Transcription
The number one most dangerous ingredient in the entire world is not what you think. This ingredient is worse than high fructose corn syrup, worse than sugar, worse than starches, and worse than seed oils. Based on mice and rat studies, it is considered a class A carcinogen, which means it's a probable carcinogen in humans. A carcinogen is something that causes cancer, and this ingredient is a very potent neurotoxin—not just with nerves, but your brain as well. It also messes up reproductive organs, and this is validated by several international cancer associations. Even the EPA classifies this ingredient as a carcinogen.
This is interesting: you will not find this ingredient on the label. Why? Because it's not an ingredient; it's the byproduct of ingredients created after you process all this crap, specifically when you add heat. What is this byproduct chemical? It's called acrylamide. Acrylamide is created when you combine a certain protein with a sugar under high heat.
The first part of this video is going to be as simple as I can make it, and I'm going to get into some more of the technical things later in the video. You can watch it if you want to. I am going to give you some good news as far as the antidote or how to neutralize that chemical acrylamide later in the video.
Forty percent of our foods have acrylamide. You won't get this chemical reaction with natural sugars like sugar cane or honey. It has to be more of a refined sugar, such as glucose or dextrose, which is synthetic sugar, or glucose syrup, or even maltodextrin, which is a starch. Because it's so badly processed, it's going to turn into sugar really quick and then combine with that protein—the modified food starch, the modified corn starch—which is basically in a lot of these foods right here.
Realize when you heat something up, you usually heat it in something, right? Like oil. If you're at the fast food restaurant and you're making fries, they're not going to fry without oil. On top of all the bad effects from seed oils, sugar, and starches creating a lot of inflammation in the body and damage to your organs, we have this darn acrylamide thing on top of everything, which is like the most deadly of all of these, putting ourselves at risk for cancer.
What's really interesting about this is if you add a saturated fat instead of the seed oils that they fry the French fries with, you actually don't get this production of this byproduct, acrylamide. Back before the 1990s, when McDonald's fried their fries in tallow, which is beef fat, you didn't get acrylamide from that, even though you had this protein and this starch. But you had saturated fats. Saturated fats protect against the formation of acrylamide.
Let's say, for example, all of these junk foods were made with tallow instead of seed oils. What would that do? Well, that's going to reduce the cancer risk right off the bat. Or if you went to a restaurant and all they used was tallow or even coconut oil to fry things with, you would get a reduction of the toxicity. Would it be completely benign? I wouldn't go that far, but it's a lot less toxic.
What foods have acrylamide? Corn chips, potato chips, French fries, baked goods, crackers, cookies, breakfast cereals, the crust in bread, and even roasted coffee. Before you freak out, because I know you probably drink coffee like I do, there is a very simple way to reduce the acrylamide in coffee, so just hang in there. I'm going to get to that.
Now that you know about acrylamide and how it's created, let's get into how to get it out of the diet or, even if you happen to accidentally consume some of it, how to counter acrylamide. I already mentioned one thing, which is adding tallow, coconut oil, or butter because saturated fats are more stable. I also pointed out that if you use a natural sugar, like sugar cane or honey, then you're not going to create this acrylamide reaction.
If you have the choice of baking something or cooking something, always use more natural sugars. Not that I'm recommending doing it, but I'm just saying if we want to reduce this cancer acrylamide thing, we want to use natural sugars. Refuse to consume any refined sugar. I'm talking about high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, and all these other sugars that are just so processed.
At home, when you're cooking or if you slow cook, you reduce this chemical reaction. Sometimes I'll slow cook pork, right? It really only gets to 26°; it never gets to 285° or more, so we keep the temperature low and we're safe. The next tip is just to focus on more whole foods and not the refined stuff because this is the stuff that's killing us.
The next tip is to pair the food that you eat. And again, I'm not recommending you eat junk food, but if you happen to eat junk food, pair it with something else to neutralize the effect. What can you eat in addition to this junk food? Any type of cruciferous vegetables: kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, arugula, cabbage. They have certain protective compounds against acrylamide. Garlic will also protect you. Sprouts will have certain properties to protect you, like broccoli sprouts, for example.
Foods high in vitamin C, sauerkraut, citrus like lemons and limes, and bell peppers can all actually protect against acrylamide. Green tea is another way to protect against acrylamide. Spirulina can also do it.
Let's talk about coffee for a second here. How can we reduce the acrylamide in coffee? Because it's roasted, you can drink organic dark roasted or espresso coffee that goes up to like 400°F. Because when you get to those high heats, apparently it makes acrylamide very unstable and it goes away. When you light roast coffee, you have ten times the acrylamide than dark roast.
Now I want to get a little more technical. I want to explain specifically what's occurring in this chemical reaction. It's called the Maillard reaction. As far as protein goes, there's a very specific amino acid: asparagine. It's in corn, it's in wheat, it's in rice, it's in soy. In these refined foods, you're not protected.
When we take this asparagine amino acid and combine it with a very specific refined sugar, like high fructose corn syrup or fructose—these are all fine sugars—crank up the heat above 285°F or 120°C, and then you get this chemical reaction called the Maillard reaction and the byproduct called acrylamide. Acrylamide then creates another byproduct called glycinamide. Glycinamide is even more deadly than acrylamide. That's the stuff that really causes the cancer.
It gets complex because it's not just about reading the labels. You have to understand there are things that are very deadly that are created just from the processing. When you take a look at ultra-processed food calories, I mean, how dead can you make a food? You're getting all these additional things that you don't want that create a lot of bad effects.
Yet when you look at a teenager's diet, 67% of their calories are ultra-processed food calories. An adult has over 50% of their calories being these ultra-processed food calories, and then a toddler has 46 or 47% of their calories being ultra-processed food.
The second most common cause of death in the world is cancer. I know for myself, people are dying of cancer all over the place, especially as they get older. You want to know what causes cancer? This is one of the things. I think people know about smoking and drinking and things like that, but a very potent thing that causes cancer in humans is acrylamide.
I hope I gave you enough information to at least be aware of it and avoid it as much as possible. And if you happen to eat it, you now have the antidote to counter it. So thank you for watching, and I will see you in the next video.