There are some foods, especially baked goods that contain high quantity of refined sugar, salt and flour. It is difficult to say which of these three ingredients considered the most damaging to our bodies or the most prevalent one. Several years ago, flour was stone-ground and lacked some of the original nutrients from the grain. A grain of wheat has a number of layers to it that contains necessary nutrients that are normally lost when being refined. This is the reason why several manufactures were mandated to add vitamins and nutrients after it was processed.

Nowadays, you will see on labels of flour-based products appears as “enriched” flour and list the nutrients that are being added. Currently, wheat is still stone-ground, however, grained-based food are being refined down to empty calories because of industrial age of mass produced goods.

Empty calories are the main concern in refined sugar, salt and flour against their natural counterparts. When grains, raw sugar cane and salt rock are processed down into a refined state, the calories are then void of any nutritional value.

When we eat empty calories, our body in reality has a difficulty digesting and breaking them down. They also burn much quicker than calories that are digested with ingredients complete with nutrients. This is the reason why sugary foods frequently give us high energy but lost quickly to cravings. For hundreds of years, we have lived on processed ingredients and the harm has been silent and the poison unfelt. Their effect is said to contribute to an increasing obesity problem and subsequent diseases.

We cannot afford to take risk on the harm caused by consuming refined sugar, salt and flour. However, we cannot escape from these ingredients because sugar, salt and flour are found in almost every food. Sugars and salts are naturally found in various foods like sugar in fruit or dairy and salt in meats and vegetables. The difference is that, naturally occurring salts and sugars have little quantity of healthy nutrients. Nature has actually provided most all we need to live well and much of the food we eat is the product of industrial convenience more than enriched nutrition.