See below for Sean Kulyk's response to an article by Jim Manson, in Natural Products magazine on the topic of 'the mantra there’s no such thing as bad food, just a bad diet'; 27th February 2018: 

https://www.naturalproductsglobal.com/opinion/busting-myth-no-thing-bad-food/

For years, the mantra ‘there’s no such thing as bad food, just a bad diet’ has been the junk food industry’s default defence. But that could all be about to change, writes Jim Manson

Thank you Jim for an excellent article. This a subject very dear to my heart, and indeed when training practitioners in nutrition 20 years back would often argue that if we define ‘food’ as ‘that which we put in our mouths, then (ultra) processed’ food is food; but if we define food as being that which is nutrient dense, unprocessed and maintains and improves health status, then (ultra) processed food could not be defined as real food..

This was the time when we first started to talk about ‘anti’ nutrients; i.e. ingredients which robbed our bodies of existing stores of nutrients; refined sugar being the best example, as to process it and benefit from the energetic content, we need several micro nutrients that have been typically almost totally removed in the refining process. This means your body has to draw on its reserves to provide the missing micro nutrients; leading to a situation of further nutritional deficiency, and subsequent cravings.

Obviously this is also true of any refined produce including white flour, white rice, as often stated by the late Professor john Yudkin etc.

As for cancer; it is well known that the reason PET scans are used as part of diagnosing cancer, is because cancer cells act anaerobically and hence heavily depend on sugar, and hence areas of sugar concentration on the PET scans, indicate the location of tumours.

However, I appreciate it is not all about refined carbs and sugars; clearly some of the chemical processes applied to refined oils has its own problems including trans fatty acids, free radicals etc.

I won’t even bother to mention GM, additives, excess salt, etc which many others have researched and discussed elsewhere.

To me if we are to be serious about our health, then food should be truly natural and minimally processed, and we should get educators to stop referring to ‘junk’ food as ‘treats’ and ‘Goodies’!

Sean kulyk
Homeopath, Registered Kinesiologist & Spinal Touch practitioner,