Obesity is now officially one of the biggest killers of our era. According to the WHO (World Health Organization), most of the planet’s population resides in areas where more people die of over-eating than of malnourishment.

Because of this, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the United States has confirmed that the leading cause of death is heart disease. Both for women and men, due to weight gain. If you wish to live longer, you better make sure to know what you’re eating.

The famous age-old saying “You are what you eat” has definitely become a scary truth. It physically manifests in our day to day lives with the invention of trans-fat and high-cholesterol processed foods. Ready to eat and packed with empty calories that do not provide any proper nutrition for our bodies. Hectic lives, stress, and different lifestyles make us lazy and uninterested in the ingredients that form our daily meals.

To live longer, we need to be conscious of what we eat and what our body receives at all times. Most of our meal decisions are based on biases formed by strategic marketing and laziness. We do not know the contents of our food, thus not nourishing our cells correcting. This ultimately leads to early death, cholesterol, heart diseases and cancers alike.

If you want to change your life for the better and start eating healthy, you must change your diet. In order to live longer you need to make sure to remove certain foods at all costs to transition into better health.

Below you will find the list of 15 foods you should avoid if you want to live longer and healthy. Make sure to remove them from your pantry if you have any and start living a healthy long life.

1. Stop eating Margarine

Even though we all know and adore margarine more than butter because of its vegetable oils content, it’s not that good to live longer. In fact, margarine has less saturated fats than regular butter, but it’s absolutely not a healthier alternative. Even if  it has less saturated fats, it is full of trans fats (trans fatty acids, also known as TFAs). These occur when any vegetable oil-based product ends up solidified, such as margarine. This food will definitely not help you to live longer.

A study published back in 2011 by the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry revealed that the mice fed with a high trans fatty acids diet for a period of 24 weeks ended up showing plaque buildups in the arteries. The authors of this study and research concluded that trans fatty acids inhibit a vital protein function. One that regulates the renewal of the cells and strengthens the immunity of our heart against some diseases.

Because of this, if you wish to live longer, try to avoid margarine and move to a more natural and less fatty spread. If you like to have your bread moist and healthy, use natural fresh tomatoes to make the bread wet. It will also add some salt and taste to it. Another solution is to use some drops of Olive oil or Hummus, both a healthy alternative to make sure you live longer. Last but not least, try to also avoid butter as well as margarine, none of the two is good to live longer!

2. Processed Meats

P rocessed meats are those that go through several processes of conversation before arriving for the public. These meats are preserved by slating, drying, smoking, and adding harmful nitrate as preservatives.

Some of this meat you may well know as ham, sausage, bacon, salami, canned or smoked meat, and beef jerky. If you wish to live longer, you may want to rethink your love for processed meats.

A research done in the past few years has shown that processed meats and its intake contributes to heart disease that can be fatal. As well as premature death and cancer.

Another study, published in 2013 by the BioMed Central, studied the lifestyle information of almost half a million men and women from ten different European countries.

This research concluded that people who ingested processed meats on a regular basis were at a 44% higher risk of developing cancer, premature death or heart disease. If you wish to increase your chances to live longer, you may want to keep this research in mind.

Additionally, processed meats contain high levels of salt which can lead to high blood pressure. In addition, the nitrate preservatives mentioned above may lead to clogged arteries and increasing blood sugar levels.

Another research from 2010, published by the Harvard School of Public Health put together over 1,600 case studies from all over the world and the results were absolutely scary.

It concluded that those that ingested processed meat on a regular basis had an increased 19% risk of developing diabetes.
If you have diabetes in your family or if you have any sort of heart disease, you will want to stop eating processed meats as soon as possible in order to live longer.

Any small step can help you decrease the bad percentages and increase the good ones!

 

3. Stop drinking Sodas and Soft Drinks

I n the US alone, sodas are already considered the second most-drunk beverage of consumers’ choice just after water. But unlike water, sodas contain an average of 44 grams of sugar (1.55oz).

One soda will not likely kill you, but drinking soft drinks regularly will spike your blood sugar. Thus leading to excess sugar being transformed into fat and a higher obesity rate, as well as contributing to diabetes and an increase in high blood pressure reports all around the country.

A study published in 2006 by the American Society for Clinical Nutrition concluded that the consumption of soft drinks may cause adverse effects on the mineral density of bones. But that’s not the only bad news if you’re looking for a way to live longer.

Earlier on, in 2001, another study published this time by Lancet, also concluded that ingesting daily sodas and soft drink beverages increase the obesity rate in children.

The daily intake of up to two cans of soda will elevate the risk for young adults to develop diabetes, as well as the risk of developing gout in both adult men and women.
If you wish to live longer, you should avoid colas in particular.

As they additionally contain phosphoric acid. Which inhibits the correct absorption of calcium, increases the risk of osteoporosis and also weakens your bones. In order to live longer, but also healthier, it is necessary to restrict the intake of sugar. You can do so by avoiding sodas and soft drinks at all costs. Substitute them for water, herbal teas, and black coffee. It is also not good to take artificial sweeteners, but we will talk about that in the next point of this article, so click next and see what we have to say for you to live longer!

4. Stop using Artificial Sweeteners

They were always marketed to the consumers as the healthy alternative to sugar. However, the intake of artificial sweeteners will not only prevent you to live longer but will also damage your body.

Many try to jump from sugar to artificial sweeteners in an attempt to lower their calories intake during diets. But recent studies have shown that the intake of artificial sweeteners can actually increase the risk of diabetes.

This is because they also raise the blood sugar levels just as sugar would do, but they also additionally affect the immune system of our bodies.

Another study, published in 2014 by the Nature journal concluded that artificial sugars and sweeteners are not properly digested and broke down by the body. This leads to the intestinal bacteria absorbing the leftover sugars and thus altering their normal behavior, leading to a rapid weight gain in every case. Additionally, because the sugar is not broke down, it increases the risk of developing diabetes.

So if you wish to live longer and you have diabetes cases in your family, make sure to remove sweeteners from your life.
In terms of flavor, even though artificial sweeteners are way sweeter than sugar, thus needing a smaller amount.

They also increase your cravings and dependence on sugar. This is because of the intensity and repeated intake of the flavor.
Drinks and foods will taste differently initially. Even a bit too bitter. You may not like their flavor at the very beginning without any sugar or sweeteners. However, after a few days, your taste buds will accustom to the new flavor and it will start tasting just like usual, even sweet! So, to live longer, allow your body to have sugarless foods and drinks, enjoy the real taste of food and fill your body with nutrition!

5. Say no to Deep Fried Foods

F rying foods has become one of the most used cooking methods in the last century. Some famous and worldwide eaten deep-fried foods are potato chips, fried chicken, French fries, onion rings, and many others.

They taste like heaven but they are the number one enemy if you want to live longer.
A little goes a long way, but too much oil is bad for your arteries. And deep-fried food contains an extremely lot of oil and fats.

Additionally, the process itself is slow, which allows for the food to absorb most of the fat used to deep-fry it.
Foods that are covered in fat and on a regular basis clogs your arteries and increases your cholesterol. All of this leads to heart diseases. In 2015, a study was published in the Journal of American Heart Association.

This researched introduced a direct association between the intake of fried food and heart failures. So whoever wishes to live longer should avoid fried foods at all costs.
Additionally, a year before, in 2014, another study was published by the American Society for Nutrition journal.

It confirmed that the consumption of fried-food on a frequent basis is directly related to a higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Or even coronary artery disease. In addition, if you wish to live longer, avoid frying carbohydrate-rich foods like for example potatoes.

When these foods are fried in a high-temperature element such as hot oil, they produce acrylamide. This is a substance that is directly related to high risk of cancer. If you wish to live longer and have a healthy life, make sure to reduce your deep-frying to a minimum. Instead, use the oven baked or grill version of the same foods.

6. Microwave Popcorn

D on’t worry! Popcorn itself is still a healthy snack to eat from time to time. The issue is not with the popcorn itself. The issue is the lining found in the microwaveable bags. The US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) which is in charge of food safety regulation has advised the below.

Popcorn bags are lined using PFOA (chemicals), which keeps the grease from leaking on the dish. The problem is that these chemicals end up leaking into the popcorn instead when it is cooked.

A study published in 2009 in Human Reproduction journal states that PFOA is a cause for a higher risk of infertility. A year later, a study published in 2010, in Environmental Health Perspectives confirmed that the intake of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) could cause thyroid disorders.

Additionally, when left untreated, these thyroid disorders can have a very high risk to turn into cancer.

If you wish to live longer, it is necessary to think of these studies. There are more studies published in the US relating PFOA chemicals to many cancer types such as kidney, testicular, and breast.

Additionally, the same chemicals are the cause of higher levels of cholesterol, and thus a very high risk of chronic heart disease.
Not only if you would like to live longer, but if you like Popcorn, you don’t need to stop eating it. However, make sure to know how it is prepared and sourced.

Avoid anything that has PFOA and try not to microwave it. It is best to cook it on the stove or get it from the cinema, where it is prepared in PFOA-free machines. If you can’t find alternatives, then, unfortunately, it is best to stop eating it entirely if you want to live longer.

7. Stop eating Canned Foods

S imilarly, to the issue found in microwave popcorn, cans also have a dangerous lining. However, it is not PFOA. Cans are lined in Bisphenol A (BPA) which can leak into the food it contains. When consumed it can cause a huge list of health issues.

BPA can interfere with a proper regular and gene regulation in the body’s system. Which leads to early puberty, cancers, and obesity alike. The Human Reproduction journal published a study in 2013.

Which confirmed that BPA that is consumed through food can lead to egg mutations. Which in result will lead to difficulties in having children. It also increases the risks of breast cancer growth in women.
BPA affects hormones so much that, in another study in 2013, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology linked BPA levels directly with childhood obesity using urine tests.

As mentioned above, obesity is one of the leading causes of death in the US. And childhood obesity is one of the causes of heart diseases once adulthood arrives. In order to live longer, it is necessary to stop eating canned foods.

This can be easily achieved by consuming fresh produce and home cooked foods. Most canned foods can actually be purchased fresh instead of canned.

By making these small changes you would be regulating our bodies, balancing the hormones and reducing cancer risks. However, if you want to live longer, there are also other small steps you could take. Not only canned food have lined BPA. Many other containers such as water bottles or plastic jugs have BPA.

Make sure to talk to the producer to find alternatives to BPA-Free bottles and containers. Not only for you but also for your children. All of this will help you and your family to live longer and happier.

8. Instant Noodles

W e all like how easy and quick instant noodles are! They are perfect for a dinner after a very hard day at work. Every single University residence is probably filled with empty instant noodle cans by now. It is the food of choice for students and busy people alike.

They can be purchased in almost every grocery or deli shop. However, if you wish to live longer, they might not be the best choice after all.

But why are they so bad? Instant noodles are covered in preservatives, seasonings, artificial colors, and artificial flavors. It contains a lot of useless and harmful chemicals, but minimal nutrition.

It provides very high levels of empty calories, a lot of sodium and fat. All these harmful mixes end up in your body when consumed. And if consumed frequently, they definitely will not help you to live longer.

In South Korea, during a 2014 study published in the Journal of Nutrition, a total of over 10 thousand adults were nutritionally researched.

Those that reported a high intake (2-3 times a week) were confirmed to have a higher risk of metabolic syndrome. This syndrome has symptoms such as elevated blood sugar, elevated blood pressure, cholesterol and increased abdominal fat.

All of these together combine into a very high risk of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. So if you wish to live longer, you need to avoid them all. Additionally, high sodium also develops into kidney and heart disease.

By knowing this, it is way better to cook noodle the old way. Prepare some veggie broth, which you can then freeze and use again later on. Cook your fresh noodles in the broth, add your favorite protein (not processed!) and enjoy! Live longer and enjoy healthy noodles all at once!

9. White Bread

There is an ongoing fight about the properties, either beneficial or not, of bread in general. Bread as it was made in the past, with barely 3-4 ingredients, and with whole wheat flour, was a given prize. People survived days having bread and milk. It was a healthy carbohydrate and filled with nutrition and energy for a hard day at work.

However, with the introduction of refined white flour and sandwich bread, things changed. Sandwich bread has usually 15-20 ingredients, which have almost nothing to do with the original bread recipe.

It is full of preservatives and artificial supplements. Additionally, white flour is just starch. In order to create white flour, the wheat kernel is stripped from its germ and bran. Which are the only two parts containing nutrients that are important to our body.

Starch is basically sugar once it reaches our body. It increases blood sugar levels, thus taking you at high risk of developing diabetes.

Additionally, this same excess of blood sugar will also carry the risk of obesity, by turning into fat and being added to your body mass. Because of this, it is easier to gain weight. Starch itself does not have any nutritional value.

Additionally, sugar is digested too fast in the body, which makes you feel hungry soon after. Because of this, it can lead to a higher calorie intake due to more hunger.

If you really like bread, go for local bakeries that prepare their own breads using whole wheat. Alternatively, prepare your own batches of bread keeping the germ and bran from your kernels.

Allow your bread dough to grow naturally before baking it. If you wish to live longer and enjoy the pleasure of eating bread, avoid the white one at all costs!

10. Soy Proteins

A lmost the entirety of the Soybeans produced in the US is engineered genetically. In addition, they are sprayed with a protective herbicide to prevent weeds from forming. This spray is called glyphosate.
Even though not usually labeled as such in the front of the packaging, some of the most commonly bought food products contain soy protein.

Either via processed oil or directly using soybeans. Most products contain them and can be checked in the nutritional and ingredients labels.

A report published in 2010 and send to the European Food Safety Authority and US Environment Protection Agency exposed that glyphosate used in Argentina to cultivate soybeans was a direct cause of a high increase of neural deformities, miscarriages, pregnancy complications, cancer, and birth defects.

Because soybeans are mostly in every processed food, it is important to read the labels. More importantly, if you want to live longer, we advise buying only fresh foods. By avoiding canned and processed foods, you will be avoiding a lot of harmful chemicals.

If you like beans, opt for other types and avoid soybeans themselves unless organic and local. You can trace where they were grown and if any herbicides were used. If any, please avoid using them if you wish to live longer.

11. Sweet cereals

W e have all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Although this might be true, it becomes an early dose of poison if you opt for the quick and easy sweet cereal. This might be a convenient option if you lead a busy life, but the long-term effects can be detrimental.

Many sweet cereals boast some or another health benefit. This might be true, but how healthy can it really be if it is mixed with other ingredients that are harmful to your health?

When these convenient meals are produced it goes through a range of processes to bring about the final product. During its processing, many ingredients are added, nutritious and harmful.

The warning bells in your head should already be going off when you hear the word processed. Most of these cereals are loaded with added sugar and refined grains. The vitamins and nutrients are actually added to make it at a bit more nutritious.

Just the addition of sugar alone should deter you from consuming these cereals.
Breakfast cereals are some of the most consumed items of food on the market. Be that because of the promise of added vitamins, the sweet satisfying taste, or just good marketing.

The fact remains that it is a popular food, even though it is unhealthy.
When one breaks it down, however, breakfast cereals are making us fat. The main reason is because of overeating.

These products aren’t very filling, to begin with, so people tend to enlarge their portion sizes. What’s more is that it is a high-sugar meal.

When you have cereal in the morning, your blood sugar and insulin and blood sugar levels spike. It doesn’t take long for the effects to wear off, then your body crashes and you crave another high-carb meal.

In the end, all you are doing is pumping your body full of processed and refined sugar that leads to various diseases.

12. Ice cream

T here are very few guilty pleasures as tasty as a creamy, tantalizing bowl of ice cream. The question is whether it would still be so irresistible if you knew how bad it actually was for your health. The negative effects of ice cream range from weight problems to cognitive ones.

To be classified as ice cream it has to contain more than 10% milk fat. But no ice cream is worth having if it doesn’t have its flavor.

Thus ice creams are loaded with sugar. Milk fat is mostly cholesterol and saturated fats. This in itself should deter anyone with a history of heart disease to stay far away from this creamy treat.

When a person’s cholesterol is too high, it builds up a fatty deposit in the arteries that can interfere and restrict blood flow. This, in turn, increases your chances of having heart failure or a stroke.

Because ice cream is so high in sugar and fat, the other obvious disadvantage is that it can make you overweight very fast. The sugar in the ice cream also causes you to crave more ice cream seeing that it spikes your blood sugar.

Not long after consumption, one also begins to feel drowsy and one’s body craves another boost to stay awake.

The disadvantages don’t stop there, however. Ice cream is one of the leading causes of tooth decay and cavities. Once again the sugar can is to blame. Ice cream is very effective in causing cavities because of the temperatures.

Your mouth is naturally warm and when you eat too much ice cream, the quick temperature changes cause microscopic cracks in your teeth and the sugar starts to eat away at your pearly whites.

13. Fruit juice

Here is another food item that is being marketed as being healthy, but in actual fact can be quite damaging to your health. Although fruit juice is made from something that is actually supposed to be healthy, the saying that too much of a good thing can be bad never rang truer. 100% fruit juice is just that, the juice of fruit and it is super sweet and full of sugar. Many fruit juices contain as much sugar as fizzy soft drinks if not more. No matter how you look at it, too much sugar is bad.

There are some beverage manufacturers that claim that their juices are 100%, but this is misleading. The production process of fruit juice requires the juice to be stored in oxygen-depleted tanks after it has been squeezed from the fruit. Sometimes the juice is stored for up to a year before being canned or bottled.

This is where the juice loses its 100% status. Due to the lack of oxygen, the juice loses the majority of its flavor and then flavor packs are added to bring the taste back. Even the best quality juices are far from the juice found in the original fruit. Some lower quality juice can almost be classified as fruit-flavored sugar water.

The main difference between fruit juice and the juice found naturally within a fruit is the fiber. If one compares orange juice and whole oranges, both contain anti-oxidants, Vitamin C and Vitamin B1, but the juice contains much less than fruit and a whole lot more sugar.

The lack of fiber means that the sugars are digested super-fast and if the energy isn’t used, it converts to fat.

14. Chewing gum

T his seemingly innocent little breath freshener has more than enough reasons why you should avoid it. You just have to ask yourself, how can something that you can chew without end and not disintegrate, be healthy for you?

To start with, many chewing gums claim to be sugar-free, but to make them sweet, they use artificial sweeteners. These sweeteners, like aspartame, has been linked to brain tumors, birth defects, and cancer. This is enough reason in itself to stop chewing.
Many people who actually chew, do so chronically and aggressively.

This is an unnatural exertion of the jaw muscles and can cause certain mouth disorders due to the extra wear and tear on the joints. Furthermore, when you chew, there are eight different facial muscles that work hard. Two of these muscles are located close to your temples.

When you chew too much, the muscles close to your temples put pressure on the nerves and can cause severe headache.

Chewing gum is only a mask for bad breath and it treats a symptom rather than taking care of the cause. Bad breath is caused by digestive problems and tooth decay. This means that in a way, you are worsening the cause of the bad breath.

Not only does it interfere with your metabolism, but the sugar causes cavities.
Speaking of digestive problems, when you chew gum, your mouth secretes saliva which activates your stomach to start producing stomach acid.

This acid then doesn’t have anything to digest. It is believed that the excess acid can lead to stomach ulcers or aggravate already existing ones. Lastly, when you chew plenty of gum, you tend to swallow an excess amount of air. This can cause you to feel bloated and even cause stomach ache and cramping.

15. Energy drinks

T here is almost nothing natural to energy drinks. These lab-engineered pick-me-ups have more than enough synthetic ingredients that your body just doesn’t know what to do with. What most of these energy drinks come down to is copious amounts of caffeine and sugar.

Both of which are not in the least healthy for a person.
It is no secret that fizzy drinks are corrosive to teeth, but fizzy energy drinks get the job done even faster.

They are up to 11% more corrosive and can quickly turn that cavity into a root canal. Alcoholics and energy drink fans have one thing in common and that is the state of their livers. It was found that when a person consumes energy drinks on a regular basis, he quickly destroys his liver.

Energy drinks are not the friendliest beverages for the health of your heart. When you consume too many energy drinks you increase your chances of having a heart attack.

This is due to the amount of energy that your body has to work with. Your heart was not meant to handle this amount of energy and overworks itself. When you frequently consume energy drinks, you are also more likely to develop headaches.

The caffeine in the drinks is very high and when you lessen your caffeine intake, it can lead to caffeine withdrawal which manifests in headaches.

Some people become very alert when they drink energy drinks, so much so that they can become anxious. In some cases, the sheer amount of caffeine can induce a full-blown panic attack. If that isn’t enough, you have to stay awake through the ordeal, because the caffeine can cause insomnia.

Additional Tips to Live Longer

Practice exercise 3-4 times a week. Li exercise like fast-paced walking will However, if you can add swim or other car exercises it is even better.

Make sure to avoid stress. In order to do add yoga, mindfulness, Pilates, or meditation your weekly routines if you wish to live long Stress will balance out and you will be able enjoy your life at its best!

Keep a healthy and balanced diet through Make sure to eat fresh produce, unproces meat, and drink plenty of fluids.

Avoid all the foods above and in general, av anything that has unpronounceable ingredients

Keep moving, live longer!

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