Summary

The article advises avoiding gluten, artificial sweeteners, and seed oils to support brain health.

Abstract

The article "Support Your Brain Health by Avoiding These 3 Foods" emphasizes the importance of dietary choices for maintaining brain health. It suggests that while people often focus on the impact of food on body composition, they should also consider its effects on the brain. The author recommends eliminating gluten due to its potential link to various health issues, including depression and autism, as well as the changes in food processing that have led to increased intolerances. Artificial sweeteners are discouraged as they may be more harmful than sugar, with studies indicating possible connections to neurotoxicity, brain tumors, weight gain, cancer, dementia, and stroke. Lastly, the article warns against the consumption of seed oils, which are a recent addition to human diets and have been associated with poor cognitive function, memory loss, brain inflammation, and reduced brain volume, among other health concerns. The author encourages the use of more traditional fats and oils as healthier alternatives.

Opinions

Gluten is portrayed as detrimental to brain health, with a belief that avoiding it can prevent a range of ailments.
The author asserts that the modern processing of wheat and grains is responsible for the rise in gluten intolerance.
Artificial sweeteners are considered unnatural and potentially more harmful than sugar, with concerns about their conversion to formaldehyde at high temperatures.
There is a strong opinion against vegetable and seed oils, viewing them as unhealthy due to their novel introduction into the human diet and their association with various health issues.
The article promotes the consumption of natural sugars over artificial sweeteners, despite sugar's own health concerns.
A preference for traditional fats like olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, butter, and lard is expressed, with the opinion that these are healthier options.
The author encourages readers to be vigilant about checking food labels for hidden vegetable oils.

Support Your Brain Health by Avoiding These 3 Foods

How often do you consider your brain when you eat?

Most of us prioritize food on the basis of how it’s going to impact our body composition — i.e., will it help us lose fat and build muscle?

But people rarely consider if what they’re eating is having an impact on their brain. And not many people eat to improve their brain health. But our brains are arguably more important than our bodies, and what we eat should reflect this.

So here are 3 foods you should actively avoid if you want to protect your brain health.

1. Any food containing gluten

Gluten has long been the “bad guy” of foods.

We have an epidemic of gluten-intolerant people and more and more people are being diagnosed with coeliac disease. While this tends to be a controversial point, I believe there is merit in avoiding gluten as much as possible.

When I was 20 years old, I read Brain Maker by Dr. David Perlmutter. This book changed my life. I was already avoiding gluten, but this book really hit home the reasons to avoid it.

Gluten has been linked to so many ailments, from depression to autism. It’s not just that we feel unwell after eating it, it’s actually impacting the health of our brains.

“Even if you don’t have an intolerance or allergy to digesting gluten, and even if it doesn’t seem to cause perceivable issues for your gut, gluten can still cause major problems for your brain… dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system (the part of your nervous system responsible for automatic actions such as breathing and digestion), cerebellar ataxia (inflammation or damage of the cerebellum, causing loss of fine motor skill), hypotonia (low muscle tone), developmental delay, learning disorders, depression, migraine and headaches. In fact, recent research has even connected gluten sensitivity with neuropsychiatric conditions like autism, schizophrenia and even hallucinations.” — Ben Greenfield

You may be wondering why gluten intolerance has suddenly become so widespread when we’ve been eating bread for hundreds of years, and in some cultures today, there is hardly any incidence of the issue. The main driver of this change is how we are processing wheat and grains.

When processed according to a certain method, as it used to be done hundreds of years ago, gluten isn’t so irritating to our gut and therefore isn’t detrimental to our health. But we’ve changed how we process foods and this is leading to intolerances. The same is true for dairy.

2. Artificially sweetened foods

While artificial sweeteners may seem like a great low-carb alternative, they are arguably worse for your health than sugar.

Sugar is pretty close to its natural form. Artificial sweeteners are made in a lab.

To highlight the unnaturalness of these sweeteners here is a disturbing fact: When aspartame, a very common sweetener, reaches 30 degrees Celcius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) a substance in the aspartame converts to formaldehyde — the fluid they use to embalm bodies. These products aren’t natural.

Artificial sweeteners have been shown to have neurotoxic properties, and lead to brain tumors, weight gain, and cancer. They’ve also been linked to the development of dementia and stroke — with those consuming artificial sweeteners daily 3 times more likely to experience a stroke.

Avoid artificial sweeteners as much as possible. While sugar isn’t great for you either, it’s not going to turn into formaldehyde or cause you to have a stroke.

3. Seed Oils

Vegetable and seed oils are a new addition to the human diet.

Our bodies haven’t evolved to effectively deal with these heavily processed foods.

Vegetable oil is everywhere — it’s in margarine, frosting, and shortening (which is in all those store-bought cakes and cookies). They even put it in drinks.

These oils have been linked to poor cognitive functioning, poor memory, brain inflammation, and reduced brain volume, as well as other issues such as heart disease, immune dysfunction, and cancer.

Furthermore, vegetable oils are often unstable and therefore vulnerable to oxidative damage — which can be detrimental to the cells in your body, especially brain cells, and can lead to high levels of brain and body inflammation.

Even more worrying is that the brain is especially vulnerable to free radicals, which are molecules that can damage our cells as well as cause inflammation and disease. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals, but vegetable oils disrupt the brain’s natural antioxidant system, perpetuating the issue.

Avoid vegetable oils as much as you can. Opt for healthier oils such as olive, avocado, and coconut, or use butter and lard. Be cognizant of the foods that contain vegetable oils — always check the label.

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