After reading this article and the books it reviews;
If you could reduce it to two commandments, they would be:
First Law: Consume 90 percent of your diet from fresh produce (fruits and veggies).
Second Law: Exercise in any form or manner for one hour or more a day every day.
A friend of mine asked me to read Eating Animals, which he had heard was a nexus of sorts to a commitment to vegetarianism (or at least a bit of a challenge for any reader). Believe me, as a lifetime carnivore, I read it with due skepticism, but I must say I was surprised to find myself in agreement with the author and lured in with his almost simple logic to stop eating meat. When I had finished it, I then took to reading: The Great American Heart Hoax, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and other books reviewed below, all involving what and how we eat. If you’ve read any similar books (or seen the documentaries, You Are What you Eat, Earthlings, Food Inc., Our Daily Bread, Super Size Me, Forks Over Knives or Killer at Large), you’ve realized something has gone awry with the North American food supply. See How to Make a Documentary to add your own opinion to the fray and read my article on Vegan Versus Paleo which criticizes Netflix's What the Health?, a prespective on how not to make a documentary.
In, Eating Animals, the essential argument is, ‘We could ethically still eat meat if our husbandry wasn’t completely immoral due to 'industrial farming’ (animals are treated inhumanely at the least). You have to find an alternative to this lamentable fact. Unfortunately, no realistic one is viable for people at large, especially urbanites. So you have to in good conscience stop eating meat. By ‘realistic’ the author includes organic farming. Some self-righteousness in the book comes down to ‘Do you want to hurt living things?’ and if you don’t, you’re ‘wink wink’ a better person than your blood-thirsty carnivore cousins.
In The Great American Heart Hoax, (see also Dr Dwight Lundell,) the claim is made that the best diet in the world, for longevity and heart health, is the Mediterranean one, of our European ancestors, [fruits, vegetables, nuts, olives, pastas, grain, bread, real juices, and a little meat and fish i.e., nothing processed]. We can no longer eat processed food or meat; it has been poisoned by the current farming technologies. This in turn leads to heart disease caused by modern industrial agriculture. It inadvertently taints our meat with the inhumane treatment and mishandling of the animals. It processes our food to the point of it being under-nutrient then adds sugars, salt and oils to nearly everything we eat to get it to taste nutritious although it’s not. More of this recent farming phenomena is explained below. This book deals with lifestyle health and heart issues as well, especially, cessation of smoking, managing stress, and most importantly, exercising. Dr Ozner, the author, tells a little story where a patient says, ‘Being fat runs in my family.’ In which case he responds, ‘No. A lack of exercise runs in your family.’
In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan takes that old quandary: “I could eat it – smells edible, looks edible – I’d love to eat it, but is it poison?” And turns our processed foods, and especially meat, against us. Incontrovertible evidence is in: industrialized processed food, especially meat, is completely dangerous for human consumption. North Americans now eat more corn – through its constituent processed parts – than Mexicans or Central Americans. In fact, more than anyone in the world, but unluckily, the world is catching up. They are now even feeding farmed-salmon, corn. It’s directly linked to heart disease, cancer, and in general metabolic dysfunction. Like in Eating Animals, the author for a time lives on a natural ecological holonic farm off the grid and shows that grass farming (the name for the cycle which can feed cattle, chickens, rabbits, and pigs, and mimics raising protein-food as we were evolved to eat it) carries none of the health risks of industrialized farming. Nonetheless, this alternative is inconvenient, expensive and time-consuming. It would be far better to learn how to cook quinoa and create a variety of bean and rice dishes than to drive 200 miles to meet the farmer and see his agrarian situation to ensure yourself that the animals he slaughters live a healthy life. We can’t all live on a farm, although if the world collapses, I guess a good many of us could find ourselves back there. [How I dread the thought.] Then every month or so you have to find a way to purchase what he had for sale (which would, unlike it is currently, be truly seasonal).
Apparently, the old saw that meat is meat and fish is fish, turns out to be completely wrong. Like us, animals are what they eat, and in turn, by eating industrialized farm meat, we are becoming what we now eat: the bovine pigs and chickens are genetically altered, obese, inhumanely treated, artificially fattened with corn feed and grains, antibiotically medicated and hardly ever see the light of day. Sixty percent of the antibiotics used in the world today are given to farm animals, frequently in stock feed to encourage growth and as a preventative measure against disease; this is why bacteria resistance to its positive effects is diminishing so rapidly in humans. The evidence is becoming irrefutable, eating meat today is misguided, not because it’s cruel to the animals – which it is – but because it is poison for human consumption. Though this is a recent development, (three or four decades old or so) enough validation has been collected to make sound judgments on whether it is harmful or not. Sorry to say that organic food is not an alternative to industrialized farming, but instead has been co-opted and bought-out by the General Mills of the world. They use less pesticide in their grow-industries, which is good, but the carrots, lettuce, fruits and vegetables are fed artificial nitrates and are mass-produced with little attention to centuries old rules like crop rotation. The fruits and vegetables don’t have near the nutrients of produce you used to eat from your parents’ and grandparents’ gardens (or locally grown markets), and are shipped thousands of miles and refrigerated many days before you put them in your fridge.
The books and movies above should be read and seen for the sake of your own health. These recent changes may not effect the longevity of your mothers and fathers, but will definitely effect the life span of you and your children. Book after book, from the Fast Food Nation to the Vegetarian Myth, (both reviewed below) all agree in general terms that factory-farmed animals are given hormones to gain weight rapidly (chickens are kept alive only seven weeks) and they’re dosed on antibiotics to prevent the diseases which are predominate in caged and closely-packed animals. They are never allowed to roam freely, and finally, they are fed altered corn and grain feed to unnaturally fatten them. Some are still fed animal by-products.
Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma is charming, funny, full of surprises and beautifully written. As in any good book, overcoming the subjective point of view is tantamount, especially in works that deal with eating, health and the good life. He doesn’t moralize much except in a self-depreciating way. Even the inconvenience caused to his friends by the thought of becoming a vegetarian is of utmost concern to him. I remembered when I started eating vegetarian, (which was provoked after I read Eating Animals) I thought of my friend and sister-in-law who had inconvenienced our whole extended family for 30 years with her vegetarianism; and hell, I didn’t think twice about my decision. She’d paved the way! Besides, the world wouldn’t even notice it. (Well, it did but that’s besides the point.) I also remembered my wife who had put out my extended family and friends for decades with her high protein carnivore diet, but for Pollan who is obviously such a fine and sensitive person, even simple things are complicated. If you’re trying to quit smoking, drinking or certain drugs, you don’t want to be with smokers, drinkers, or users. It is hard, damn hard, and quitting smoking is nearly impossible, but giving up meat was no sacrifice at all for me. It was easy as changing into new shoes. My body liked it. I craved no chicken, pork or bovine and consuming lots of fruits and vegetables has always been second nature to me -- my family always had a huge garden in the backyard. Sandwiches became a problem. What to put between two slices of your favorite whole grain, pumpernickel or french stick? I’m not eating much soy. I’ve never really liked it that much and it doesn’t sit well with my body. Protein became a concern. I like to cook and prepare food; that helped. (My father was a chef). Whole grain or spelt pasta? Quinoa and other grains? Nuts? Don’t forget peanut butter! Beans? Pure pomegranate and cranberry juice. Cabbage and sauerkraut? You bet! And much else too. When we go out, it also has been no trouble. Other vegetarians have led the way; you just ask for and receive a varied menu. Becoming a vegetarian today is like saying that tree-hugging is not a dishonorable practice anymore, which makes it hard to understand Pollan’s defense of meat-eating: “I enjoy eating meat, meat is nutritious food, and I believe there are ways to eat meat that are in keeping with my environmental and ethical values.”
I don’t think I can do vegan. I mean, I will try but isn’t eating plants hurting living creatures as well? (Actually, considering the ecosystems destroyed for the benefit of industrial agrofarms, there’s a literal truth to this). Firstly, veganism sounds like a religion; secondly, I think you should have sardines, shrimp and other fish (as well as yogurt) in your diet for it to be balanced, not a lot but some; I mean you’re already giving up so much by just saying no to meat that there’s always a problem that you’re going to become a pain in the ass to others or that your own life will get just too complicated. I’m assuming that you don’t have too much time on your hands. Thirdly, I met some vegan-s through Amnesty International and they struck me as hoity-toity and also they were Leftists (what a vicious combination.) Lastly, the reputation vegan have as militant isn’t wholly undeserved; some vegan websites are morally repugnant. I have nothing against it in principle, but remember that famous song from Joe Jackson, ‘Everything Gives You Cancer’? It’s a little bit true. Anyway, I’m trying to live as a vegetarian to eliminate any personal relationship I have to industrialized animal farming. No perfect solution to wellness through eating exists; and I have my doubts that it ever can. Knowledge and science can help, but think of the diet fads in our North American culture. They started long before factory farms and genetically altered animal-genes came into their heyday. I bet even if you constantly ate processed foods but were in training 24/7 – like say a long-distance runner – you will be healthier than if you ate all the right foods – the perfect diet – and didn’t do a lick of exercise. What if you did both adequately, but constantly couldn’t get enough sleep? Wouldn’t that lead to poor health? What if you ate, exercised and slept fine, but couldn’t manage money worth a damn and the result was continuous and tremendous stress in your life? Wouldn’t that lead to ill health? You get what I mean. Metabilic Dysfuntion currently is a major concern in our society, but some of getting over-weight, no matter what Taubes says (below) is mismanagement. If giving up meat caused me to get fat I’d certainly and quickly reconsider my decision.
In many ways a society practices the morality it can afford but I must say, a vegetarian way of life today seems a completely viable option; however, I think if I lived an autochthonous life and was hungry, then stumbled upon a deer, I would without thought (if I could) kill it for food, especially if I was hungry. I’d bring it home and the tribe would love me for it. We would enjoy cooking and eating it together; it would be a celebration of life. Maybe we would dance afterwards if we had any wine and music. The thought of going back to a pleistocene way of life makes me cringe. I don’t know if I could do it. I love modern life in the big city and my nuclear family that comes with it; my adorable meat-eating wife who would no more eat broccoli or cauliflower than practice cannibalism, my accomplished daughter who would sit down to any great meal as long as she didn’t have to prepare any part of it (just joking) and my son who is so far off the ground gaming most days that taking time to eat “good food” such as fresh grapes, apples, pears, berries, instead of processed snack food is a challenge. I have a large extended family and many good friends. We love to eat and drink. We enjoy each other’s company which often revolves around a center cut a barbeque and a grill. At a get-together a while back the whole ‘eating part of the night’ went ‘veggie’ due to my recent decision to quit meat; it was all good. We barbequed peppers, yams, onions, zucchini, potatoes, beets, mushrooms, and assorted other vegetables. We (stove-top), cooked grains, and prepared salads. It was fun. There was even oven cooked veggie pizza. It was a grand night. But you can see that in a way I was a killjoy and we might not have gotten enough protein.
In Fast Food Nation, Schlosser gives a step by step dissection of how, as consumers, we have made an eating choice for the quick McMeal and ended up with the factory farms to support it. – ‘About 90 percent of the money Americans spend on food is used to buy processed food.’ – A beef company in Colorado is typical. They run feedlots of 100,000 head of cattle or so each. During the months before slaughter the cows are fattened with grain and corn which comes to them on conveyor-like devices. They get anabolic steroids, are antibiotically medicated, and gain 400 to 500 pounds. That’s a lot of live beef standing still but it’s way more shit that you can imagine, lagoons of it. Burger King, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC and all the others; what were we thinking? Factory farming is now the single largest contributor to green house gases in the world, jumping ahead of the combustible engine. Ironically, the fast food business chains are some of the worst employers. They literally live on teenage minimum wage help; high school kids who work too many hours to buy some wheels and a few logoe-threads. They skip extracurricular sports to work their McJob, often eat the nasty processed food they serve to the unsuspecting public and drive around town all carbed-up. So the calamity which they don’t immediately see takes place for them on three fronts: fast food employment has meant they’re working for the biggest polluter in the world. As an employee, they’re probably eating more fast food than most kids (any amount is bad) and indirectly harming themselves by doing so. Moreover they’re participating in less sports at school because they’re working all the time (and even skipping classes to do it). They’re tired. They drive everywhere. Less exercise means their bodies have less defense from the damage process food has on them. Driving of course adds to the second largest world polluter. You can see at once the ramifications and the multiplier effects of ‘the fast food industry’ on the individual. One thing feeds into another. (I know!), and it all started with, ‘Who has time to cook a meal?’ Let’s reconsider that one.
Although Ori Hofmekler, (The Warrior Diet), doesn’t review Michael Ozner’s common sense, Mediterranean Diet, (from The Great American Heart Hoax) he does criticize Health Food diets, Zone diets (Barry Sears and all), Prititikin diets (Dean Ornish and all) Atkin type diets (Michel Montignac and all), Holistic diets, the Weil Diet (below) and the Diamond Diet. All of which is pretty cool; it’s as close as you’re going to get to diet wars in a book. Hofmekler’s diet comes with tremendous amount of info on foods, nutrition, and eating. It’s a whole lifestyle change with a tough exercise regime (an easier regime is offered in his, ‘Maximum Muscle, Minimum Fat’), and a regimented under-eating/over-eating daily routine. It even has recipes. This diet recommends a lot of meat, (veal, fish and chicken.) He has apparently no problem with or doesn’t know about factory farming in North America. There's also low carb diets to consider.
The sustained attack against conventional wisdom in regards to eating in Mark Sisson’s The Primal Blueprint is noteworthy. Notable not only for its audacity to challenge the skewed way authorized and state-licensed medicine looks at human health, but also for how it aligns itself in a general way with many experts whose books are reviewed in this article. I often refer to this kind of conventional wisdom talked about in the Primal Blueprint as the modern myths of The New Ancien Régime, an arrangement comprising a lose confederacy of the millionaires and billionaires of the military-industrial complex and the news-people intelligentsia and politicians who serve them. This oligarch can’t stop looking at us as anything but a machine for science to fix instead of an impossibly complex organism. In the Primal Blueprint we see, like in the Mediterranean Diet or the Warrior Diet and others, a persistent attempt to get our diet and lifestyle to coincide with the creatures we’ve evolved to be and not the one we’re quickly becoming due to collective choices in the last hundred years. Having said that, here is a practical example in everyday terms of what can be considered a metaphysical theory in action: the Theory of Evolution. It is the discreet backdrop to this work. What is the optimal manner we were evolved to become over the millions of years of our history? What balance of diet, exercise and stress is a winning one? Primal Blueprint is my most recommended health book.
To many religious people whose sedentary out-of-shape diet is based on the above mentioned myths and whose belief system has been compromised by faith and whose skepticism is being lowered by believing in things without proof, the disadvantages of a tenet in supernaturalism is at once readily apparent in everyday practical terms. That is, the belief in the Theory of Evolution has practical results in lifestyle choices. To maximize human health and wellness, it is extremely important to understand that we weren’t created 5000 years ago, but evolved in harsh conditions over millions of years. We evolved as hunter-gatherers; our genes blossom or wilt on how well we mirror the diet of our ancestors. Denying evolution – every single one of the 2016 GOP candidates were sceptics of evolution and many wouldn't even take questions on the subject – is indirectly a negative health factor in our physical well-being. Believing in a thing without proof can actually weaken our immune systems. By being on the wrong side of this philosophic dispute, you lower your chances of a successful well-managed life. Independent thinking is required for personal value judgements on questions like: ‘What should I eat?’ ‘Why do we get fat?’ and ‘Are regiments like the Warrior Diet and Primal Blueprint essential to our understanding of where we sit in our chronicle?' Without a magical explanation, your mind aligns itself with a certain lifestyle cache: superior reasoning, hardheaded skepticism and tentative knowledge instead of embracing an unseen dimension without evidence, wishful-thinking and absolute truth supplied by the earthly representatives of god.
The 10 Primal Blueprint laws are: 1. Eat Lots of Plants and Animals; 2. Avoid Poisonous Things, (i.e., processed foods), 3. Move Frequently at a Slow Pace, 4. Lift Heavy Things, 5. Sprint Once in a While, 6. Get Adequate Sleep, 7. Play, 8. Get Adequate Sunlight, 9. Avoid Stupid Mistakes and 10. Use Your Brain.
In Eating Well For Optimum Health, Dr. Andrew Weil takes you through the basics of nutrition and eating well. His ‘The Worst Diet in the World’ section mirrors what every expert is saying. Stay away from refined flour, starchy food, sweets, pop, margarine, vegetable oil, commercially raised chicken beef pork and lamb, processed snacks cow’s milk deep fried food, french fries potato chips, pickles, ketchup and all drinks and condiments made with corn syrup. Doesn’t that sound like the Fast Food Nation diet? His recipes and ‘best foods’ mirror in a general way, both Dr Ozner and the Warrior Diet recommend: fresh fruits and vegetables, high fiber cereal, tofu, real fruit juice, soy or almond milk, beans (with rice), nuts, fish, olive oil and whole grains. Where Hofmekler underscores eating healthy and exercise for the lean mean machine, Weil emphasizes food and wellness for happiness and health, allowing for a softer chunkier body. In regards to what to eat, (as far as I can tell) Ozner, Hofmekler and Weil are in near agreement (in a general sort of way).
In How to Eat, Nigella Lawson’s food credo seems to be eat at home and cook for yourself. If we only practiced this as a society there would be few fast food outlets, no factory industrialized farming and no lack of imagination as to what you can do with something as simple as rhubarb. This book is about how we eat at home and how much time it takes. We should all have it in our kitchens. It’s organized by time and comfort and not by any level of nutrition yet the meals seem nutritious and delicious at once. I recommend it for its ambient life-style instruction explained through food. Food, like music, is a complex experience that can be looked at as art for art’s sake. The book is a guide to the culinary possibilities in your own home and the joy of living, eating well and celebrating life through food with – not chefs on the food channels – but by you being creative inside your own kitchen (with a huge number of delicious recipes included.)
In The Vegetarian Myth, long-time vegan Lierre Keith preaches against what she considers the modern myth of vegetarianism. Vegetarian and non-vegetarian alike should read it. Like a defeated golfer who fires his caddy in anger, she rationalizes her decision with the metaphysical logic of the Bible or Das Capital – a wholesale platonic condemnation of life – but still, walking up the hill backwards makes a lot of sense to many people. This is the thing though, I think if the world had/or would chosen Libertarianism/Stoicism and silenced the Catholic voice inside of us which in union wants a kindly softer hugging-version of Jesus and Marx it would be considerably better for the Joel Salatin’s of the world (see, Polyface Farm) and other holonic eco-friendly farms to counter the New Ancien Régime (my name for the loosely-federated oligarchy which today is the new global economic order). That said, anybody who thinks life as hunter-gatherer would be preferable to our present civilization, is a million light-years away from where I stand. Sometimes, the Left or the left-leaning anarchists think the handmaiden state and socialism have nothing to do with what has happened in the last two hundred years. They think that lack of regulation has led to state-licensed union-embodied medicine (as against unregulated holistic medicine), factory farmed everything, (as opposed to the Salatins of the world), the bank system’s heart pumping with worthless fiat money, (as opposite to the gold standard) the oil industry owning the legislature, (as contrasting a lobby-free House or Senate) and the fast food monolith poisoning us, (as opposite to real food). In their view, this was done by laissez-faire capitalism and the pursuit of individual liberty (thank god for welfare government and Keynesian economics); after all. We are naturally just greedy animals inadvertently destroying our planet. The whole contention, though, is like industrial farming versus holonic farming itself: there is a natural check and balance in life between my borders and other people’s borders which the toxic modern state has utterly destroyed to gain what, today, we have created. (Whether for good or bad is still being debated among the middleclass but I’ve made up my mind; the growth of the modern state may cost us our liberty health and wealth). But I wouldn’t say for a moment that it was done on purpose,
Socrates led to Plato, Christ, Augustine, Hegel then Marx and so forth; there’s nothing for it. The idiot will always dream of the perfect order and some fool with power will try to put it into effect. Everything here is a soupy foggy haze of clutter between the market driven economy. She holds that the rest of the world is ignorant but she and her ilk know the real truth. That’s almost always a good sign that you’re in the presence of ‘the Left’. Plus, she sounds like a bellyacher and I might be assuming it but my radar’s pretty good for these kinds of things. Her arguments against vegan-s seem not to ring true to my ear. The main argument I use from Eating Animals is that factory farming is horribly cruel to animals and is poisoning us, we (as a consumer), can’t or won’t purchase our meat from Polyface-like farms, (because it’s too expensive or inconvenient), so we have only one reasonable alternative in our day to day lives and that’s to try vegetarianism and see if we can do it without becoming miserable or fat. Her voice is extreme but she does make you think twice about eating too much soy. I thought her concern about feeding the world a bit cavalier. I also think that if we got rid of every edible domesticated animal in the world (without anybody being hurt or starving), humans and the planet might not suffer as much as she claims. However, don’t take my word for it. I’m no expert. This author seems also to be anti-modern-civilization, maybe even anti-human (the very worst in a platonic sentiment – and please forgive me if I’m wrong), she’s definitely gloom-and-doom. This book also appears to have a fair bit of stretching the facts to fit with a theory, after all, millions of people live without meat and don’t prematurely get sick (indeed, if the ‘stats’ are ‘fact’ vegetarians generally weigh less and live longer). Anyway, I included the book here due to the fact that it’s on the other side of my divide (and is also controversial). That divide is: she became a carnivore just when I'm becoming a herbivore. I thought it would be a nice contrast. [Are my hips any bigger?]
In Why We Get Fat, Gary Taubes makes the best argument I’ve ever read against vegetarianism. After reading this exceedingly factual and well-researched work, you’ll become an outright carnivore (i.e., you’ll want to get all your essential nutrition through protein and animal fats and stay away from carbohydrates altogether). According to Taubes, the reason we get fat is counterintuitive: we don’t get fat because we overeat, we overeat because we’re acquiring fat. The point is that what insulin does to the body provokes an unfortunate sequence of events if there is a precondition toward adiposity, a hereditary predilection to it or if we have an uncritical attachment to a starchy and floury Western diet. The whole ‘calories in/calories out’ event currently embraced by the medical community, (that is, overeating as the cause of adiposity) explains nothing and is like describing alcoholism as caused by chronic over-drinking, i.e., it begs the question. Here is why things like hunger, self-control and eating less when it comes to weight control is contrary to common sense: extended energy (physical activity) increases appetite so we eat more when we exercise. Potentially, physical activity can cause us to get fat. Impecunious populations suffer more from adiposity than the opulent ones. The belief that our affluence and coddled way of life in the West is the root cause of obesity is not true. Only carbohydrates produce the necessary condition to create excess fat in the human body. The person who is overweight and is always hungry is not a paradox. He is likely this way not because of how much or little he’s eating, but because of what he is eating. Please note that I don't mean to suggest you shouldn't be exercising; whether you're a youth or a senior, you should have two things going simultaneously: maintaining your optimal weight through diet and a rigorous daily excercise routine. (See also: Sugar Fat and Salt, M Moss, Fat Chance, Lustig and Pure White and Deadly, Yudkin).
Taubes argues that the view that carbohydrates in the human diet are essential is a medical myth (i.e., you could survive on just protein and fat.). Good carbohydrates or bad do make a difference (although ultimately, the only good carbohydrate is the one some other species has consumed, converted to protein and which you in turn have eaten.) Feeding on a bowl of ice cream, (in a way) is all the same to the body as eating a plate of cauliflower and broccoli, (i.e., they’re all ‘carbs’ to the body) but the ‘veggies’ (outside of having so many vitamins and minerals) are also fibrous, take much longer to digest and contain more water than ice cream does. (Are you following me so far?) (And does this sound vaguely familiar?) In fact, this is the diet that Dr. Atkins made famous. [Bacon anyone? Watch that icy step?] Taubes criticizes the Ozner Diet (a little bit) and Weight Watchers (even less) as diets with a poor track record (because of recidivism) or ones which don’t have as good a result in weight loss as the Atkin’s diet. Taubes did not bring up the moral problems of the inhumane treatment of animals by the factory farm process and either does Dr. Cordain, the author of The Paleo Diet, although he certainly promotes the nutritional value of wild game and free range meats.
I have a friend, a professor at U of T who has lost 200 pounds on Weight Watchers
It was over a two year period and with a radical lifestyle change.
She is doing terrific; I truly admire her
That’s a loss of more than I weigh by 50 pounds.
Wheat Belly, W Davis: modern genetically altered Triticum Aestivum wheat flour is on average 70 percent carbohydrate by weight, with protein and indigestible fiber each comprising 10 to 15 percent. The small remaining weight of Triticum wheat flour is fat, mostly phospholipids and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Ancient wheat has higher protein content. Emmer wheat, for instance, contains 28 percent or more protein. Wheat products elevate blood sugar levels more than virtually any other carbohydrate from beans to candy bars. This has important implications for body weight since glucose is unavoidably accompanied by insulin, the hormone that allows entry of glucose into the cells of the body, converting the glucose to fat. The higher the blood glucose after consumption of food, the greater the insulin level, the more fat is deposited. This is why, say, eating a three-egg omelet that triggers no increase in glucose does not add to body fat, while two slices of whole-wheat bread increases blood glucose to high levels, triggering insulin and growth of fat, particularly abdominal or deep visceral fat. Does this sound like, 'Why We Get Fat'? According to Williams, a combination of halting the glucose-insulin-fat-deposition cycle and the natural reduction in calorie intake that results by removing wheat from human diet is sometimes as rapid as starvation. Wheat consumption in all forms poses potentially serious threats to health. We did not evolve to deal effectively with it even in it’s 10,000 year old original form. A worthwhile important read, and though counterintuitive, it seems that whole grains lead to all sorts of trouble; and like in Why We Get Fat, it’s well researched, explained with superior logical form and is pretty damn convincing. (See also: Grain Brain, Perimutter.)
If you want the more objective health-style advantages of going veggie dissected and parsed, Becoming Vegetarian, Vesanto Melina and Brenda Davis, might be a worthwhile read for you. A comprehensive guide to nutrition and a living companion to have around the house whether you are a vegan or vegetarian and every diet in between. Here we see again a general agreement with the other books we’re reviewing in this article about the main culprits to chronic ill health and being overweight: stay away from processed food, get a lot of exercise, avoid vegetable oils, starches and sugars. The tome contains valuable information for a newbie like me; for instance, complex Vitamin B12 needs to be supplemented in veggie diets. Who would have known? In practical terms for issues like lessening heart disease, meticalic dysfunction in general, greater longevity and overall better health, their conclusions are drawn from numerous studies with large numbers over periods of some decades. In this regard, there seems to be a significant qualitative and quantitative advantage to becoming vegetarian even as measured against a super healthy lifestyle which includes eating meat.
Another work worth your every consideration, is, The Vitamin D Solution. It’s a three step strategy to cure our most common health problems. It is well thought-out and researched. This leading medical expert-advocate for increase levels of Vitamin D in our bodies and it’s importance to our health, makes a strong case for a controversial conclusion: ‘limited’ exposure to sunlight is healthy. Vitamin D is essential to our well being, and while supplements are “better than nothing”, only direct sunlight gives us what we have evolved to extract from it. Firstly, it isn’t a vitamin at all but a secosteroid hormone made by the skin which directly or indirectly targets 2000 genes and gets its best quality Vitamin D intake from direct sunlight. Both thought-provoking and potentially life-altering; again, here, in this book, there is an element of the theory which is counter-intuitive to our thinking. Why? Due to the constant fear of direct exposure to UV sunlight provoked by the dermatologists worldwide who have demonized exposure to any direct sunlight, we have been brought to the point where we are afraid of any unprotected time in the sun at all. The connection to a myriad of diseases which are the direct result of Vitamin D deficiency, or even insufficiency, is compelling. Add this to your list of health books to get around to reading. It could be a life-saver!
In Nutrition and Your Mind, (a 1960’s classic) a simple, and I think, obvious point was made. Common sense dictates that garbage in and garbage out doesn’t only apply to computers; so, it’s surprising to learn that Dr. Watson was kicked out of the discussion and lost in space/time like so many intellectuals from the sixties who challenged the status quo, (what a unpleasant decade), which at the time of the book was that psychological disorders were a sociological deficiency rather than caused by metabolically irreconcilable nutrition intake. Chances are that both explanations are somewhat true: impecunious and resentful children suffer from poor nutrition and cultural impediments. To think there was controversy though that what we put into our bodies had no psycho-chemical effect on the brain seems not too much to ask for in a medical theory about mind and brain, i.e., that the food we consume makes a difference on how we function mentally. Here again ‘bad carbs’ must have a negative effect on the biology of our brains if it’s having one on our body, or let me regroup and restate, (because Watson doesn’t actually say that); however, if Taubes and all, are right, then certainly Watson must be on to something. Don’t live to eat. Eat to live! Malnutrition (or under nutrition) never helped thinking. How could it? But reasoning this through, a healthy body and brain has to be a platform for proper mental functions.
If you’ve seen the movie ‘Tapped’, you might like to find an alternative to drinking out of plastic bottles. With a handy thermal metal liquid-container you can fill it with filtered ice cubes and water and it lasts ice-cold for hours, even on the hottest days. Water ice-cold is quite delicious and can replace a lot of the processed juices/sweetened pop we drink, (most are made with corn syrup and their first ingredient is water anyway) (Plus the toxicity problem with plastic and heat is eliminated). My whole family uses them. I’m no authority on this, but if we had a list of five nutritional deficits that we had to give up for the sake of our physical health, they would be: sweetened pop, potato chips, vegetable oil, refined flour and starch. I think all the authors would agree as well to limit your restaurant visits, especially fast food outlets. [We used to bring our daughter when she was a toddler to McDonalds so she could spend time in their Play Land.] (How sad is that?) Fortunately she grew up healthy and strong. But what were we thinking?
I confess that when I was a teenager, I read Adelle Davis and was for a time enamored with her rage against the processed food industry, but popping all those supplements seemed not right to what little common sense I had back then and also it seemed like too much work. I was arrogant anti-everything in those days but this passed and the rage she had bequeathed me evaporated with my days in university. So revisiting all this stuff has shocked me as much as the decision to quit meat. Despite the inconvenience of a veggie or vegan diet and missing the delicious taste of meat, there seems to be some incontrovertible but not overwhelming scientific evidence in the advantages of a vegetarian lifestyle – a super fit vegan as compared to a super fit omnivore – this is true especially in regards to longevity and quality of life (less heart disease, cancer, respiratory problems and better healthy-weight norms).
Certainly there is significant individual moral value in not perpetrating harm to other living creatures by the cruel process of bringing about their dead flesh to your plate. The singular salient truth overall though must be that the experts above all seem to agree on this: eating processed foods, fast foods, starchy foods and so called junk food is directly irrefutably poisonous to human health. There also seems to be general agreement that there is value in exercise, especially daily steady-paced walks, bike rides or slow jogs in safe places, by which I mean, out of the flow of any through traffic. On how much rice, potato and other starchy food is good to human health is a little more controversial as is the elimination of gluten, wheat, corn starch, syrups and refined corn and wheat additives from your diet. Nonetheless, if you fill your fridge with a wide variety of fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables, it’s hard to believe you will ever go hungry. Fast foods are of a common thread: much of what they offer is cooked in grease or filled with refined wheat or corn thickeners and additives. They are massive empty carbohydrates filled with lots of sugar and salt; an almost addictive-like substance which gives you elevated levels of blood sugar while stripped of all worthwhile nutrients. Every expert agrees, stay away. Eat as little processed food as possible. Do your own cooking. Exercise. Use moderation. Get enough Vitamin C, D and B12. Go gluten lite or free. Put some distance in between meals. Read health books. Keep alert.
This piece was written six years ago; I was still meat free as of January 2014 but in June, after the untimely death of a close friend from heart disease, I started an even stricter routine of diet and excercise, following Dr. Cordain's Paleo system; I am gluten free and have how stopped eating any processed or fast food whatsoever. I am eating mostly my protein is from range eggs and wild caught fish; I am now well over tens years into it. In 2018 I didn't miss a single day of my exercise regime and 2019 to 2022 were almost as good). I think a super-fit vegan, keto or Mediterrean lifestyle are as good as long as there's plenty of exercising and no processed food! Over Christmas 2019, I got my first cold in seven years, but it was mild and still I did not miss a day of exercising through it. In all these years I have not taken a single drug, not an Aspirin, antibiotic or anything. As the world deals with COVID, having a strong auto-immune system is where you want to be and to get there takes a plan, when I got covid in 2022 (I was double vacinated), I would have never known it if I hadn't tested for it; it was extremely mild and in 2024 I'll be 74 and still Dancing as Fast as I Can.
Books reviewed and read by E A St Amant for this article: The Primal Blueprint, The Pegan Diet, The Food Fix, Wheat Belly, Grain Brain, The Paleo Diet, The Brain that Changes Itself, Seven Countries, Warrior Diet, Why We Get Fat, The Great American Heart Hoax, Omnivore's Dilemma, The Vitamin D Solution, Fast Food Nation, EPI-Paleo RX, Fat Chance, Pure White and Deadly, Eating Well For Optimum Health; How to Eat, Eating Animals, The Vegetarian Myth, Salt Sugar Fat, Becoming Vegetarian, Nutrition and Your Mind, Wahl's Protocol, The Paleo Solution, Death By Food Pyramid, New Evolution Diet, Use Your Brain to Change Your Age, The Paleo Comfort Foods Bible, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living, Practical Paleo, Big Fat Surprise, Brain Maker, Live Long Die Short, The Great Cholesterol Con, The Cholesterol Conspiracy, The Cholesterol Myths, The Great Cholesterol Myth, Cholesterol Clarity, The Pleasure Trap, How Not to Die, My Beef with Meat, Power Food for the Brian, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, The Plant Paradox, The Starch Solution, The China Study, The Salt Fix, The Blood Sugar Solution, Eat Drink and Be Healthy: Healing With Whole Foods.
