Pure Trash

[NighthawkChris]

I went to the doctor's office for my annual physical, and I got a lipid panel done.  Results were not great unfortunately for me...  I have high levels of triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, and high LDL cholesterol.  So the solution they have me looking into first is to adjust my diet and exercise to see if this helps - otherwise going on cholesterol meds.  It may be genetic to how my body apparently manages cholesterol...  I'm not a doctor, so forgive me on the fine details here...  but these numbers seem to alarm my primary care doctor's office, so working on doing something to get better lab results next time I get a lipid panel done. 

So I was thinking about fast food this fine day while I'm having a salad for lunch - where I used to casually get a burger or taco at one of our favorite fast food places.  I was doing a little reading on the interwebs here and decided to search for worst nutrition for fast food joints ranked - to make me feel better about eating my healthy, not as tasty salad for lunch.  Of course this is somewhat subjective who's the worst to some extent, but there's no mystery, we have TONS and TONS of these places nearly everywhere we look selling us garbage food that kills us about the same rate that smoking cigarettes could do IMHO.  What's worse, dying at 70 with COPD issues from cigarettes, or dying as a fat turd that has cardiovascular disease because of the massive amounts of cholesterol and fat these places serve us - for not even cheap prices today, the irony of it all. 

We are just fed a ton of garbage food, whether it be on every street corner or in the aisles of our grocery store.  To me, it's almost like an epidemic.  There's no mystery that fast food is addictive, an it's made convenient for us to pay for really, a bunch of empty calories. 

I usually found that in the rankings per my searches, it was a recurring theme to see McDonalds there, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Arbys...  I even read that the "meat" isn't even pure meat these places use.  I read about this a while back, but the claim resurfaced in my readings. 

Things that we even think might be OK such as lunch meats, pink hams (because of the sodium nitrate they are loaded up with), hot dogs...  All horrible for us.  Meat is NOT pink.  It just "looks" better - thanks sodium nitrate! 

Sugars in nearly everything, and we even put corn-based sweeteners that are really worse because of the massive fructose content (interestingly enough, fructose is equivalent to alcohol in terms of how the body processes these - all done by the liver ONLY).  Fructose I think somehow screws with our pancreases and the pancreas doesn't caloricize fructose...  There's no feedback to you when you consume it to tell you, "You've had enough!"  Again, trash food and trash components of the food we eat. 

There's my rant.  Has anyone else banned themselves from eating any of this crap I mentioned for whatever reason?  I admit, I think these foods taste good, but that doesn't equate to GOOD food.  On the contrary, it actually can cause more issues than help if these are consumed regularly. 

Edited October 20, 2022 by NighthawkChris

[Pinch]

I usually hover around not-good cholestorol levels, so I've started to clean up my food intake. Thanks for the reminder, because I need to be stricter. 

[Tman]

I do restrict carbohydrates. Lots of good options now including plant based meats (impossible burger etc) if you are inclined. Erythritol and monk fruit is really good and no GI upset. Real non processed foods avoiding sugars and starches are the way to go. You can even have wine (2 grams of carbs/glass) or alcohol (0 carbs) if inclined. Myth about wine and sugar. The sugar is metabolized into alcohol and alcohol is metabolized by the body like fat, not sugar so much less if any insulin release and no fat storage or production. A bit of wine and exercise and no smoking is great way to raise your HDL.

I have high cholesterol and serious heart disease in my family history. I take Lipitor and eat as above and my numbers all dramatically improved..

[kidblast]

the triglycerides are alarming as it's fatty cells in your blood which will lead to clogged arteries, which, well you know the rest.

Fish oil tablets, taken daily and diet with some meds helped to keep mine in check

My problem isn't the diet,  I don't ever go to fast food places, and most of the stuff my wife whips up in the kitchen about has wholesome and healthy as it gets  She is dialed in on all this stuff since my Doc told me to watch it some years back   Some of this is hereditary, but I also like things like Gin and Tonics  (Tonic water = BAD  Unless is the "Good" stuff  which is expensive

I stear away from Soda (except tonic water and gingeral, uz dam it's so good with whiskey-- wups!)

and there are many Juices that you'd think are healthy are not, as they are high in high fructose sugars    gotta watch out for that it's almost everywhere, and one has to read the labels to know.

 

 

[jdgm]

No fast foods for me either - much too expensive now in the UK for one thing.  I'm old and not well off - and prices of everything have rocketed and are still increasing. 

Since being diagnosed with paroxsysmal atrial fibrillation in 2014 I've been on 20mg Atorvastatin nightly.  I know of people on higher doses.  That keeps cholesterol levels in check.

Agree about the salt; ready meals etc usually have high levels of salt and various preservatives.

Fortunately I love my salads, my AF is in remission these days and I'm getting back to my daily swim - though the pandemic stopped that for quite a while.

Still like a beer (or a nice G&T) but a late-night snack is now an occasional, carefully-considered....biscuit

Edited October 20, 2022 by jdgm

[jedzep]

Existence is over-rated.

[NighthawkChris]

Thanks everyone, good advice all around.  Sort of difficult to change eating habits and try to work some more exercise in the schedule, but I'll find a way to do it.  I'm just trying to eek out as many fruitful years as I can to give to my children most importantly.  If there's something I can get ahead of, this sounds like that something that I should be getting ahead of before I get issues with this stuff. 

I had other tests done too on my blood-work - blood sugar. etc...  Those all came back acceptable, so have to be happy about that one! 

Thanks again though, stay healthy everyone! 

 

Edited October 20, 2022 by NighthawkChris

[sparquelito]

I cut out all sweets nine years ago. 
Haven't had a candy bar, any cake, a slice of pie, or a donut in all that time. 
Not a bit. 
If somebody bakes a birthday cake for my birthday, I thank them kindly, and I watch everyone else eat it. 
I won't touch it. 

I eat lots of fruits and vegetables, and though I eat a lot of meat, I select good quality, lean cuts of mostly organic meat. 

I swim every other morning, sometimes five or six times a week. 

My one downfall is that I love beer. 
And beer loves me. 
It clings to me. 
Mainly around my middle section. 

😐

[tx-ogre]

My wife and I rarely eat fast food of any kind, perhaps 2-3 times a month.  And because everything here in Austin is always crowded except during off-hours, we almost never eat at sit-down restaurants.  My wife and I both cook.  She does most of the indoor cooking.  I do all of the outdoor cooking, something that can be done year-round here.  And after retiring my infared gas grill and buying a 36” Blackstone flat top griddle, I can cook anything on that that can be cooked on the stove, only in larger quantities.  (And my occasional smash burgers and Bubba Burgers just taste better…lol. )  This way we can control the ingredients, especially things like sodium and fat.  Leaner cuts of meat, etc.  It has really helped control cholesterol and triglycerides.

Edited October 20, 2022 by tx-ogre

[Mr. Gibson]

Quit going to the doctor they always find something wrong with you even if there’s nothing wrong with you. 

[Murph]

10 hours ago, Mr. Gibson said:

Quit going to the doctor they always find something wrong with you even if there’s nothing wrong with you. 

 

Bingo.

Those guys are on commission.

[badbluesplayer]

Lipitor good. Donuts bad.

Just remember, they put a grommet in your jugular - right in your neck -  when you have bypass surgery so they can feed a bunch of wires down into your heart to make sure you're not dead yet.  So keep that in mind when you eat donuts.  I had nine tubes and leads and sensors sticking out of me whan I had my triple bypass twenty years ago.  Not again.  Nuh-uh.

Oh, and the other thing is - how could I have forgotten?  When you wake up and you're on the ventilator.  That's a character building experience right there.

Edited October 21, 2022 by badbluesplayer

[kidblast]

18 hours ago, jedzep said:

Existence is over-rated.

maybe so...  but  I think it beats the alternative by a light year or two   just sayin...

 

[Pinch]

57 minutes ago, kidblast said:

maybe so...  but  I think it beats the alternative by a light year or two   just sayin...

 

Heart attacks and strokes aren't that good either. 

[Whitefang]

22 hours ago, NighthawkChris said:

I went to the doctor's office for my annual physical, and I got a lipid panel done.  Results were not great unfortunately for me...  I have high levels of triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, and high LDL cholesterol.  So the solution they have me looking into first is to adjust my diet and exercise to see if this helps - otherwise going on cholesterol meds.  It may be genetic to how my body apparently manages cholesterol...  I'm not a doctor, so forgive me on the fine details here...  but these numbers seem to alarm my primary care doctor's office, so working on doing something to get better lab results next time I get a lipid panel done. 

So I was thinking about fast food this fine day while I'm having a salad for lunch - where I used to casually get a burger or taco at one of our favorite fast food places.  I was doing a little reading on the interwebs here and decided to search for worst nutrition for fast food joints ranked - to make me feel better about eating my healthy, not as tasty salad for lunch.  Of course this is somewhat subjective who's the worst to some extent, but there's no mystery, we have TONS and TONS of these places nearly everywhere we look selling us garbage food that kills us about the same rate that smoking cigarettes could do IMHO.  What's worse, dying at 70 with COPD issues from cigarettes, or dying as a fat turd that has cardiovascular disease because of the massive amounts of cholesterol and fat these places serve us - for not even cheap prices today, the irony of it all. 

We are just fed a ton of garbage food, whether it be on every street corner or in the aisles of our grocery store.  To me, it's almost like an epidemic.  There's no mystery that fast food is addictive, an it's made convenient for us to pay for really, a bunch of empty calories. 

I usually found that in the rankings per my searches, it was a recurring theme to see McDonalds there, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Arbys...  I even read that the "meat" isn't even pure meat these places use.  I read about this a while back, but the claim resurfaced in my readings. 

Things that we even think might be OK such as lunch meats, pink hams (because of the sodium nitrate they are loaded up with), hot dogs...  All horrible for us.  Meat is NOT pink.  It just "looks" better - thanks sodium nitrate! 

Sugars in nearly everything, and we even put corn-based sweeteners that are really worse because of the massive fructose content (interestingly enough, fructose is equivalent to alcohol in terms of how the body processes these - all done by the liver ONLY).  Fructose I think somehow screws with our pancreases and the pancreas doesn't caloricize fructose...  There's no feedback to you when you consume it to tell you, "You've had enough!"  Again, trash food and trash components of the food we eat. 

There's my rant.  Has anyone else banned themselves from eating any of this crap I mentioned for whatever reason?  I admit, I think these foods taste good, but that doesn't equate to GOOD food.  On the contrary, it actually can cause more issues than help if these are consumed regularly. 

Treating cholesterol levels can be dicey especially since most doctors now practice what I call "chart medicine" in that they'll rely on "go to" treatments instead of investigating more of what their patients can respond to(or how) to these treatments.  Fine example in this case;

When my wife would have high cholesterol numbers her doctor would typically prescribe a statin drug(Lipitor).  Turns out Statin drugs caused her to have severe leg cramps.  In that case, the doc would suggest pain drugs or the like that not only didn't help, but caused stomach distress as well.  We had to ride him about this until he finally came up with Welchol, a non statin cholesterol treatment.

Since my TIA back in '14, my diet has consisted mostly of low fat this, "lite" that, "fat free" whatever.  But eventual spinal issues greatly limiting my mobility and activity resulted in weight gain the diet is unable to reduce like one would think.  

I learned long ago, after being diagnosed with hypoglycemia(low blood sugar) from the book "Sugar Blues"  how much sugar is actually used in foods thought to not have any sugar.  Like most processed lunch meats.  And of course, despite what certain industries try to claim, how sinister-like dangerous high fructose corn syrup is to people. FAR worse than cane sugar. And frightening how many food companies use it in their processes.   Tell you what.......   Want more frightening info about how dangerous food, NOT just "fast food" but other foods we generally think are OK, but aren't?  Well, since there aren't any more video stores, go online and order, or look on You Tube or whatever to see a documentary called "Food Inc."   It'll get you spending an extra hour or two in the supermarket just reading the nutrition labels.    But I'm no angel.  I'll every couple of blue moons swing into Mac's and get a McDouble and fries.  Or Wendy's grilled chicken sandwich.  But not on any regular basis.  Following the motto "Everything in moderation" on most other eats.   And since I'm also hypertensive, I search high and low for "lower sodium" alternatives.  And was surprised to find ketchup was higher in sodium than mustard.  But luckily, Heinz makes a "No salt added" ketchup variety.  And Campbell's also has "Healthy" and "No salt added" condensed soups.  As to fructose----

This also can benefit you if following that "everything in moderation"  advice.  Fructose, especially from fruits and some vegetables, isn't necessarily bad for you.  But like everything else, overdoing it can be bad.  And too, not everyone is the same.  You may know( and I know as do other people I've talked to) someone who can chow down like a pig and not gain one ounce of weight or suffer any poor health reactions.  And I know a guy who started smoking at age 12 and smoked all the way to his dying day at 92.  Yet another guy who never smoked and worked in a cubicle at an office building where smoking was prohibited and he died of lung cancer at age 44. 

Go figure.

Whitefang

[mihcmac]

I haven’t been to the doctor for quite a while, I was able to recover from my recent non-COVID Flu just using over-the-counter preparations, I did have a few bad days but I’m still here.

[ksdaddy]

I stopped drinking coffee in early July. I haven't used my Albuterol since. And I've cut my beta blockers in half.

I do drink tea, but not a lot. 2 cups a day maybe.

[merciful-evans]

Interesting. I watched a YT blog by Evan Edinger, who is an American living in the uk. He did a comparison grocery shop between USA & UK and the USA shop came out quite a bit more expensive. This was a surprise to me. He found fresh produce was more expensive in particular in USA and recalls that its about as cheap to buy meals out there too. 

I am pretty healthy diet wise. Except for wine and beer maybe. 

I do find that you can get used to almost anything, if you are patient enough.