Diet Plans: How Safe Is Your Corn?

By Saleem Rana


Although it may seem that corn is a good food to add to your diet, there are some good reasons why it would not work well in diet plans.

A summer barbeque seems incomplete without a piece of corn on the cob and a movie show, whether at home or in a theater, seems to be more enjoyable with some buttered pop corn, but there are reasons to think twice about either choice.

More and more people are raising the question...

Does corn help or hurt diet plans?

Although it has been estimated that about 60% of crops are genetically modified, this is only a conservative figure and the numbers are much more likely to be higher. The practice was implemented to produce a bigger crop so farmers and national revenues from the agricultural sector were higher. Genetically modified corn could now kill insects that had become resistant to pesticides.

Sweet corn, now also called Bt-corn, has been altered to produce an insect-killing poison.

Now although some of these may sound like a good thing (especially if you're a farmer!), we need to consider how GMO foods respond in our bodies and what kind of long term effects they can have on our health.

The plain fact is that we do not know if any GMO foods are safe. Everyone is an involuntary guinea pig. In April 2007, a researcher from Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, UK, announced that rats had intestinal problems after eating genetically engineered potatoes.

In humans, too, intestinal problems are not uncommon. Doctors frequently treat people with irritable bowel syndrome and other digestive issues. It's not too far fetched to consider processed foods and GMO foods play a part in these problems.

Since GMO rather than corn itself is the main problem, would diet plans with non-GMO work?

How Carbohydrates Affect Weight Loss



First, your body reads corn as a grain, NOT a vegetable so if you are to include it into your meals, this will be the grain (carbohydrate) for your meal. So having corn and brown rice would be having 2 grains in one meal. This is not necessarily off limits and not "bad" in any way, just consider if you are someone who is sensitive to grains, you will lose weight faster by greatly reducing the number of grains you eat each day. You may want to take 2 - 3 weeks and follow the "no grain" meal plans in the Diet Solution manual and see if that helps break through any weight loss plateaus and/or helps your digestion.

What role does microwave popcorn play in a healthy diet?

Microwave popcorn is not healthy. There are two reasons for this. It has preservatives and the bag is coated with chemicals used in non-stick cookware that rubs on the kernels.

Is air popped popcorn better for you?

This is the better choice when it comes to pop corn. However, you have to only enjoy this snack occasionally because your body will not lose weight if you consume too much carbohydrates.

In conclusion, then, it's fine to include corn into your diet plans provided you take some precautions. Firstly, only get the non-GMO variety. Secondly, consider corn a grain rather than a vegetable and allocate it to the carbohydrate portion of your meals.




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