most of the research used to establish safety is also done by the industry itself, which structures the research to show that its products are safe. What's worse, no one is really looking at the health effects of exposure to toxins from processed foods.
"What happens to people who eat large quantities of processed food, maybe people who really based their diets on that? No one is doing any research on that," Joanna says. "There are all these assumptions that chemicals are fine in small quantities, but that's not really looking at the cocktail effect for people, particularly children, who are obviously more prone to being affected by chemical overload. No one is looking at that at the moment."

More Information

Avoiding processed foods is one of the most important changes you can make if you want to improve your health or prevent or address disease. If there's any question in your mind at all as to the reasons for reverting back to whole, minimally processed foods, I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy of Joanna's book, Swallow This: Serving Up the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets as it will radically increase your understanding, and secondarily your motivation and desire to avoid these toxic foods.
As an undercover insider, Joanna reveals details about the food processing industry that you simply cannot get anywhere else. Read it, and pass it around. Create awareness that will eventually, hopefully, inspire more people to make the switch to a more wholesome, health-preserving diet. If we don't buy these foods, food manufacturers will have to stop producing it, and healthier whole foods will again become the norm.
As Joanna says, "we've got to catch up with the industry because they really bypass our comprehension of what they're doing to our food. The take home message for me is that, in Europe, we have this idea that processed food is getting better. Everything is going a little bit not more natural, and actually, that's wrong.
And we really can't trust our regulators to get it right. We have to adopt our own, what I call PPP: Personal Precautionary Principle. You are the only person who's going to really bother to think about these issues to deal with your food. You can't rely on anyone else doing it for you."
In the future, Joanna is considering writing another book on food processing, delving into newer processing technologies and synthetic biology, called SynBio. The use of completely artificial biology is also disconcerting, and an area that is as unregulated as the old Wild West.
Synthetic biology is basically like an extreme form of genetic engineering, which obviously carries a number of unknown risks. And, like genetically engineered foods, most people have no idea synthetic biology is even used, or that they may be eating it on a regular basis. To learn more about Joanna's work, see her website, JoannaBlythmanWriting.com. It contains all of her journalism, covering all of her seven books.
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Five Everyday Food Chemicals that Could Be Making You Gain Weight

Five Everyday Food Chemicals that Could Be Making You Gain Weight

ByMEGHAN RABBITT FOR PREVENTION.COM MAY 18, 2015WRITE A COMMENT
Chemicals In Food And Weight GainPHOTO BY VLADIMIR MARAVIC/GETTY IMAGES
Tired of struggling to lose weight and making zero progress—despite eating a relatively healthy diet? Join the club. Yet before pure frustration inspires you trade that big salad for a bacon cheeseburger, check this out: New research shows that certain chemicals in our food—even seemingly healthy picks, such as lean meats, fish, fruits and veggies—could be encouraging your body to hang on to fat.
"These toxins—known as obesogens—disrupt the function of our hormones and others alter our gut biome, causing an imbalance of good and bad bacteria," says Patricia Salber, MD, a board certified internist and author of the blog The Doctor Weighs In. The imbalance can lead to confused hunger cues, a sleepy metabolism, and an increase in fat cells and fat storage—all of which can lead to weight gain. "Worse, theseobesogens have also been shown to increase your risk of heart disease, diabetes and high cholesterol," says Salber.
Which means it pays to know where they're lurking and how to steer clear of them.
Obesogen No. 1: Bisphenol-A (BPA)
Chemicals In Food And Weight Gain(PHOTO BY SMNEEDHA/GETTY IMAGES)

Over the last few years, our increasing understanding of the dangers of this synthetic compound (found predominantly in plastic food and drink containers) has launched a new market for BPA-free bottles. That's great, but BPA is still found in virtually all people tested nationwide. In a new study published in the journal Nature, Harvard and Brown University epidemiologists compared levels of BPA in the urine of almost 1,000 U.S. women to their self-reported weight gain over a 10-year period, and the women with the highest levels of BPA reported gaining about half a pound more per year than women with the lowest levels. Other studies show that BPA may accelerate fat-cell differentiation, disrupt pancreatic functioning, and cause insulin resistance, all of which can lead to obesity.
Steer clear: In addition to buying those BPA-free baby bottles and food storage containers, avoid plastics marked with the #7 in the recycling triangle (a surefire sign it contains BPA) and canned foods, such as canned tomatoes and tuna fish. In fact, canned tuna is one of the most BPA-laden foods on store shelves. (Also be wary of BPA-free plastic; learn more here.)

Obesogen No. 2: Triflumizole
organic produce(PHOTO BY ANDREA SPERLING/GETTY IMAGES)

If you tend to choose conventional over organic produce due to availability and affordability, here's some news that may inspire you to make a different choice: A study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives has linked triflumizole—a fungicide commonly used on many food crops, especially leafy greens—to weight gain. When pregnant mice ingested tiny doses of triflumizole, they gave birth to babies that were more prone to obesity, and the researchers chalked it up to the fungicide acting as obesogen in the body. "Almost all of the common chemicals used on our crops are endocrine-disrupting," says Salber, "which means they promote fat storage and undermine our body's ability to build lean muscle."
Steer clear: Opt for organic fruits and veggies. Yes, they can be more expensive and tougher to find than conventional produce, but here's some more evidence that could make the extra effort and expense worth your while: Research published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives shows that it takes just five days of eating organic fruits and veggies—or avoiding the most contaminated conventional ones—to reduce pesticide-based obesogens to undetectable levels. For a list of produce with the most pesticide residues, take a look at "The 14 Kinds of Produce With the Highest Levels of Pesticides."
grass fed beef(PHOTO BY JUPITER IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES)

These chemicals are added to processed foods to improve texture and prevent separation (think of mayonnaise and salad dressings), but a new study published in the journal Nature found they negatively impact your gut biome, creating a bacterial imbalance that can lead to metabolic syndrome. Researchers at Georgia State University fed mice emulsifiers at levels that are present in our food, and not only did it trigger obesity in the animals, but also gut diseases, such as colitis (an inflammation of the lining of the colon that can cause abdominal pain and diarrhea).
Steer clear: Since emulsifiers are found in many processed foods (and hide out as "polysorbates" and "sorbitan monostearate" on food labels), try to avoid them and load your diet with whole foods instead. "Emulsifiers are everywhere," says Salber, "which means you can take a really great food like artichokes, which benefits your microbiome, and dip it in a mayo-based sauce that totally undoes all of the benefits," she says. (Learn more about emulsifiers and how you can avoid them with The Sneaky Food Ingredient That Could Be Making You Fat.)

Obesogen No. 4: Antibiotics and Hormones
When cattle and other livestock are treated with antibiotics and hormones, you get a dose when eat the meat from these animals—and research shows these substances can lead to weight gain. In one study, New York University researchers found that mice exposed to comparable amounts of antibiotics had decreased levels of T-cells, which not only impairs immune function but has also been associated with obesity. Another study in the International Journal of Obesity found that the use of steroid hormones in conventional dairy farming and meat production could be a contributor to the obesity epidemic.
Steer clear: Choose antibiotic- and hormone-free meats and dairy products (look for "organic," "free range" and "grass-fed" on the label) and choose leaner cuts of meat: Many obesogens are fat soluable, which means they're more likely to accumulate in fatty tissues. 
MORE: 13 Vegetarian Dinners That Are Anything But Boring

Obesogen No. 5: Perfluoroctanoic acid (PFOA)
Found in non-stick cookware (and sometimes referred to as Teflon), PFOA has been linked to obesity. When Danish researchers measured levels of PFOA in pregnant mothers and then compared those with their children's body weights 20 years later, the moms who'd had the highest levels of the chemical in their blood were three times as likely to have overweight or obese daughters than mothers with the lowest levels. (The same weight gain didn't occur in sons.) And here's a surprise: PFOA is also found in greaseproof food wrappers and microwavable popcorn bags, which means you may be ingesting some of this chemical even if you're a cast iron skillet devotee.
Steer clear: There's no need to ditch your set of (expensive!) non-stick cookware. However, when you start to see chips or scratches, replace the pan—preferably with untreated stainless steel or cast iron (which has the added benefit of giving your food an boost of iron).
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