Looking at our food sources and labelling is a start on becoming smarter buyers. If you’ve been following my posts you know that eggs are an important part of our diet for health-over-70.

Pasture-Raised Eggs

The difference in eggs can be quite dramatic based on the sources you select.

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

Labelling

The key to gaining the above benefits and avoiding all the toxins and additives including GMOs is to understand what the labelling means because these are definitely used to mislead you into thinking your getting what you want – something that doesn’t compromise on your health. In order to produce healthy eggs, chickens was be exposed to the outdoors and sunlight for close to 8 hours a day, be able to scratch on the ground, eat seeds, worms, and grubs, take dust baths and spread their wings – in other words, do all of the things that are normal and natural for hens. If you see a light yellow yolk then chances are that regardless of the label you don’t have that.

• “Cage-Free”: Hens are uncaged inside barns, but they generally do not have access to the outdoors. They can engage in many of their natural behaviors such as walking, nesting and spreading their wings. Beak cutting is permitted. There is no third-party auditing.
• “Certified Organic”: Hens are uncaged inside barns, and are required to have outdoor access. However, the amount (space-wise), duration, and quality of outdoor access is not defined. Hens are fed an organic, all-vegetarian diet free of antibiotics and pesticides. Beak cutting and forced molting through starvation are permitted. Compliance is verified through third-party auditing.
• “Free-Range” or “Free-Roaming”: The USDA has defined the terms of “free-range” for some poultry products, but there are no standards regarding “free-range” egg production. Free-range hens are typically uncaged inside barns and have some outdoor access. Again, the amount, duration or quality of outdoor access is not defined. Since they are not caged, they can engage in many natural behaviors such as nesting. This is very important: there are no restrictions regarding what the birds can be fed, and there is no third-party auditing. Beak cutting and forced molting through starvation are permitted. (Kind of sounds like anything goes, huh?)
• “Certified Humane” (a program of Humane Farm Animal Care): Hens are not caged, but may be kept indoors at all times. They must be able to perform natural behaviors such as nesting, perching, and dust bathing. There are requirements for stock density (the number of hens within a given area), and number of perches and nesting boxes available for the hens. Forced molting through starvation is prohibited, but beak cutting is allowed. Compliance is verified through third-party auditing.
• “Animal Welfare Approved” (a program of the Animal Welfare Institute): The birds are cage-free and continuous outdoor perching access is required. They must be able to perform natural behaviors such as nesting, perching and dust bathing. There are requirements for stocking density, perching, space and nesting boxes. Birds must be allowed to molt naturally and beak cutting is prohibited. These are the highest animal welfare standards of any third-party auditing program.
• “American Humane Certified” (a program of the American Humane Association): Hens may be caged or cage-free. Hens that are confined in these so-called “furnished cages” have about the space of a legal-sized sheet of paper (“humane certified,” eh?). These cages are detrimental to animal welfare, and they are opposed by nearly every major US and EU animal welfare group. Forced molting through starvation is prohibited, but beak cutting is allowed. Compliance is verified through third-party auditing.
• “Food Alliance Certified” (a program of the Food Alliance): The birds are cage-free and access to outdoors or natural daylight is required. They must be able to perform natural behaviors such as nesting, perching and dust bathing. There are specific requirements for stocking density, perching, space and nesting boxes. Starvation-based molting is prohibited. Beak cutting is allowed. Compliance is verified through third-party auditing. Food Alliance Certified is a program of the Food Alliance.
• “United Egg Producers Certified” (a program of the United Egg Producers): The overwhelming majority of the U.S. egg industry complies with this voluntary program, which permits routine cruel and inhumane factory farm practices. Hens laying these eggs have 67 square inches of cage space per bird, less area than a sheet of paper. The hens are confined in restrictive, barren battery cages and cannot perform many of their natural behaviors, including perching, nesting, foraging or even spreading their wings. Compliance is verified through third-party auditing. Forced molting through starvation is prohibited, but beak cutting is allowed. This is a program of the United Egg Producers.
• “Vegetarian-Fed”: These birds’ feed does not contain animal byproducts, but this label does not have significant relevance to the animals’ living conditions.
• “Natural”: This term has no relevance to animal welfare. It simply means that nothing was added to the egg, such as flavorings, brines or coloring.
• “Omega-3 Enriched”: Hens are fed a diet enriched with omega-3s. However, they are typically poor-quality sources of omega-3 fats that are already oxidized. Interestingly, omega-3 eggs have been shown to be far more perishable than non-omega-3 eggs. This term has no relevance to animal welfare.
• “No added hormones”: This term is really just a marketing tactic as all farmers are legally prohibited from giving hormones to chickens. If present on a label, this term must be followed by a statement that says “Federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones” (or something along those lines).

Now that you see the problems with labelling, you can probably guess that any certification or compliance reviews are not reliable as well. Even the USDA lays off certification and inspection to third parties.

Bottom Line

You #1 best source for eggs is a local farmer that you can visit and review their practices. If you can see the hens grazing across open fields of green, having access to fresh water, and not being feed GMO grains, then you stand a better chance of getting what you want even if you have to drive 50 miles, than taking a chance with product from a retailer who really doesn’t care what the label means.

Your next best approach is to find a local farmer’s market and speak to the owners about how they raise their hens. Many local farmers are too small to afford the USDA Organic certification, however, if you review their practices yourself often you’ll find that they adhere to every requirement and more.

We’ve covered this topic several different ways in the past.

The Easy Path for Reversing Diabetes Naturally

Type 2 Diabetes

Diabetes and Your Gut

Lab Results Trap for Obesity and Diabetes

But we need to return to this important topic of how to prevent type 2 diabetes naturally.

Almost 50% of the adult population of the US has pre-diabetes (sometimes called metabolic syndrome. We’re eating ourselves into a very difficult situation and a part of why we’re here is that we believe as our doctors do that there’s nothing we can do about it.

20% of us are obese – a common symptom that goes with the pre-diabetic condition and we also think that is inevitable – I mean we have a vague feeling that our obesity is something that doesn’t respond to just dieting and exercise but we feel helpless to know how to do anything but give in.

High Blood Sugar is a Symptom Not a Cause

There are a number of things we control that can give us access to reversing type 2 diabetes, but we first have to realize that high blood sugar is not a cause but a symptom. and the treatment – insulin – are simply treating the symptom and not the real cause. Change your approach to treating the cause and you’ll find that your need for insulin – if you are currently on insulin you need to continue to follow your doctors instructions – will go away.

Taking Control of Your Lifestyle and Things You Can Change

Sun Exposure and Exercise – give yourself time in the sun everyday. Your body was made to use sunlight to activate hormones that your body needs to function normally. Take a walk even if you need to keep it short – do something that give you some easy exercise outside where you can get some sun. Start small and work your way up to 30 minutes or an hour a day. You’ll start to feel the difference almost immediately.

Change Your Diet to Dramatically Reduce Carbohydrates – carbs are the culprit and your enemy in your road back to functioning normally. You can get some free help by tracking your daily diet – use this free website to start tracking your diet today.

Increase Your Intake of Fish Low in Mercury – Omega 3 is a very important animal-based fat for pre-diabetics and diabetics. Fish like wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon, sardines, anchovies, herring and fish roe are good sources of low mercury fish if they’re not farm-raised and are sourced from cold waters. Although it is required that you be “choosy” about the fish you eat, with some study and some searching around you should be able to find a source for what you want. You can also supplement with Omega 3 but in that case you also need to concern yourself with sources that also avoid Mercury in their fish sources.

Increase Your Intake of Seeds – I like sunflower and pumpkin seeds and eat a lot in my salads. These are a good source of magnesium and magnesium even from supplements will help you to find your way back from diabetes.

Increase Your Intake of Good Fats – Everyone tries to peddle the same old “wisdom” that came to use in the 50s along with the food pyramid. These sources of wisdom have been proven wrong by massive numbers of scientific studies over the past 20 years. It’s amazing how long real scientific evidence takes to find its way into our mainstream knowledge. I credit the food companies for part of this because their products were formulated for a time that has long passed but they would like to keep feeding us the same thing rather than suffer the expense of changing. I also credit the pharmaceutical companies – they own a significant interest in the seeds we’er planting that are a big part of the problem and aside from that they get paid for selling us drugs as long as we keep getting sicker.

Increase your intake of avocados, along with the use of olive oil and coconut oil – all very healthy sources of fats that you need in your diet.

Increase Your Intake of Fiber – Especially fiber from whole foods. I like to steam cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, green beans and artichokes – I only steam them just enough to heat and soften them but not so much that they get too hot or soft – they have less nutritional value the longer you cook them. Try to get 2-3 servings of these per meal including breakfast. Almonds also have a fair amount of fiber and are good raw. I also eat a fair amount of beans – black beans, pinto beans, and lentils. I try to get these organic and non-GMO as a rule. I also recommend raw walnuts.

Change Your Treats – Use organic strawberries as a treat along with black berries and blue berries.

Minimize Dairy – Naturally this is the one that gets the most “push back” because there are mixed blessings with dairy. On the one hand, most dairy is comes from feedlots and is heavily contaminated with GMO (something you’re almost certainly allergic to) and antibiotics and hormones. Our dairy industry just can’t give us anything edible but if you can find a source for grass-fed milk and yogurt that is free of antibiotics, then you can keep dairy in your diet as long as you’re making progress on your primary objective.

Summary

If you’re suffering from dizziness, headaches, leg or muscle pains, blurred vision, food cravings, increased hunger, increased thirst, sores or cut that won’t heal, frequent urination, then you’re probably due for a doctor visit and a blood test. If you’ve already been diagnosed as pre-diabetic then the most important thing is to realize that you have the power to step away from that threshold and reverse type 2 diabetes.

If you’ve received a lab test showing levels over 150, chances are you doctor has talked to you about diet. But diet is only one way to address high triglycerides.

What are they?

Triglycerides are how you body converts what you eat to a type of fat or lipid that circulates in your blood stream. If Triglycerides are too high, then there’s too much fat circulating and that tends to deposit itself anywhere convenient – your fat cells, you blood veins (it similar to cholesterol another fat lipid created by your body primarily to repair damage and rebuild cells).

Where traditional medicine goes wrong?

So your doctor will most likely give you the traditional answer. You’re most likely overweight and you’re gaining weight so the traditional solution is “exercise more, eat less.”

Not that this is bad advice but it just rarely works, and is only a part of the solution.

Lifestyle Changes

Rather than purely trying to consume fewer calories, you might consider changing a number of factors that contribute to high triglycerides and generally are indicative of metabolic syndrome – a cluster of symptoms that indicate your health is headed in the wrong direction – toward type 2 diabetes.

So why not take a comprehensive approach that includes exercise, dieting, supplements, and do something that is sustainable which most dieting or exercise is not?

Diet

Just eating less is not generally a sustainable approach. Sure you can cut calories through will power for a while, but that generally just doesn’t last. Better to choose different and better foods where you can actually eat more but get less of the foods that cause the problem.

Consider the following changes any one of which could significantly impact your condition in a very positive manner.

• Reduce or eliminate grain consumption – in other words, get off of anything made of flour – breads, cakes, pies, cookies, rolls, cereals, etc. Grains turns to sugar faster than sugar turns to sugar and in your body and bloodstream grains are a primary fuel for too many triglycerides.
• Reduce or eliminate dairy. That includes milk, milk products, packaged products with diary, cheese, cream, etc. If you have to have dairy then make sure it is organic from grass-fed cows that are hormone-free – modern milk is not the same milk your parents had in past years – it’s full of hormone and antibiotics used to raise cows in new modern factories where they get sick and die a lot more frequently and are milked while they’re pregnant which leads to 10X the estrogen of normal milk.
• Increase raw leafy green vegetables – eat a salad once a day for a meal – it will fill you up and take the place of a meal where you eat something a lot worse.
• Increase slightly steamed vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, zucchini, and yellow squash. These will help fill you up – eat them first with a meal of chicken, fish, or beef.
• Eat only organic grass-fed beef and eat less of it. Most beef contains hormones, pesticides, GMOs, and more. Beef raised in feedlots produces beef that you just shouldn’t be eating nor should you be supporting that type of ranching.
• Eat only cage free organic chicken. Again, same as the beef. You shouldn’t support ranchers who are captives of big-agribiz companies who want to feed you chicken with hormones, insecticides, and GMOs.
• Avoid sugar and sugar-added foods. You might also consider avoiding minimizing fruit and fruit juices for a while. Sugar is just as much a contributor to your triglycerides as is grains.
• Choose healthier fats – stop using vegetable oils, corn oils, soy oils, for cooking – these are high in Omega 6 fats and too much of those fats can be devastating to your efforts to reduce your triglycerides. Instead choose olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil. Believe it or not, cooking in butter will be better for you than cooking in the bulk vegetable oils.

Exercise

The key to exercise is to do things that are sustainable. If you workout with weights and do that regularly good for you but most people with metabolic syndrome and high triglycerides are not working out regularly so you need to find something you can do everyday and then build on that.

Walking is one of the key ways I recommend when you’re just starting – walk around the block and make it your goal to do that daily. Once you’ve made that a part of your day you can increase the frequency to twice a day and increase the speed or distance, but first establish a foothold of daily walking.

Naturally anyone would say they question how beneficial walking might be compared to other exercises, but if you’re currently doing nothing, walking is 100% better than no walking at all.

Supplements

Supplements are not a miracle cure for anything unless your body is just deficient in converting your foods to vitamins which is often the case as we get older.

In particular, fish oil and niacin are the two recommended supplements for high triglycerides.

As we get older it is also very likely that we’re not making enough vitamin D – a vitamin our bodies manufacture from exposure to sunlight – our skin has a form of cholesterol just under the outer layer that converts UV to vitamin D – a perfect little factory – but of course if we don’t walk outside and get exposed daily to sun we can’t really make that.

Here are some good products I use personally.