By "toxic," I mean chemicals or highly processed ingredients that aren't good for you or can cause harm to your health.
I'm talking about refined grains, trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, and all the other artificial junk you can't even pronounce on the ingredient lists.
Any food that has been canned, dehydrated, or had chemicals added to it is a processed food, and these foods make up about 60 percent of the average American diet.
Know which toxic food ingredients to avoid?
1. Palm Oil
When a regular fat like corn, soybean, or palm oil is blasted with hydrogen and turned into a solid, it becomes a trans fat.
These evil anti-nutrients help packaged foods stay "fresh," meaning that the food can sit on the supermarket shelf for years without ever getting stale or rotting.
Avoid palm oil and other trans fats like the plague, and kiss fried foods goodbye too, since they're usually fried in one of these freakish trans-fatty oils.
2. Shortening
Ditch any food that lists shortening or partially hydrogenated oil as an ingredient, these are also evil trans fats.
In addition to clogging your arteries and causing obesity, they also increase your risk of metabolic syndrome.
Choose healthier monounsaturated fats, such as olive, peanut and canola oils and foods that contain unsaturated omega3 fatty acids instead.
3. White Flour, Rice, Pasta, and Bread
When a whole grain is refined, most of its nutrients are sucked out in an effort to extend its shelf life.
Both the bran and germ are removed, and therefore all the fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
Because these stripped down, refined grains are devoid of fiber and other nutrients, they're also easy to digest too easy.
They send your blood sugar and insulin skyrocketing, which can lead to all sorts of problems.
4. High Fructose Corn Syrup
The evil king of all refined grains is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
The amount of refined sugar we consume has declined over the past 40 years, but we're consuming almost 20 times as much HFCS.
It increases triglycerides, boosts fat-storing hormones, and drives people to overeat and gain weight.
5. Artificial Sweeteners
Aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose may be even harder on our metabolic systems than plain old sugar.
