About the author

(NewsTarget) Most people today are usually aware that fast food is not the healthiest food to eat. Typically, the majority of people eat fast food several times a week or more. People generally eat fast food for a few main reasons, mostly because it's convenient, cheap and usually tastes pretty good.The cost factor is certainly an understandable reason given the current state of the world economies and everyone's need to tighten up on their spending. But even this is really no excuse to be pumping the tons of toxic chemicals and "dead" food into you or your families' bodies.Nearly all books and documentaries that have come out in recent years showing how bad fast food is mostly focuses on it's high fat/ high sodium content. Very few of them truly reveal the real dangers of consuming fast food and just why it is totally unfit for human consumption.Hopefully this article will help you to truly begin to understand why it's not just a "less healthy" food, but something so terrible, so disgusting, and so horrible that you are far better off eating nothing at all than to consume fast food. If most people truly knew what it is that they're putting into their bodies when they go up to that drive through window and place their order, surely the vast majority would rarely if ever consume it again.Certainly anyone who is interested in overcoming illness and disease and attaining higher levels of health and internal purity must vastly limit or completely eliminate their consumption of these so called foods So just what is in fast foods today and why is it really that bad for you? Come along as we cover some main reasons for such a strong stance against fast foods and just why they are to be avoided at all cost. Be warned that some of this information may be quite disturbing to some readers.In 2002, author Eric Schlosser, a correspondent for the Atlantic Herald, came out with a ground breaking book called "Fast Food Nation" which takes us through a sordid maze of deception, cover up, lies, fraud and both animal and human cruelty that has unfortunately become all too common in the meat packing industry today. This was even turned into a 2006 movie release of the same name.If you only saw the movie, then you missed virtually all of the "meat and potatoes" of this story because the movie was but a pale shadow of the mind blowing information contained in the book.The movie mostly focused on the plight of the immigrant laborers who work in the meat packing plants. These plants are the main suppliers of the meat, chicken and other foodstuffs sold in the fast food industry.The book covers every aspect of the fast food industry. From the truly horrible and inhumane conditions of the animals themselves from birth till death, to the often slave like conditions of the plants where the mostly immigrant and poor workers toil in 12 hour shifts or longer each day and more.Fast Food nation is a thoroughly well researched book that has won worldwide praise for its author Eric Shlosser. Eric was able to gain access to feed lots, slaughter houses and even the J.R. Simplot plant in Aberdeen, Idaho where millions upon millions of French fries are made on a daily basis. The majority of which are mostly destined for area McDonald`s restaurants.The fast food industry came out in strong protest against his book saying that they don't agree with his conclusions. At the same time when asked if there were any errors in the book the same industry said "no" that they could not find any errors in his facts or figures at all.Twenty years ago the standard number of cattle processed per hour in a typical meat packing plant was 175. The older meatpacking plants in Chicago slaughtered about 50 per hour. Today the workers at many plants are required to kill up to 400 cattle per hour. At the rate worker injuries are all too common as the workers stand close together in one spot for hours a day performing the same task over and over again. Mostly this involves swinging a large sharp knife over and over again to carve up the animal into smaller pieces for processing. Mistakes and injuries to other workers are common as they struggle to keep up with the fast pace of the line in constant fear of falling behind or being fired.The pace of the line that these workers are forced to work at is a major cause of many serious injuries to workers and has even led to several deaths. How do these workers die exactly...well this is where the story gets downright grizzly. Many times these workers are near the meat grinders when some get limbs caught in them or simply fall into the larger machines completely. By the time the machine can be shut down, there is nothing of the worker left to recover.That means that along with the meat from the cattle, there is at times, human meat mixed in with the animal meat itself. Fortunately it doesn't occur all that often, but the author is surely not taking any chances on putting such meat into his body or that of his family and I strongly suggest that you don't either. There are other things mixed into with the meat as well which we'll cover shortly.The speed of the cattle line not only producers a danger to the workers themselves, but it causes them to make a much higher percentage of mistakes in the cutting of the meat itself. What this means is that, because these workers are being forced to do the same motion up to 10,000 times per day, they can and do make mistakes and end up cutting the wrong part of the animals.Instead of cutting the meat parts that are to be sold, they can end up hitting the bowels which often causes a "mixing" of the animals waste to be mixed in with the meat that is eventually sold to restaurants and the public. This is a main source of various E-coli outbreaks that we hear about on the news from time to time. How many more people get sick from such "food" but never report it?With the terrible and inhumane way in which the animals themselves are treated which causes the meat to lose any of it's health benefits, coupled with the contamination of the meat itself during processing, you now have a situation where this meat is not only providing very little nutrition or bio-energy, but it can be quite dangerous and deadly."Every day in the United States, roughly 200,000 people are sickened by a food borne disease, 900 are hospitalized and fourteen die. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), more than a quarter of the American population suffers a bout of food poisoning each year. Most of these cases are never reported to authorities or properly diagnosed" - Fast Food Nation, page 195Not only are these animals often killed while they're in poor health, as a recent investigative film by the human society showed that even animals that are too sick or weak to walk are being picked up by forklifts and led to the slaughter anyway. This is against current animal welfare policies but is rarely enforced due to a loophole in the laws.Aside from the obvious reasons for animals to be sick and weak such as hormone injections and cramped feedlots which stresses animals out just as it does humans, there are other more stomach churning reasons for their ill health.The animals are not only unhealthy due to how they're treated in terms of actual abuse or crowded and stressed conditions, but what they're being fed is absolutely disgusting a crime against nature itself. These cattle are ruminants, meaning that they're designed to eat grass and perhaps some grain. They have four stomachs because they're meant to eats things with high cellulose content.So what is it that these animals are being fed that further contributes to their being in such ill health and overweight? Until 1997, about 75% of the cattle in the US were being fed livestock wastes, the rendered remains of dead sheep and cattle. They were also fed millions of dead pets from animal shelters. The FDA banned such practices after evidence from Great Britain suggested that this might be responsible for a widespread outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) also known as "mad cow disease"However, current FDA regulations do allow dead pigs and horses to be turned into cattle feed, along with dead poultry too. They also allow the poultry to be fed to dead cattle. Other constituents of cattle feed include cattle blood, metal fragments and sawdust.Is it any wonder then that these poor animals are sick and weak and some are unable to even walk to their own slaughter?Many such animals go to the slaughter with their bodies wracked with tumors, viruses, infections and some reports indicate that a majority of them have cancer throughout their bodies. Meat packers are taught how to cut around the cancers and tumors to avoid infecting the meat itself. But this means that even the "uninfected" parts are so weakened of nutrients, oxygen, energy and life force that it is still unfit for human consumption.Because of their low nutrient content, higher levels of diseased tissues, bacteria, weak and impure electromagnetic and life force energies along with little to no exercise and not being allowed to eat the grasses that they are designed to eat and other reasons constitute why these animals are unfit for human consumption and a horrible choice of food to be putting into your body.If you think the chickens that are sold at fast food places are treated any better, then please take a look at this 48 minute video recently featured on a major health website that is available free at the authors website below.The meat and other foods sold at fast food restaurants bears little to no resemblance to actual freshly cut meat. Food scientists employ a number of very deceptive and clever techniques to fool the senses into thinking that such foods are tasty and healthy. Science has discovered many chemicals that can exactly emulate the smells of fresh foods found in nature.For example; Ethyl-2-methyl butyrate smells just like an apple. Adding methyl-2-peridylketone makes something taste like popcorn. Ethyl-3- hydroxybutanoate makes something taste like marshmallow. On and on these combinations go and it can all be done without effecting the appearance or nutritional value of the processed foods. These ingredients can be listed as "natural flavors" on the labels, even on foods that are listed as "organic"At the Lamb Weston plant in American falls, Idaho, Eric Shlosser saw how the French fries undergo an amazing amount of scientific testing and chemical tweaking to attain just the right taste, consistency, mouthfeel, cooking time and even after taste. At one point they had him close his eyes and he was asked to identify various foods just from their smell. When the first sample was brought him he said "hmmm apples". When the next sample was brought to him he said "French fries", the third smelled just like a hamburger. Upon opening his eyes and expecting to see each of the foods present, all he saw was a scientist in a lab coat holding small white pieces of paper under his nose. These were the samples of the chemicals used to make fast food taste and smell so good.This process is certainly not limited merely to fast food or French fries. At the IFF (International Flavor and Fragrances) plant in Dayton, NJ, Eric saw how chemicals that make nearly every single food or product sold on the market today taste and smell just as they do. Some of these products include; toothpastes, colognes, pop tarts, frozen and restaurant foods, ice cream, snack cakes, cookies, mouthwashes, antacids, potato chips, corn chips, breakfast cereals, soft drinks, sports drinks, bottled teas, beer, wine coolers, all natural juice drinks, frostings, dishwashing detergents, floor waxes, shampoo, soaps, furniture polish, and the list goes on and on.Why such a focus on the aroma of food, because up to 90% of the taste of a food is actually linked to its aroma. Of course if the food is healthy and fresh, why do they need to add aroma and taste back into the food? Simple, because the food sold at most if not all fast food restaurants is so degraded, so old and of such poor quality that if you actually were to see it's color and smell it before all of this chemical processing, you would never put such foods into your stomach. This is especially true of the meats that are sold at fast food restaurants.This is a major reason why reading those labels and eating as much organic, unpackaged and unprocessed foods as possible is so incredibly vital to health and longevity. Too often even foods that are labeled as "natural" or "organic" will contain many of these chemical potions. Eating as much raw foods such as fruits, vegetables and locally grown meats is about the only way to make sure that you're not consuming foods with these myriad of chemicals in them.Aroma is not the only tweaking that goes into fast foods. The color of food also has a lot to do with it's perception of flavor. This is by design because we know that color often indicates whether a food is ripe or rancid. In the early 1970's an experiment was done where people were given an "oddly tinted" meal of steak and French fries that appeared normal under the colored lights they were subjected to. Everyone thought that the food tasted fine that is until the lighting was changed. As soon as people saw that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, people were shocked and several even became ill.If you have ever bought standard supermarket meats then you have probably noticed that the meat has a bright red "healthy" looking color to it. Well that meat is not much better than your typical fast food meats. The bright red color is from the same kind of food coloring and chemical wizardry of sight and aroma as those used in the fast food industry to trick your senses into believing the meat is health and tasty.The processing of these foods whether it's the beef, chicken, other meats or French fries has not only destroyed its chemical and nutritional value, but the energetic and phytonutrient or light energy of these foods long before they get to the dinner table.Understanding how this food is processed, what the animals are eating, how they're treated and what effect all of this has on the animals that you're consuming is critical to understanding why fast food is something that you want to avoid at all costs.At the very least you want to limit your consumption of this convenient food to no more than once a week, making sure to take digestive enzymes with every meal to ensure proper digestion. Since these foods are enzymes, nutrient and energy dead, that means that you will use up far more of your own digestive enzymes to process this food. This is why fast food equals dead food and the more dead foods we consume, the faster we end up dead ourselves. We truly are what we eat.Most natural raw foods contain their own natural enzymes which helps the food to digest itself in the stomach and intestines. This takes a big load off of the pancreas which makes most of our digestive enzymes. This is very important since digestion is the number one drain on our store of enzymes. What's not well known is that enzymes are also a major part of our immune system and are responsible for every process that occurs in the human body, even the beating of your heart.This is why eating foods high in natural enzymes, which means eating raw, fresh and minimally processed foods as much as possible along with sufficient enzyme supplements, can go a long way to not only aiding in digestion and absorption of nutrients, but can even help boost the immune system and ward off disease.When enzymes are not busy digesting our last meal, they travel around the body dissolving tumors, killing bacteria, viruses and germs, absorbing dead tissues and rebuilding new ones along with strengthening the entire system. This is the main reason why juicing is so effective at helping people at overcoming and eliminating their serious diseasesWe get a plethora of these natural vitamins, nutrients and enzymes when juicing or making natural smoothies with plenty of raw, fresh ingredients. Their natural enzymes are released in the juicer or the blender in the same way that cutting up a fresh salad also releases and activates the nutritional and enzymatic contents in the leaves.Hopefully you can now see more clearly why it's vital to avoid fast foods. This truth extends to just about all packaged and processed foods. Food that is packaged and processed is almost totally enzyme, nutrient and energy dead. These foods use up and drain the human body of tremendous amounts of enzymes required to digest and assimilate their nutrient content while giving very little in the way of true life giving energies back.The longer we keep putting these denatured and energy dead processed foods into our bodies, the faster we're using up our own limited stores of these life sustaining substances. This can not only hasten the onset of disease, but can accelerate the arrival of our own demise. It is for these and many other reasons why you should avoid fast food at all costs.If you want to read more about this, the author highly recommends the book "Fast Food Nation".Sources;"Fast Food Nation", Eric Schlosser"The Complete Book of Chinese Health and Healing" Daniel ReidRichard is a network engineer and longtime practitioner of Chinese martial arts, medicine and chi-gung for over twenty six years. Having learned many Chinese health and healing arts from old world gung-fu and healing masters and practitioners, he has helped many people to overcome their health issues and achieve their fitness goals. Through diligent study and experience he has taken this knowledge even further over the years including reading scores of books on Chinese medicine, health, chi theory, science, physics, nutrition, supplements, meditation, martial arts, and many other subjects. Utilizing the web, health and fitness videos, newsletters, articles, teachings and lectures, Rich is passionate about spreading the true knowledge of health, healing, fitness and spiritual truths. I'm proud to be writing articles for NaturalNews.com You can read many articles, hear audio interviews, and learn more about the highly praised Chinese Health and Fitness video by visiting Chinese Health and Fitness.com