Junk Food

Processed foods list

Our processed foods list helps you to avoid eating foods that will produce insulin in your body.

Insulin converts 25% of the calories you consume into fat cells in your body. Insulin prevents you from burning all of the calories you consume each day. As a result, you feel hungry and you feel the need to consume more calories, thereby creating a vicious cycle that makes you want to eat more and more each day. And if you cut back on food, you will feel like you lack the energy to exercise.

  • Processed foods produce insulin in the body.
  • Insulin blocks leptin signals in the brain.
  • Lipogenesis is the metabolic formation of fat.
  • Insulin drives weight-gain.
  • Processed foods are the culprit to explain people’s expanding waistlines.


Fruit Flavored Yogurt

Are you still skeptical? Can’t I still eat my fruit flavored yogurt in the morning? Answer: No. Fruit flavored yogurt doesn’t have real fruit in it. It has fructose. Fructose causes lipogenesis. When fructose is consumed, absolute lipogenesis is 2-fold greater than when it is absent (100:0).   Dietary Sugars Stimulate Fatty Acid Synthesis in Adults 1–3

Watch Dr. Robert Lustig‘s video on hunger and hormones to understand the relationship between processed foods and insulin production.

The term processed foods refer to foods that are packaged in boxes, cans or bags. These foods need to be processed extensively to be edible and are not found as is in nature.

Most yogurt sold in stores also contain trans fats. Trans fats raise your bad (LDL) cholesterol levels and lower your good (HDL) cholesterol levels. Eating trans fats increases your risk of developing heart disease and stroke. It’s also associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Processed foods list 

  • Artificial ingredients, such as synthetic dyes (like FD&C Red No. 40, Tartrazine, or Blue No. 1) and sweeteners
  • Bacon
  • Beef jerky
  • Bread with more than 4 ingredients (other than seeds)
  • Breakfast cereals, such as Cheerios, Special K, Captain Crunch, etc.
  • Cheese
  • Chopped fruit or vegetables in a package are processed foods
  • Cookies
  • Cream cheese
  • Drinks, such as milk, powdered juices, soft drinks
  • Factory farmed meat and seafood
  • Fast Food
  • Flavored yogurt
  • Frozen prepared foods
  • Fructose
  • Ham
  • Imitation crab meat
  • Low-fat products
  • Margarine
  • Meat, if canned or dried
  • Microwave ready meals
  • Pasta
  • Pop tarts
  • Pudding cups
  • Salads at McDonald’s are full of high-fructose corn syrup and thickeners made from corn
  • Sausages, hot dogs, salami
  • Shortening, soybean oil, and even canola oil
  • Snacks, such as crisps
  • Soups:
    • Annie Chun’s soup
  • Stouffers frozen prepared foods
  • Sugar, corn syrup, cane juice, or brown rice syrup
  • Sweeteners (like saccharin, aspartame, or sucralose).
  • Tinned vegetables
  • White rice
Annie Chun's Miso soup packages
Annie Chun’s Miso soup packages are a processed food

References

Too much fructose can damage your liver, just like too much alcohol

Dietary Sugars Stimulate Fatty Acid Synthesis in Adults 1–3, 2008

Insulin and leptin as adiposity signals, 2004

There is now considerable consensus that the adipocyte hormone leptin and the pancreatic hormone insulin are important regulators of food intake and energy balance. Leptin and insulin fulfill many of the requirements to be putative adiposity signals to the brain. Plasma leptin and insulin levels are positively correlated with body weight and with adipose mass in particular. Furthermore, both leptin and insulin enter the brain from the plasma. The brain expresses both insulin and leptin receptors in areas important in the control of food intake and energy balance. Consistent with their roles as adiposity signals, exogenous leptin and insulin both reduce food intake when administered locally into the brain in a number of species under different experimental paradigms. Additionally, central administration of insulin antibodies increases food intake and body weight. Recent studies have demonstrated that both insulin and leptin have additive effects when administered simultaneously. Finally, we recently have demonstrated that leptin and insulin share downstream neuropeptide signaling pathways. Hence, insulin and leptin provide important negative feedback signals to the central nervous system, proportional to peripheral energy stores and coupled with catabolic circuits.