Don't Buy These

"What Not to Buy
Processed foods may be convenient, but most of them wreak havoc on our bodies and our metabolisms. Find out which toxic foods to avoid at all costs.

No one has enough time these days, as we juggle work, family, and a million daily errands. Turning to processed foods can make life easier, no doubt, but it certainly doesn’t do us any favors when it comes to our health.

A processed food is one that's been canned, frozen, dehydrated, or had chemicals added to make it last longer, texurize it, soften it, or allow it to sit on the shelf forever. While some of these foods — like frozen or pre-chopped veggies — can be a godsend, other ones are like poison for the body. These toxic products are full of cheap chemicals that dilute the food's healthful whole ingredients. Here are six foods you must eliminate to restore your hormonal balance and put you on the road to a healthy, hot body.

1. Refined Grains
Foods made of refined grains are everywhere — in white pasta, flour tortillas, white rice, and white bread. While refining grains helps extend their shelf life, the process also strips them of the good stuff, like most of their fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Even worse, often sugars, salt, fats, and chemicals are then added to these foods. Now that the grains have lost all their healthful nutrients, they're so easy to digest that they guarantee skyrocketing blood-sugar levels and insulin spikes, which mess with your hunger level and ability to burn fat. So stick to whole grains, choosing products that list "100 percent whole ___" as the first ingredient. If you insist on eating some refined grains, make sure they have at least two grams of fiber per serving.

2. Trans Fats
Trans fats (also called hydrogenated fats) are among the most evil foods in the world. They're added to snacks and baked goods, like chips, crackers, cookies, pies, doughnuts, cake, and bread, so they can sit on the shelf for ages and retain their "freshness." These nasty fats are also found in foods like margarine, many fried and fast foods, and even salad dressing.

A small amount of natural trans fats are found in meat, but it’s not those you need to worry about. It's the man-made versions of these fats that you must avoid at all costs. They're created when a regular fat, like corn or palm oil, is blasted with hydrogen to change the liquid into a solid at room temperature. This processed fat does benefit the processed-food industry, but it hurts you. The stuff clogs arteries and causes obesity. It can boost LDL cholesterol (the “bad” kind) and lower HDL cholesterol (the “good” kind), adding to the risk of heart attack and heart disease. There is no safe limit to this stuff! So toss out anything with "shortening" or "partially hydrogenated oil" of any type — palm, corn, soybean — in its ingredient list, as they always include trans fat.

3. High-Fructose Corn Syrup
As one of the cheapest sweeteners around, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is found in everything from bread, yogurt, and cookies to ketchup and soda. It's hard to avoid this stuff! Production of this sugar substitute has increased 350 percent since 1980, and obesity has skyrocketed during this time, too. Coincidence? Definitely not. HFCS is the most evil refined grain of all, since all it does is boost our fat-storing hormones and contribute to us eating more and gaining weight. I have a zero-tolerance policy for this garbage. Train yourself to stay away from all products that have HFCS in their ingredients list.

4. Artificial Sweeteners
I used to be all for artificial sweeteners — I was a Diet Coke addict, for crying out loud — but that was before I was up on the research indicating they might actually make us fat. These bad guys include aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal), saccharin (Sweet'N Low, SugarTwin), and sucralose (Splenda), and ironically enough, they may put us in even greater metabolic danger than real sugar or HFCS. There are many theories for why this is, ranging from our bodies essentially "forgetting" that sweet things contain lots of calories to some of these sweeteners causing permanent damage to our brain's appetite center. Regardless of which theory wins, it's best to avoid these sweeteners altogether. In fact, I prefer that you keep your consumption of all sugar as low as possible. Beware, too, that there are lots of names for sugar, like honey, syrup, evaporated cane juice, and pretty much anything that ends in "-ose" (like glucose and fructose).

5. MSG and Glutamates
You've probably heard of MSG (monosodium glutamate), but do you know what it's used for? MSG and other glutamates are "flavor enhancers," meaning they artificially boost the taste of your food. You'll find this stuff in everything from canned ravioli, soup, and tuna to bouillon, ice cream, and ranch dressings. Some processed foods even have a few different kinds of glutamates. It turns out that high levels of these glutamates may mess with our brain chemistry big time, causing damage to the brain's appetite center. There's still heated debate over MSG's safety, but why take the risk when there are so many natural ways to boost your food's flavor, like spices and fresh herbs?

6. Artificial Preservatives and Colors
Ingredients don't get more fake than the many artificial preservatives and colors found in our foods. There's evidence that these chemicals mess up our biochemisty, inhibit our metabolism, and get in the way of losing weight. Plus, some of them are suspected to be human carcinogens. Do you need any more reasons to avoid this stuff like the plague?

I'll admit that it's hard to cut out all artificial preservatives and colors, but here are some big ones you should definitely avoid:

Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) — a potential carcinogen and endocrine disruptor
Sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite — preservatives found in processed meats that may contribute to metabolic syndrome and colon cancer
Sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate — preservatives in sodas that may be carcinogenic when combined with ascorbic acid (vitamin C), another common additive to sodas
If you can't memorize these names, much less pronounce them, just remember this: The shorter the ingredients list on a food product label, the better the food is. If the list is a mile long and you can’t pronounce half of it, that's a pretty good hint that your food is chock-full of preservatives, colors, and other additives. "