Previously, I talked about keeping a healthy kitchen as a foundation to a
healthy lifestyle. Just as your kitchen is the foundation of your home, what
you use to fuel your body is the foundation for your health. There is an ancient
Chinese proverb, “He that takes medicine and neglects diet, wastes the time of
his doctor.” Furthermore, it was Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine,
that said, “Let food be thy medicine.” Yet so many of us ignore what we are
putting into our bodies.
In America, food is treated
as an inconvenience. It is microwaved, bagged, and thrown out a window. It is
eaten hastily at a desk or, worse, in the car. It comes in boxes geared toward
making our lives easier. These foods are packed with sugar, fat, and salt so
they taste amazing to us and our bodies crave more. When we give ourselves more
we become hungrier because this “food” is not nourishing our bodies. This leads
to a never ending feast. Our bodies are geared to take in as much food as
possible to prepare for a famine that never comes. When we have so much access
to these easy and cheap foods, there is so little work involved in getting the
food. Our ancestors had to work hard to feast the way we do every day which is
why obesity is so rampant. Furthermore these foods that we manufacture are so
unnaturally calorie dense it is no wonder we are gaining more and more weight.
We have no
connection to our food. The best connection you could have is to have grown it
in your own back yard, cook it yourself, and fill your body with it but too
many of us either can’t or won’t take the time to do any of this. This disconnect
with our food is becoming a huge crisis in my opinion. An example I would like
to give is a time I bought watermelon seeds at a big box store because I had
never grown them and did not have seeds saved. When the woman ringing me out saw
what I was buying, she said, “You can actually grow your own watermelon? How do
you grow watermelon?”
I was appalled. This
grown woman was literally asking me how to grow something as simple as a
watermelon. It sounded like she had no concept that watermelon even grew in the
ground. I explained, “Well, you put the seed into the ground and water it.
Nature does the rest.”
“How does it grow?
In the ground, like do you dig them up?”
“No. It is a gourd.
So it grows on a vine.”
She was mesmerized
by this knowledge and talent of mine and I wanted to feel sorry for her. I had
grown up spending summers with my grandmother and gardening with her. I remember
this feeling, though. I remember the time grandma asked if I wanted to grow
vegetables and I was floored by the idea—I was five. It hurts me to think of so
many people like this woman who have no concept where their food comes from.
I’d like to go back
to the mention of feast or famine for a second and tie that in with animal instincts.
Animals are pleasure seeking creatures. The things that cause the most pleasure
for us are tied in to survival for ourselves and our species (read: Food and
Sex.) High calorie foods are pleasurable to us because they tell our brains we
are getting a boat load of calories and survival will not be an issue today.
Oh, but if I also eat this then I won’t have to worry about surviving tomorrow either,
which makes me feel pretty good about myself. Each time we fill our bodies with
highly processed foods (that contain large amounts of sugar, salt, and fat) we
are giving ourselves another temporary high. Eating these foods has nearly the
same effect on the brain as drugs. We crave it.
The focus needs to
shift from making our stomachs feel full and our chemically saturated brains
feel high to our bodies feeling nourished. Nourishment means that you feel
clear minded and strong both physically and emotionally. We all know the
newfangled word, “hangry” (so hungry you are angry.) It was recently added to
the Webster’s dictionary, did you know? It is a catchy truth that is not going
away anytime soon because we are all hangry all of the time. How can we end
this eternal torment?!
Well, let’s start by
looking at our food, shall we?
This pie chart is a
representation of the standard American diet. The percentages and the idea for
the chart came from the vegan documentary Vegucated but I made this chart
myself. Seeing as I did not have any photoshop nor do I have any real computer
skills, I was quite proud of my work. But I digress.
As you can see, a staggering
50% of the average American diet is made up of processed foods. This covers
just about everything that comes in a box and is made to be “easier” and “faster”
to prepare. This lovely convenience unfortunately comes with large amounts of processed
sugars and salt. Most of this food is fake. Just read the ingredients and see
how many chemicals are in this food you want to put in your body.
Another forty percent of the diet comes from animal based products. Whether
you are eating the cow or the yogurt made from cows milk, this is still an insanely
high figure. The consumption of meat per person in this country has doubled in
the past one hundred years bringing us to an average 270.7 pounds per person
per year. This is the second highest rate of meat consumption in the world,
just behind Luxembourg. The sad part is, many parts of the world are trying to
catch up to us. I will come back to the questionable health of animal products
in a moment.
The really sad part,
to me, about this graph is the fact that Unrefined Plant Foods (UPF) are only
worth about 5% of the American diet. This is a tragedy. Unrefined Plant Foods
have the highest nutrient density per calorie making them literally the
healthiest foods on the chart and they are utterly ignored.
UPF are also often referred
to as vital essence foods because, unlike processed foods, they still retain the
vital essences of the earth—nutrients. I have heard it said of them, “I could
taste the sun, rain, and earth in that piece of fruit. I could feel its life
force.” –Halé Sofia Schatz.
Why else are vital
essence foods so important? They actually fill your stomach completely! Below
is an example of 400 calories and how if fills your stomach. As you can see the
oil does nothing for you, the chicken is a little helpful, but the vegetables are
raising the bar.
This diagram from Forks Over Knives is slightly different but the same
idea. What it shows you are the density and stretch receptors of the stomach.
As in the first diagram the oil hardly triggers any of these receptors. More
are triggered in the second stomach but it is the final stomach that triggers
all of the receptors that communicate fullness to the brain. Moreover, vital
essence foods are so high in nutrients per calorie your body literally becomes
less hungry. Your body is no longer fighting to have more food. You can fill up on nutrients so you are
actually less hungry and you eat less. Dr. Fuhrman said with an interview with
Vedgucated that, “You can’t be overweight when you eat these foods.”
Here is the real
kicker. Study after study has shown that as the percentage of UPF rises in the
diet heart disease and cancer go down. How is this possible?!
Aside from the China
study (which was the longest running, most comprehensive food study ever conducted)
there are a lot of smaller studies that add credence to the idea. During WWII
Germany took over Norway. When they did so they took everything they could from
this country to feed their war machine, especially livestock to be sure the soldiers
had plenty of protein for the fight. Once the population was deprived of a
large amount of animal products the health of the population changed. Heart
disease plummeted and became nearly nonexistent. Cancer followed the same
pattern. Once the war was over and Norway was able to keep its own production
of meat these ailments returned.
In India a study was done concerning the amount of
casein (main protein in dairy) in the diet. A study was formed with two groups
of rats, one on a diet of 20% casein and one on a diet of 5%. As the study
progressed the rats eating 20% casein quickly showed signs of cancer growth
while the rats only eating 5% showed no changes.
This study was later redone with one major change.
Rather than keep the rats on a steady diet they switched every three weeks. For
three weeks one group was eating 20% then they switched to 5% for another three
weeks and so on, so each group was still opposite of each other but trading
between the casein percentages. When the rats were on 20% casein there were
signs of cancer growth. When they were switched to 5% the cancer not only
stopped growing but began to reverse. This went back and forth and showed that
the amount of casein literally turned the cancer growth on and off.
Now, this study has had some skeptics, as you might
expect. The rats in the India study were researched for a year or more. At the
end of the first year, all or at least most of the rats who ate 20% casein had
cancer. However, a large number of the rats on 5% were no longer alive, while the
entire population of rats on 20% were still living. The death of those rats was
caused by a lack of protein.
I am rather fond of
saying that I am not a doctor, medical researcher, or anything to give me
credit other than a desire for knowledge. This being said, I read the information
of rats dying of protein deficiency and I nearly fell out of my chair. I read
this article as saying, “Just go ahead and get cancer because you’ll live
longer anyway then drug companies can make more money off of you.”
Protein is one of
the building blocks of life and is present in everything you can eat (if even
in tiny amounts.) There are a large number of plant based proteins such as
beans, legumes, nuts and seeds. Quinoa and chia seeds for example are a perfect
and complete protein. I would like to
give my average breakfast for an example, because we all know we should start
the day with plenty of protein to get us going. I eat overnight oatmeal which
means I take my 1/3 cup of oatmeal, 2tps of chia seeds, and 1/3 cup almond milk
in a jar and leave it overnight to soak. In the morning I add honey, ¼ cup
pecans, cup of strawberries, ½ cup blueberries, and one banana. I won’t bore
you with all of the math but I researched the amount of protein in each item
and I came to 13.37 grams of protein (I’ll round to 13.5 to make it easier.)
According to health.harvard.edu “The Recommended Dietary
Allowance (RDA) for protein is a modest 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of
body weight.” I would rather not discuss my weight but I can tell you that the
13.5g is well on my way to rock the rest of the day. I am just careful to make
sure I keep it up. Obviously, whether you go vegan or not, limit your dairy
intake or not, is entirely up to you. I feel based on this study and many
others that the more we reduce our animal product consumption in favor of a more
whole foods plant based diet the better.
But we need milk for calcium, too, Elizabeth. What about
that?
Did you know that high levels of animal protein in the
body creates metabolic acidosis? Basically your body has to work so hard to process
these foods that it creates extra acid in the body to do so. Once you have acid
in your body, your body tries to regulate itself by using calcium stores to
temper the acid. Where does your body get this calcium? Your bones, naturally.
So consuming large amounts of dairy can actually cause osteoporosis rather than
help it. It is then recommended that you drink low or no fat milk to help your
body process it. The only problem with this idea is that when the fat is
removed what is left behind is a higher concentration of the protein which is what
causes the problem in the first place.
“If you take care of the small things the big things
will take care of themselves.” –Emily Dickenson
When asked what he thought would happen if everyone ate
a large amount of fresh organic food, Andrew W. Saul, PhD said, “What would happen
if everybody ate lots and lots of fresh organic food that was minimally
processed? I think we’d have an epidemic of health.”
What can we do to bring ourselves closer to this ideal.
I think it is fair to say I am a promoter of the vegan diet (though please note
I am not perfect in my vegan efforts) but that does not mean you have to become
completely vegan to reap these benefits. Start by changing a few things here
and there. Have a salad with dinner. Switch to oatmeal for breakfast rather
than cereal. Don’t have time in the mornings? Search Pinterest for overnight
oat recipes you throw together before bed and can grab quickly in the morning.
I think my best advice for making change is to become
your own loving parent. How do you want your children (you) to eat? How would
you go about telling them (you) this? Do you want your children (you) to eat
more fresh fruits and vegetables? Tell them (you) that you feel this way.
Remind them (you) why this will be better for them and slowly start adding more
fresh foods into their (your) life. Speak to them (you) compassionately,
especially when they (you) make a mistake. Don’t scream at them (you) about
their (your) choices. Simply remind them to do better next time. Lead them by
example. Rather than reaching for cookies when you get home from work, reach
for an apple.
Sources/Honorable mention
*If the Buddha Came to Dinner: How t Nourish Your Body and Awaken Your
Spirit by Halé Sofia Schatz with Shira Shaiman.
*Vegucated: Comedy/Documentary. 2011. Marisa Miller Wolfson
*Food Matters: Drama/Documentary. 2008. James Colquhoun, Carlo Ledesma
*Forks Over Knives: Documentary. 2011. Lee Fulkerson
*Kathrine Wier photography
