{"id":591,"date":"2013-02-14T22:41:32","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T04:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/?p=591"},"modified":"2013-02-16T10:39:40","modified_gmt":"2013-02-16T16:39:40","slug":"are-processed-foods-okay-as-long-as-theyre-gluten-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/are-processed-foods-okay-as-long-as-theyre-gluten-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Processed Foods Okay as long as They’re Gluten-Free?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A study is about to be released that will directly track back the cause of metabolic syndrome to the sugar we consume. Metabolic Syndrome is a combination of medical disorders that increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and liver disease.*<\/p>\n

You may respond to this news with a shrug thinking you’re immune to the problem because you limit desserts, don’t spoon sugar into your coffee, avoid soft drinks, and never touch a doughnut. Before you get too comfortable, take a moment to read the labels on the packaged gluten-free pizza, bread, rolls, muffins, scones, cornbread, bagels, tamales, chicken broth, deli meats, crackers, pretzels, seasoning packets, jams, jellies, and cereal that you eat along with the labels on your juice drinks and sodas. If you see the words glucose, dextrose, fructose, galactose, high fructose corn syrup, cane syrup, sucrose, maltose, or lactose then the food contains sugar.<\/p>\n

If a label contains words like sorbitol, xylitol, mannitol, maltitol, lactitol, erythritol, isomalt or hydrogenated starch hydrolysates then the food contains sugar alcohols. Sugar alcohols are often found in foods labeled sugar-free. Even though they are not sugars, these items are carbohydrates and may trigger the same deleterious effects as sugar such as raising your blood sugar level.<\/p>\n

If you employ a gluten-free lifestyle, none of these items will trigger the autoimmune response your body has to gluten. That makes them healthier for you than a gluten containing equivalent. It does not make them healthy.<\/p>\n

According to the American Heart Association, the current recommended daily allowance of sugar in a healthy diet is no more than 6 tsp for women and 9 tsp for men.** That might seem like a lot of sugar if you’re eating it straight out of a spoon, but not like much at all when you drink a 12 oz soda even though the soda contains 8 tsp of sugar.<\/p>\n

If you want to be as healthy as possible, you can carefully read labels making sure to add up all the sugars listed so that you don’t exceed the recommended number of teaspoons per day. Because most labels list sugars in grams, this can become a confusing and time consuming task. The easier thing to do is to phase processed foods out of your eating plan.<\/p>\n

I’m not suggesting that you should never, ever eat a bowl of cereal, packaged pasta, or crackers, but if you make these rare treats rather than everyday staples, it will be much easier to keep your sugar consumption at a minimum. It will also facilitate lowering your sodium intake, and it won’t hurt your pocket book either since gluten-free convenience foods are often priced significantly higher than their gluten-containing counterparts.<\/p>\n

\"lamb<\/a>
Lamb Chops are Gluten-Free<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Don’t worry about not having enough gluten-free choices when you phase out processed food. Fresh beef, pork, fish, seafood, poultry, dairy, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, fruit, herbs, and spices have never contained gluten. By combining these ingredients you can make a seemingly unlimited number of delicious and healthy combinations.<\/p>\n

More fresh food means less risk for Metabolic Syndrome. Let’s phase out that processed food, get out those aprons, and start cooking to thrive!
\n*For more information, see these resources:
\nhttp:\/\/www.nlm.nih.gov\/medlineplus\/metabolicsyndrome.html<\/p>\n

Lustig, Robert. Fat Chance.; Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease.<\/em> New York: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, 2013. Print.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022http:\/\/www.heart.org\/HEARTORG\/GettingHealthy\/NutritionCenter\/HealthyDietGoals\/Sugars-and-Carbohydrates_UCM_303296_Article.jsp<\/p>\n

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A study is about to be released that will directly track back the cause of metabolic syndrome to the sugar we consume. Metabolic Syndrome is a combination of medical disorders that increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and liver disease.* You may respond to this news with … Continue reading “Are Processed Foods Okay as long as They’re Gluten-Free?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,11,9],"tags":[49,106,338,335,221,337,336,339],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":596,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions\/596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}