It has become quite commonplace to fill your refrigerator and cabinets with easy to cook, easy to eat convenience foods.

Our busy lifestyles and lack of knowledge practically forces our diets down this path, it is no wonder obesity is at an all time high in the U.S.

There are several reasons why you should avoid processed foods but I wanted to focus on the five main reasons why.

Let's begin with a term most people have become familiar with: Trans -Fats.

Trans fats are the real fat substitute in our modern diet and are in ALL fast food and processed foods.

Trans fat has been linked to heart disease, cancer, digestive disorders and degeneration of joints and tendons. Consumption is also linked to skin issues, learning disabilities, stunted growth in children and auto immune disease.

Next up is High Fructose Corn Syrup. This has become a controversial ingredient recently. The corn and processed food industry has begun an aggressive marketing campaign trying to undo the damage that has been done to this prevalent processed food ingredient.

Essentially, High Fructose Corn Syrup increase your triglyceride levels and your LDL (the bad cholesterol) within 60 minutes of ingestion. It's also the cheapest and most prominent ingredient in the American food chain.

The average person in the U.S. consumes 68 pounds of HFCS per year.

In 2005, if one looks at the actuarial curve on cardiovascular disease, obesity, hypoglycemia and diabetes, they all parallel HFCS increase in the food chain.

Third is white sugar. Sugar has been shown to be more addictive to cocaine and has been coined in some circles as "The REAL gateway drug"

Sugar can suppress your immune system and impair your defenses against infectious disease. It has been show to feed cancer cells and also been connected with the development of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer and lung cancer.

There has also been a study finding a cross tolerance and cross dependence between sugar and addictive drugs.

The average American consumes close to 175 pounds of sugar per year.

Fourth is artificial sweeteners. We have been led to believe that these are a safe and smart alternative to sugar but that is not the case.

Consuming artificial sweeteners impairs the body's ability to control food intake and body weight.

Artificial sweeteners can actually stimulate your appetite, increase your carbohydrate cravings and stimulate fat storage and weight gain.

Drinking diet soda can increase your risk of metabolic syndrome and heart disease.

Finally is MSG or Monosodium Glutamate. MSG is essentially concentrated salt and is an excito-toxin, which means that is overexcites your cells to the point of damage, acting as a poison.

What is really tricky about MSG is that it can be hidden in food labels under names like broth, casein, hydrolyzed, autolyzed, gelatin, hyrdolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), yeast extract, malted barley, rice syrup or brown rice syrup.

Monosodium Glutamate has also been linked to causing nerve damage and vision loss. Basically, this stuff is REALLY bad for you.