3 Ingredients I Think You Should Give Up Forever

A nutritionist’s blunt advice on how to feel better and live longer

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Life expectancy is going backward in both the U.S. and the U.K. This isn’t a blip like World War I plus the Spanish flu combo. This is a downward trend since 2015. When’s it going to stop? What’s happening to our quality of life?

For one thing, chronic disease is on the up and up. The World Health Organization estimated levels would increase 57% from 2001 to 2020. Previously, the increase in chronic disease was blamed on the aging population — the idea being the longer you live, the more time disease has to manifest. But now those ideas are diverging.

What may be to blame? How might you beat the odds of developing chronic disease?

Nourish yourself

We need all the help we can get in this honking, stressful, over-dopamined, keep-up-with-the-Joneses, ring ring, beep beep, oh Christ, how do I look in this photo? world we call the present.

As a registered nutritionist, I often explain to people that a good diet is as much about what you don’t eat as it is about what you do. In today’s developed world, we’re overfed yet undernourished. Junk has taken over. This is largely because we concern ourselves with calories first and believe that by maintaining a certain amount below a given number, everything will be hunky-dory. And all the while, we miss out on the real reason we eat: to obtain nutrients.

If you make the effort to eat nourishing foods — unfashionable or a pain to prepare by today’s standards — the calories will take care of themselves. And, for the most part, so will your health.

If you’re the type who prefers to know what you need to stop doing (before you commit to a new start), I’ve got you covered. Here’s my list of the three empty foods you should throw away, leaving space for you to enjoy real food that was born or grown.

1. Highly refined grains

Highly refined grains are the backbone of many junk foods. By avoiding them, you will steer clear of many things that are best thrown away by default.