From time to time, you may hear top health and fitness experts mention “clean” food, “clean eating,” or other “clean” talk. Often these experts assume we all know what “clean” means, when the truth is that most of us don’t.

Believe it or not, the origin of the food you eat can keep you fat or help you lose weight.

Food Origins

The food that 99% of us eat is far from clean:

• Beef is grown on feedlots and fed the cheapest, most fattening food available, often food completely different from a cow’s natural diet.
• Chickens are penned into dark buildings where workers must wear masks to avoid inhaling contaminants in the air, while the chickens are fed the cheapest, most fattening food available, often completely different from their natural diet and sometimes even including animal byproducts.
• Pigs…you get the picture, right?
• Fruits and vegetables are genetically modified for color and saleable content as well as to repel viruses and pests (although some studies have found that farmers using pest-resistant GMO seeds actually use more pesticides than farmers using regular seeds!).

And that’s not counting the processing and ingredients inserted into your food between the farm and your table. For example, you may think that “fresh” ground beef at the grocery store is made from pure ground meat, but it actually contains about 12% meat, plus various random cow tissues along with special processed filler that must be mechanically separated and cleansed with ammonia. But the filler is cow-based, so it counts as “beef!”

You may think a can of sliced fruit is healthy, but most canned fruit includes added sugars, often in the form of corn syrup. Peaches are normally very sweet on their own, but it’s hard to find them canned without additives. Canned vegetables just as frequently contain so much added sodium that the manufacturers often offer a “low-sodium” version.

Let’s not even speak of most boxed food, with its preservatives and hydrogenated versions of oils that are unhealthy to begin with.

This is “dirty” food. Kind of simple, now that you see it, huh?

The Clean-Food Difference

Clean food is just that: clean. Farmers take care to raise the food as much like the food has grown for centuries. Cows eat grass and roam large fields. Chickens eat grains and seeds and get ample access (not just a tiny door swung open for a short time each day—the qualification for “cage free”) to healthy fresh air outside, where they scratch and eat grasses and bugs to supplement their diets.

Fruits and vegetables are grown in fertile soil and kept as pesticide-free as possible. They’re not modified to contain things the natural vegetable doesn’t contain. They don’t use ripening agents or color agents or any kind of agents.

Again, this is kind of simple—but beware of corporations attempting to muddy the waters!

The big factory farmers constantly lobby the government to loosen and change terms like “cage free” and even “organic” to fit the way they grow food for mass consumption. For example, organic milk cows can be fed genetically modified food and still qualify as “organic.” “Studies” will often find “no difference” between the nutrition in organic and factory-grown food, but a closer look always shows that the “study” has carefully defined the term “nutrition” to suit its purpose.

Even previously reliable sources like bison are becoming factory farmed.

Why Clean Food is Better

Also, it’s generally what “clean” food doesn’t contain that’s most important for fat loss. Additives, chemicals and sugars can change your body chemistry, short-circuiting your hormones and causing you to retain fat. Commonly-used oils are usually high in omega-6 fatty acids, which promote inflammation.

The problem is worse when you eat factory-farmed meat, because animal fat tends to concentrate toxins.

Essentially, eating organic, pasture-raised food gets you back to a baseline. Just the nutrition, without all the incredibly awful substances that serve no purpose but to grow more food and make it more attractive.

Scourges like e.coli occur less in organic, grass-fed beef than factory-farmed meat, and the bacteria that are present are more likely to be killed by nothing more than the acids in your stomach. Non-organic meat often contains growth hormones, which negatively impact your hormones…you get the picture.

Where to Get Clean Food

Like every part of this article, the sources of clean food are simple: “natural” whole-food stores and farmer’s markets are common and I can guarantee you’ve got one in your town. Other sources, like the Trader Joe’s chain, often feature discounts on organic and pastured food. And thanks to the millions of people buying their produce from these sources, even big chain grocery stores are starting to get the message.

Despite the jokes about “whole paycheck,” organic and pastured food is cheaper than ever, and prices are still coming down. Again, a farmer’s market is an excellent source, both because you skip the middleman and because the farmer is local. Local farmers don’t have advertising budgets—their food quality is their reputation.

Look for organic fruits and vegetables, free-range chickens and eggs, and pasture-finished beef. (When beef is finished with grain, much of the benefit of their grass-fed upbringing is lost.)

When you can’t afford or find organic or pastured food, at least buy your food from local sources—a local beef farm is less likely to combine their meat with filler and cow parts from abroad—and when in doubt, call the farm directly. Ask them how they raise their food. Hell, go visit.

It may seem like a lot of work, but once you find your sources you can just buy and eat like normal.

The difference in the food you eat can be the difference between seeing your abs and struggling to lose weight. Give clean food a try and see if it doesn’t help.

Oops…I also forgot to mention how much better it tastes…

Click Here to see a short, informative video with the crazy truth about fat-burning. If you’ve tried and failed before, you want to see this.

You might as well eat the styrofoam.

You’re watching your favorite TV show when a commercial comes on. Maybe it’s the latest double-bacon-cheddar-angus burger, or a super deep-dish-pizza/hot wings combo delivered in 30 minutes or less, or an ingenious sandwich where instead of bread they use two fried chicken breasts! The camera lingers on the food in question, looking perfectly done, buns fluffy, cheese bubbly…mmmmm, right?

Then you read a fitness magazine or book or website encouraging you to eat beef, chicken, marinara sauce, maybe even cheese and bacon, because they’re good for you.

So why not head down to the Royal Burger or Pizza Shack and chow down?

Here’s the most amazing thing: most “experts” will tell you fast food is bad because it’s high in fats. Well, fats aren’t a problem—in fact, the right fats can help you to lose weight! What these “experts” ignore are the real problems that make fast food unhealthy.

1. Sources

The difference between a healthy slab of beef and that ground patty on the Triple Whammer Burger is immense. First, there’s the issue of ground beef, which isn’t just a steak put into a grinder. It’s ground-up pieces of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of cows (some from other countries!). And you don’t want to know which pieces they are. Then it’s mixed with filler (made from cow parts, so the restaurant can claim “100% beef”) that has been processed with ammonia, frozen and sent to the restaurant where it’s prepared with all the care a guy in a paper hat can muster.

That’s not all. The cattle used in those burgers was raised on a feedlot where it was given a steady diet of fattening food like corn and soybeans (neither of which cattle eat on their own) while likely kept in some pretty messy conditions. The meat is processed under the minimum conditions allowed by the law (remember e. coli?). Chickens have it even tougher, many not seeing the light of day from birth to death. They too are fed whatever’s cheap and fattening, although fortunately it’s now illegal to feed them pieces of each other.

The resulting meat is high in omega-6 fatty acids and low in omega-3s, which is a recipe for inflammation. I cringe every time I see an obese person riding a scooter (because their joints no longer support their weight) into a fast-food burger place, where they’re going to chow down on more joint pain. Likewise, the nutrient profile of these burgers is pure awful.

Don’t ask what’s in the cheese—remember when that large delivery pizza chain admitted their cheese wasn’t “real” (their exact word)?

2. Additives

In addition to that anonymous burger meat, the burger or chicken parts are dressed in a bun or breading. Pizza is mostly bread. Here’s what’s in a fast-food bun:

Enriched bleached flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid, reduced iron), water, high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, yeast, contains less than 2 % of each of the following: salt, calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, calcium silicate, wheat gluten, soy flour, baking soda, emulsifier (mono- and diglycerides, diacetyl tartaric acid esters of fatty acids, ethanol, sorbitol, polysorbate 20, potassium propionate), sodium stearoyl lactylate, dough conditioner (corn starch, ammonium chloride, ammonium sulfate, calcium peroxide, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, enzymes), calcium propionate (preservative).

Mmmmmm.

Then there’s the issue of sauces and spice mixtures, which usually include sweeteners (that’s high-fructose corn syrup), oils (corn or partially hydrogenated soybean), colorings and preservatives. “Special” indeed.

3. Preparation

The fast-food business isn’t in the business of taking care with your food. Grills are kept slick with partially-hydrogenated oils, and the deep-fryer is filled with them. (Thanks to misguided conventional wisdom about cholesterol, McDonalds stopped doing the one nutritionally decent thing they did—cooking fries in beef tallow—and switched to the awful vegetable oils.)

Microwaves prepare what can’t be grilled or deep-fried. There’s no evidence that microwaves themselves are unhealthy, but the cleanliness and type of containers they’re using in there can affect your food.

When you order pizza from a genuine Italian restaurant, liberal doses of healthy olive oil are usually included in the sauce and crust. Not so with the fast-food pizza vendors, who stick to cheap partially-hydrogenated oils.

The Difference

The fact is that fast food is made to be a cheap, impulse-driven facsimile of real food: you see a TV commercial or smell the scent they pump out to the street, look at the rich colors of the packaging and read the claims of “100% beef” and “now we have real cheese!” That’s why you buy fast-food—not because your body wants it, but because you’re fooled into it.

On the other hand, when you start eating nutrient-rich food raised by local farmers who care about their animals as well as their profit, your body notices the difference. A hamburger made from cows that grazed on pasture at a single farm will contain nutrients a fast-food burger can’t touch. Olive oil and higher-quality vegetables like romaine lettuce instead of the fast-food staple iceberg will have your body producing fat-burning hormones.

The fast-food companies can fool your brain, but they can’t fool your body. The simple fact is that you feel and look better when you’re eating food from healthy sources, prepared without additives or cheap grease.

And the biggest secret of all: better food tastes better. It’s true.

- Michael Cox
Fitness MasterPlan

Click Here to see a short, informative video with the crazy truth about fat-burning. If you’ve tried and failed before, you want to see this.