Dining out safely requires that glutonians always do their due diligence (DD), before planning to eat at a selected restaurant. Can you imagine how stressful it would be if you didn’t have the option to do your DD. Well, that may happen more often than you would like on a road trip.
When you consider the many stops along the way, with each stop offering its own set of food challenges. You might start thinking – a road trip is probably a very bad idea. If your travel plans include a hotel room with a micro/fridge, DD is possible without a lot of stress, but nonetheless a bother.
Okay, your hotel room only has a micro/fridge or you’re on a road trip by car/van. If yes to a the previously mentioned, then these kitchenless meals will certainly help.
Every Travel by Car/Van and Room with Micro/Fridge meal provide at least one complete protein food or a combination of partial protein foods. Healthy fats are also part of each meal. Complex carbohydrates are only in some meals.
These simple meals can provide you with a diet that’s healthier than what most Americans are presently eating. How is this possible? Answer, no ultra-processed foods, no fast foods and used only minimally processed foods in each meal.
Minimally processed foods, in my opinion (IMO), contain the natural food(s) and at times one other ingredient. That other ingredient is one of the three key ingredients (refined salt, sugar and fat) in small amounts. Let’s briefly take a closer look at these three key ingredients with their pros and cons.
Refined Salt – (table salt)
Cons:
• Contains anti-caking agents like Ferro cyanide, tricalcium phosphate, calcium silicate and sodium alum inosilicate.
Pros:
• Shields the salt particles or absorb moisture before they do. Thus, preventing the salt from turning into solid lumps.
Refined sugar – (white sugar)
Cons:
• Contains cornstarch, an anti-caking agent, which is also the product of refinement itself. In refinement it is soaked in sulfur dioxide.
Pros:
• Sugar is prevented from clumping so it has the ability to flow when being poured.
Refined oils – (vegetable oils)
Cons:
• High temperatures applied during the refining process, along with highly toxic chemicals like hexane solvent (a petroleum oil byproduct), phosphate, sodium hydroxide and bleaching agents result in the removal valuable nutrients in the oil. Refined unsaturated oils are then used to make hydrogenated shortening and margarine.
Pros:
• Refined fully hydrogenated oils is a less harmful form of the now banned partially hydrogenated oils. That said, as long as you don’t ingest these refined oils; you’ll find they make good wood treatment products, hydraulic fluid, lubricants and as alternative fuel in Diesel engines.
Hidden in Plain Sight
Here is a small fraction of the chemical additives used in ultra-processed foods (UPFs); high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners, emulsion stabilizers, preservatives, artificial colors, chemical bleaching agents and so on. UPFs are also used in some way in almost all fast foods.
A gluten free diet that depends mainly on ultra processed gluten free foods should be eaten with caution. They are manufactured with the same refined fats, salt and (this is the key) sugars as non-gluten free foods.
A sugar heavy diet stimulates high insulin release. Insulin tells the body to convert whatever macro nutrients it can to fat. Store it and burn whatever sugar it can find for energy.
When the sugar is gone, you feel hungry and the cycle starts all over again. You are now training your body to store, not burn.
It’s easy to live in denial and train your body to store in an environment plentiful in UPFs and QSR foods. It won’t be long before you notice uncontrollable weight problems because of a diet loaded in refined sugars.
A diet of protein, fats and complex carbohydrates – aka macro nutrients, will lower the amount of insulin circulating in your system. Thereby training the body to burn, not store.
Change will never come from the Processed Food Industry (PFI) and Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) Industry willingly. UPFs are their legal money making drug of choice for consumers/users. If the public at large can break their addiction to UPFs, they will see a marked improvement in their over-all health.