Free Radical Reduction: What to Trash

Refined sugar. British physician John Yudkin says in his book Sweet and Dangerous (Bantam, 1974), “Avoid sugar and you will lessen your chances of getting diabetes, dental decay, atherosclerosis, some forms of cancer, obesity and gout. You will increase your life span and your chances of enjoying a healthy old age.”
Sugar gives you a rush of energy and then a slide into fatigue and despair. The sugar rushes into your bloodstream without even stopping to make a courtesy call on your liver, which would dole it out slowly.
Once in the bloodstream, it raises your body’s blood sugar levels, making you feel high and energetic. But this much sugar in your blood is dangerous, so the insulin comes running out of the Isles of Langerhans in your pancreas and takes that sugar out of your blood; it then deposits it in your cells, where it is stored as fat. But the insulin goes in for overkill. It takes practically all the sugar out of your blood, and there you are in a dark-blue funk, feeling more tired and depressed than before, and what do you do? You go scrounging around for a candy bar or a cup of coffee and start the whole vicious cycle over again.
So, if you want to live to be 120 in good health, throw away the sugar bowl and the artificial sweeteners. You can live the sweet life without either.

Bleached white flour. A whole book could be written about the crimes of white flour against humanity. Here’s only what you need to know to justify a quick switch to whole grains.
The bleaching chemicals destroy vitamin E. Even if the flour is unbleached, it has been deprived of wheat germ, the source of vitamin E.
In 1900, before we reaped the consequences of the milling process started in the 1890s, which extracted the vitamin E from the flour, coronary thrombosis was practically unknown. In his book on heart disease, Dr. Paul Dudley White says, “When I graduated from medical school in 1911, I had never heard of coronary thrombosis, which is one of the chief threats to life in the United States and Canada today — an astonishing development in one’s own lifetime!” What a terrible price to pay for white flour, foam-rubber bread and flavorless cereals.

Hydrogenated fats. Hydrogenation destroys the original oil with all its mineral compounds and regenerates a new one synthetically. The new one is purified, deodorized, bleached and an insult to your body. It is believed that these fats pass into the bloodstream from the digestive tract but will not be taken up by the cells of the body, which recognize them as fake. They are probably the main factor creating sludge, which may block the blood vessels, with tragic results.
Manufacturers use hydrogenated fats in many processed foods, not only in margarine. They’re used in peanut butter, mayonnaise and in practically all prepared cake mixes. Why? Because when these foods are hydrogenated, they do not spoil.
One of the rules you must heed to preserve your family’s health is this: Never buy anything that does not spoil. Use it before it does. Anything that does not spoil has been embalmed.

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Adapted from The Antioxidant Save-Your-Life Cookbook by Jane Kinderlehrer and Daniel A. Kinderlehrer, M.D.; copyright 2000 . Reprinted by permission of Newmarket Press, 18 E. 48th St., New York, NY 10017;
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