Whole Food Happiness… Are You Missing Out?

Our society’s obsession with secular rather than holistic success is back firing massively when you hear firsthand accounts about so called ‘highly successful people’ who have to sell their Mercedes sports car because they can no longer get in and out of it due to obesity and associated problems.

One would think that the more affluent you become the higher the quality of food and activity you would invest in. Evidently this type of logic does not hold true and clearly there is a significant gap in both sound nutritional understanding and successful implementation which affects most of the Australian population at some level.

Fast food, highly processed convenience foods and confectionary snack foods (like Easter eggs) are shoved under our noses at every possible juncture. These types of food are becoming the major food groups for today’s children and young adults.

CBC News - Health quoted a 2005, U.S. study in which; researchers projected in the New England Journal of Medicine that life expectancy at birth and at other ages could level off or even decline within the first half of this century because of the rise in obesity rates.

The projection means that averaged across all members of the population, this generation could be the first in history to live less healthful and shorter lives than their parents.

"Knowing that there's an epidemic of childhood obesity and that those children are likely to grow up to be obese adults, we have a concern that in fact they may be shaving years off their life expectancy," said Dr. David Allison of the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

That's because as obesity rates rise, people risk developing heart disease, kidney problems, blindness and ultimately death at younger ages, the researchers said.

Weight loss is a very simple formula but far from easy to overcome with the gluttony of bad foods so readily available. Simply put, burn more Calories daily than what is consumed and you will lose weight.

Inactivity in children and young people is partly to blame for sure, however most obese children would have to run 5 – 10 kilometers a day to burn enough kilojoules to lose weight simply due to the fact that they are consuming so many calories predominantly in the form of sugar and bad fat intake.

Soft drinks, fruit juice, sugary processed cereal, muesli bars, chips and processed biscuits, white bread, jam, sweetened low fat dairy products, confectionary and fast food. Then the special treats that happen every week; Pizza, fish and chips, fast food burgers, fast food chicken, cakes and sweat buns.

If children are raised on natural whole foods they don’t tend to crave junk foods and as they grow and mature with guidance their own food choices are more likely to be whole foods. Can a parent leave a child a better legacy?

Ask anyone who lives a whole food life to compare their overall feelings of wellbeing and happiness against times in their life when they did not eat whole foods and they will tell you how amazing and generally happier they are when eating whole foods.

If you have not yet committed to eating whole foods you seriously might be missing out on more than just good health, good looks and more happiness…more life!