The Whole Food Diet

            Americans face an interesting dilemma that has never been such an issue as it is today.  No one knows what to eat.  The US faces an epidemic of degenerative diseases, so the health seeker just wants to know the answer to a simple, basic question.  €œWhat food should I eat to be healthy?† But this is not an easy question to answer, at least not in today’s technologically advanced world.  When taking into account the plethora of fad diets, nutritional science, and varying opinions by doctors and “health experts” that change day to day it is no wonder why â€what should I eat†is a problem of such epic proportions. 

            So tuning in to the latest health revolution can cause a whorl wind of confusion that the health seeker is not likely to sort out.  But the answer of what to eat is actually simple.  Eat whole foods.

            And what exactly are whole foods?  Whole foods are foods exactly as they are found in nature.  They are intact, unprocessed, and come from the ground, a plant, an animal or the sea.  They do not come in packages, they do not have nutritional statistics on their label, and they do not contain additives of any kind such as sweeteners, preservatives, synthetic vitamins or minerals, etc. 

            Another way to think of whole foods is to think about what animals eat.  Not domesticated animals that eat processed animal scrapes, but animals out in the plains, jungles, oceans, and deserts.  They eat plants.  They eat animals.  Their diet consists of leaves and roots, fruits and berries, nuts and seeds, honey, and of other animals.  Sure, they are opportunistic and will eat other foods that are offered.  Food can be scare sometimes and it’s best to eat what one can get.  But without human interference they eat what nature provides.  There are no potato chip trees or cake vines in the wild.  Nor are there pecan trees with added sugar or cows that give milk with €œextra vitamin D€.

            Our ancestral hunters and gatherers did the same.  They lived on fruits, nuts and seeds, plants, and other animals.  They ate abundantly from the ocean.  All of their foods were whole and unprocessed.

            So why is this important?  Science has created everything we have in our society today.  So just because animals and primitive man didn’t eat processed foods doesn’t mean they are harmful, does it?

            But if a modern humans health is compared to that of a hunter gatherers health it can quickly be seen that these are foods are definitely linked to degenerative disease.  Dr. Weston price traveled around the world studying various cultures that still ate their traditional diet.  What he found is that cultures eating their traditional diets had few cases of degenerative disease.  Furthermore, almost all of them had perfectly formed dental arches and never lost their wisdom teeth.  Bodies were lean, strong, and able to perform manual labor into their old age.  For more information see the Price-Pottenger Foundation at http://www.ppnf.org

            Now of course much of this is because their lifestyles were very different than the average American.  But in cultures that abandoned their traditional diet in favor of a modern diet of processed foods the people quickly became ill, they developed cavities, and their dental arches did not form correctly.  In cultures were they reverted back to their traditional diet their health was restored.

            One theory for this is because man has lived with and adapted to whole foods for thousands or millions of years.  Man doesn’t live in a vacuum.  He is intimately connected with all life around him.  He is a part of the environment and not separate from it.  So man’s body is adapted to have a certain amount of fiber to push out waste material.  He needs a certain amount of Vitamin C to keep his veins and capillaries strong.  The fats and proteins in whole foods are shaped a certain molecular way and that is the shape his body recognizes.  Today’s trans fats are a different molecular shape and his body doesn’t have the equipment to metabolize it.  His body is adapted assimilating the carbohydrates found in whole foods, and the fiber prevents carbohydrates from flooding his system and spiking his blood sugar.  Concentrated sugars and foods devoid of fiber raise his blood sugar to dangerously high levels.

            The basic point is man adapted to over thousands or millions of years to eating whole foods.  It takes a long time to adapt from an evolutional standpoint.  Processed foods were introduced in the last couple centuries, not nearly enough time for man’s body to adapt to the new foods.

            So eat whole foods.  Eat lots of them.  Avoid processed foods.  The question of what is healthy is as easy as that.