If you don’t put much thought into what you eat…think again. You are what you eat is no lie.

You should know that 80% of your fitness results can be attributed to your eating habits.

We are in such a hurry to eat sometimes that we just don’t pay attention to what we are ingesting. And this is what we can tie to excess body fat and poor nutrition. What is the best for you to eat is confusing. There‘s all sorts of misinformation out there from the media and from food manufacturers. Food companies use lots of unhealthful and dodgy ingredients to extend shelf life, add gaudy colors, and make us crave their products. Avoiding these ingredients helps you to improve the quality of what you put into your body.

Read labels to know what you’re putting in your body.

There are ingredients that you want to avoid. Seeing these listed on a food label or recognizing that it is manufactured into a product should automatically signal to you that you don’t want it. rBGH is one of them.

rBGH is produced by Monsanto, rBGH is a genetically-engineered version of the natural growth hormone produced by cows. It is used to boost milk production in dairy cows. rBGH causes udder infections in cows, which are treated with antibiotics. Increased antibiotic use in food animals is a serious problem because it creates antibiotic resistant bacteria and is strongly linked to human infections that are difficult to treat. Injections of rBGH also increase another hormone, called IGF-1, in the cow and the cow‚ milk. Too much IGF-1 in humans is linked with increased rates of colon, breast, and prostate cancer. While it’s not certain that rBGH given to cows significantly increases IGF-1 in humans, why take the chance?

Throughout the Midwest and West, there has been an explosion in large dairy operations over the last decade. They are associated with numerous environmental and health hazards, including air pollution. California state regulators have named dairy cows as the leading air pollution culprit in the San Joaquin Valley–home to 2.5 million dairy cows. As a result of having some of the worst air quality in the nation, 16 percent of children in the region have asthma, three times the national average. “rBGH milk” contains high levels of insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), excess levels of which have been implicated as major causes of breast, colon and prostate cancers. rBGH milk is not required to be labeled. Giving cows rBGH has been shown to increase the incidence of mastitis. When a cow has mastitis, pus and blood are secreted into the milk. It also leads to antibiotic resistance, which is tied to the spread of virulent staph infections such as MRSA. Hormones in food have also been linked to the onset of early puberty for girls. Consumer feedback spurred such megabrands as Dannon and General Mills, and the supermarket chains Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Publix to phase out products with hormones rBST and rBGH.

rBGH is also known as recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) and is found in all dairy products that aren’t specifically labeled “No rGBH or rBST.”

Once you cut these items such as this out of your diet, you’ll be pleased with the results. You will see excess weight loss, higher energy levels and you will just generally feel better.

Another way to think about purifying your diet is by focusing on eating “real food”. These food items include lean meats, vegetables, whole grains, fruits, nuts and seeds. Interestingly enough, real food items are generally found around the perimeter of your supermarket.

Sources: HealthierTalk.com, GymnasticsStuff.com, HealthyEating.com, MayoClinic.org, FoodandWterWatch.org, LiveScience.com, HealthyChild.org

http://www.healthiertalk.com/10-worst-food-ingredients-you-should-avoid-plague-4066,  http://www.gymnasticsstuff.com/nutrition_article_ingredients.htm, http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/foods-contain-white-flour-refined-sugars-1330.html, http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-cholesterol/in-depth/trans-fat/ART-20046114 , http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/foodsafety/dairy/, http://www.livescience.com/36206-truth-potassium-bromate-food-additive.html, http://healthychild.org/easy-steps/avoid-nitrates-and-nitrites-in-food/