I have known and worked with many people and have been amazed at how much they seem to be able to eat without getting fat. I am sure I eat half as much as these people but am still twice their size, it is not fair!

One day I decided I needed to find my own way of losing weight. It was time to have a reality check and to be honest with myself. I knew that in reality I do very little exercise, I like all of wrong types of food. I am a bit of a fast food junkie, this is only because of my busy lifestyle . One of my biggest problems though is that I like snack food, such as peanuts, chocolate and crisps.

Throughout most of my life, I have heard that “You are what you eat!” Then later, as I became more knowledgeable about nutrition, it became “You are what you eat, digest, and absorb!”

Our world is changing daily. Over years quality of our food supplies has also changed. Your grandparents, and possibly even your parents, would purchase food from grocery store that was not so heavily-laden with chemicals as it is today. Or, perhaps, they grew much of their own food.

I spent several years growing my own vegetables and then either canning or freezing many of them. They were grown organically, chemical free, and were delicious. While at that time of my life, I just heard that “organic” was better for you, I didn’t know much about why “organic” was better for you. But I did know things tasted better.

Basically, same thing rings true with our meats. The cows that used to roam freely in pasture, getting most of their nourishment from grass, went to locker plant mostly chemical free. Today they graze on grass that is heavily fertilized and had weed killers used on it. They are fed grains with chemicals added to help them put on weight faster.

So, even if consumer is trying to purchase purely healthy-type foods, there are some increased health risks because of added chemicals.

However, I believe that biggest health problems are brought about by what choices consumers make. When I go to super market, I see grocery carts stacked to brim with hot dogs, white breads, sweets, potato chips, soft drinks and other items that do nothing positive for a person’s health! In many cases, person pushing that shopping cart, is extremely overweight.

And then same people who stack their grocery carts with junk food wonder why they develop health problems. While genetics does play a certain role in people’s health, most diseases and illnesses are nutrition related.