Day 86: Skinny Bitch

       I just recently finished listening to the book on tape “Skinny Bitch; a no-nonsense tough-love guide for savy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous” by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin with my boyfriend when we made our trip down to San Diego two weeks ago.

     This has to have been one of the best overall health and nutrition books I have read. It is absolutely hilarious with chapters named “sugar is the devil”, “Dead, Rotting, Decomposing Flesh”, “Don’t be a Pussy” and so one. These authors really tell you like it is with eye catching verbiage and language you normally won’t see in most health books. My favorite quote from this book was when she referred to soda as “liquid Satan”, I mean who says that!

     While I was laughing throughout this whole book, I also was learning some important information such as the fact that diet soda is ten times worse than normal soda for the chemicals in diet soda actually help preserve your fat cells!

   One of the most eye opening chapters for me personally was Chapter 11 “Let’s Eat” for it listed all those ingredients on the back of packages that most of us don’t know what they are and why we shouldn’t be eating them. Here are some of the most disgusting / scary ones that some of us eat without even realizing it.

Bad or Potentially Bad Ingredients

Ambergris – From whale intestines (used to flavor foods and beverages)

Artificial, FD & C food coloring – Derived from coal-tar and can contain trace amounts of lead and arsenic.

Butylated Hhydroxanisole (BHA), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) – a preservative that can cause cancer, birth defects, and infertility

Carmine, cochineal, carminic acid – red pigment from crushed female cochineal insect and often it takes 70,000 beetles to produce one pound of this die.

Cystine – an amino acid found in horse hair and urine

Duodenum substances – come from the digestive tracts of cows and pigs

Gelatin, gel – protein obtained by boiling skin, tendons, ligaments and/or bones with water from cows and pigs.

Isinglass – a form of gelatin prepared from internal membranes of fish bladders

Lipase – enzyme from the stomachs and tongue glands of calves, baby goats, and lambs

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) – flavor enhancer which is blamed for reproductive, nervous system and brain disorders

Nitrates – potentially deadly carcinogenic preservatives found in processed food and meats

Pepsin – in hog’s stomachs, that works as a clotting agent

Potassium Bromate – Can cause cancer, nervous system disorders, and kidney failure (banned worldwide expect for Japan and the US)

Urea, uric acid, carbamide – excreted from urine and other bodily fluids

     After reading this sample from book of the long list of ingredients you really shouldn’t be eating you might be over whelmed. I know I was, but it all comes back to the point that you should only buy food with ingredients that you know what they are. I always feel a sense of relief when I find peanut butter that has only one ingredient; peanuts. So if you see a long list of confusing ingredients just don’t buy it. You really don’t want to be putting all that junk in your body any way.