Photo by Tony Alter
I once heard author John Robbins say that we Americans are overfed and undernourished.
Interesting statement. How is that even possible?
It’s no secret that we get plenty of calories, usually in the form of protein, sugar, or fat. But are we actually getting the nutrition we need? The vitamins, the minerals, and most importantly, the fiber?
No, I would venture to say that we actually get so very little nourishment from all those empty calories we consume every day, that our bodies are actually starving.
Starving for Nutrition
Think about it, most of our food today is processed. Even the meat our omnivore friends eat now comes from a factory, pre-loaded with growth hormones and antibiotics. In fact, nothing we eat today is comparable to what our grandparents ate 100 years ago.
Oh sure we have a lot more food, and we can feed the masses very inexpensively. But is it worth it?
It’s convenient – that’s for sure. Ready to eat in just 3 minutes. Pop it in the microwave or pull into a drive-thru and bam. Dinner is served.
But I’ll ask again – are all these technological and agricultural advances worth it?
My grandfather had a very large garden back in the day, and a small, simple tractor to till it. The work was back-breaking. All the hoeing, and shoveling, and weeding. And then during harvest time you had even more work waiting for you, picking and shelling the beans, canning the tomatoes, digging the potatoes, not to mention fighting all the critters and bugs.
But the food was fresh, and loaded with nutrition. We worked for it, and it was most definitely worth it.
How many of you who were raised in the 60’s or 70’s remember seeing obesity like we have today? I sure don’t.
We had real food. Food that was actually good for us.
Turning it Around
So what can we do to turn this obesity epidemic around?
For starters, as Michael Pollan put it so eloquently…..
Eat FOOD. Not too much. Mostly plants.
- Try your best to eat real food, not highly processed, heat ‘n eat, microwavable, convenience food.
Foods that your grandparents would approve of – or even just recognize for starters.
Foods like beans, potatoes, corn, vegetables.
Believe it to not, our food doesn’t have to come smothered in some kind of salt, sugar, or fat to taste good. Nothing can be simpler, and tastier, than a plain baked potato with just a little salt and pepper.
- Leave out the meat, as much as you can.
We really, really don’t know what goes on in those meat processing plants. And frankly, I don’t want to know.
Study after study have all shown that eating a diet with lots of meat puts a huge strain on your body. I have seen it at work lately with many of my medical response team calls. Calls for pain or discomfort due to kidney stones, gall stones, diverticulitis, and high blood pressure.
These conditions, and many more, are all due to a bad diet. A diet centered around meat and protein. You don’t need that much protein (regardless of what you read in the media) and what you do need you can easily get from plants.
- Eat those carbs.
One of my wife’s walking buddies sounds a lot like those people Dr McDougall use to treat in Hawaii. She’s a 2nd or 3rd generation Asian/American who has become more and more westernized. She told my wife the other day she was going to start a low-carb diet because she was getting fat.
The ironic thing of course, is that if she would just eat like her ancestors, a HIGH carb diet of mostly rice, with some fruit and vegetable on the side, she wold regain her health and lose the extra weight.
Carbs are GOOD for you. Complex carbs that come from REAL food, like beans and vegetables are full of fiber and studies have shown that our westernized diet seriously lacks any real amount of fiber. We simply don’t get enough, and then try to make up for it by drinking a fiber supplement from a bottle. How upside down is that.
As you learn to eat the foods we were designed to eat – basically a low-fat, starch-centered, vegan diet – you will immediately start to feel the effects of what real nutrition can do for you.
And as you get leaner and healthier every day – you will stop and wonder how we ever let ourselves get in this mess we’re in to begin with.
Real food is out there – we just have to learn what it is, how to prepare it, and then learn to eat it. Only then will we overcome this new America where everyone is overfed and undernourished.
