What To Eat

Two books reviewed here -- Going Primal and Mainlining Butter -- were about eating healthy. The books promoted a diet of meat, fat and vegetables. But how do you really know. There are food and diet studies... and there are tests... and there are conclusions... and there are other conclusions... and then new studies contradict the old studies... and the Food And Drug Admin gets involved... and then no one really knows what to believe due to the revolving door policy and big money influence of government bureaucracies.


The two books that were referred to in those mini book reviews both promote a diet of protein, fat, vegetables, a few fruits and low/no carbohydrates. Both books claim that the human evolved to be a meat eater.

Considering that agriculture had developed about five to ten thousand years ago, the books contend human evolution has not evolved to meet the starches contained in "farmed" grains and legumes. Could be true. But could it also be true that in some geographical locations, two to three hundred generations would have evolved for some humans to handle the starches without deleterious effect on health.

For most of human history, the human was a short time away from starving. Not only starving, but also there were frequent unintentional fast days between finding sustenance -- unsuccessful hunting or no plant produce to be found while foraging.

For those that took up farming 6,000 to 10,000 years ago (depends on the archeologist), it was lots of hard work. There was hard work to grow, gather, thresh and prepare those grains for eating. Those calories were hard to come by and expended in more work to gather the crop. No doubt there was little obesity among those who were doing that work. Their bodies handled those "bad carbs".

In a comment to one of my mini book reviews, Boonie wonders: If humans had evolved as carnivores, how come the canines of humans do not resemble the fangs of animal carnivores. Good question. Turns out that chimpanzees (closest to human genetics) are also omnivores and their diet includes  small animals and small monkey species -- along with a vegetarian diet. No fangs on the chimp.

If the next diet craze becomes meat and fat and no carbs, no doubt there will be numerous studies that will start appearing about the hazards of forsaking the food conglomerate products (grains, legumes and sugars) to dine on meat, fat and vegetables.

However, to catch up on the latest fad diet, one wonders what the food conglomerates will do to those meats and vegetables to add "value" so they can charge more money to maintain profits for the food conglomerate.

In the end, a personal diet looks similar to a belief system. Pretty hard to change a personal belief.

Humans are a bundle of genetics and chemistry and each reacts differently to medications and foods. Whole wheat products cause me severe intestinal cramps. Had that problem as a kid. Eating refined flour products causes less problems, but the exposure is enough for me to be a low/no carb person.

Over about ten to fifteen years, I've been following a diet of salads, meats, and some carbs. Those carbs have frequently been in the form of some type of crunchy bread. The real reason for the bread was to slather butter on it. Today, I don't bother with the bread. I just mainline the butter.

Now I know what I should eat. Since I've begun a serious effort to get carbs (sugars and starches) out of my diet about three weeks ago, I have discovered that I have not been taking the antacid Tums after many of the meals I ate. For me, that is the positive of the low/no carbohydrate diet. And a very good reason to continue this way of eating.

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Placebo Medicine.... A healthy diet seems like a segue about placebo medicine. A series of blog entries at Steve Salerno's blog has turned out to be very educational. In his introduction to the series, he will "... tell the story of placebo medicine: how during the past century, multiple precincts of traditional medical practice, from your local GP to the largest university hospitals, began trading in sugar pills: bogus drugs, bogus therapy, even bogus heart surgery....". First blog entry of the series is Placebo. How Sugar Pill Became a Poison Pill.

Unfortunately, the series doesn't link forward to the next in the series. Go to Shamblog's archives to see all the posts in the series. There are nine at the time of this writing.