I walked into IHOP one day and asked if they had fresh orange juice. The waitress said “yes! of course we do.” I was actually surprised that they did, so I asked again: “So you have freshly squeezed orange juice?” She answered: “Oh, no. Not freshly squeezed, but I can open a new jug for you.”

Real food is an unclear concept for most people. Most of our food comes from a long line of processes that create what would seem like a piece of bread, but it is really not entirely all natural. Taking the same example with bread: In France, for instance, bread is an indispensable food in their diet, and it is considered to be good for your health. It has fiber and I doubt many french people would consider cutting it out if they were on a diet. In the US, on the other hand, bread is the first thing you cut when you want to loose weight. Most american bread goes through a long process in which they add chemicals and sugars to it to make it more appetizing…but also more toxic and fattening. We have seen earlier this week a perfect example with Subway. The sandwich chain is using a substance in their bread you can find in elastic objects such as in a yoga mat to make the bread more chewy. The reality is that food in the US is much less protected and much more processed than the majority of countries and people do have to be on the look out.

One of these processes is adding sugar to the product. In a recent study, results showed sugar not only makes you gain weight, as we all know it does, but it also increases your chances of heart disease. Dr. Sanjay Gupta recorded the evils of sugar in 60 Minutes saying that sugar is a sort of toxin. Fruits, he says, is okay, because you are getting many other nutrients with that natural sugar, but processed sugars are toxic. He even explained how artificial sweeteners make you crave real sugar. “The human body is smart,” he said, and it knows you are tricking it with artificial sweeteners. Gupta said on 60 Minutes that the best way to keep healthy is eating unprocessed and unpackaged food. That is, real fool.

Based on a 2000 daily calorie diet, women should eat about 6 teaspoons of sugar (30 grams), and men about 9 teaspoons (45 grams). True, most of us eat so much more mostly because we love eating sweets, but also because people consume products they don’t know have that much sugar in them. Here are six products that would shock you the most.

• One bar of Quaker Oatmeal to Go, Brown Sugar Cinnamon= 19 grams of sugar
• Half a cup of Prego Fresh Mushroom Italian Sauce= 11 grams of sugar
• 6 ounces of Yoplait Original 99% fat free, Lemon Burst= 31 grams of sugar
• 20 ounce Vitamin Water= 32 grams of sugar
• A 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew= 77 grams of sugar
• One Pop Tart, Chocolate Fudge= 20 grams of sugar

So if you simply have two fruit bars a day, you would be eating more sugars than recommended. But here is the worse part, especially after seeing Americans drink soda in almost every meal: if you drink a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew you would have had your sugars worth of more than two days in just one bottle. Seeing these examples, it is clear most people eat more sugar than they should… the general conception of eating sugar is that you can get fat, but what really should be thought as is that sugar is a toxin.

For further reading here are some links…

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-too-much-sugar-is-linked-to-fatal-heart-disease/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/03/added-sugars-heart-disease-death/5183799/

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2014/02/04/sugar-can-make-you-sick-caudle-newday.cnn&video_referrer=