We went from Neo-Lithic diets to Neo-Pathetic
((lot's of good links in here))
We eat food that we can't identify or even pronounce the ingredients, we eat food whose priority is yield, portability, etc - NOT nutrition. Crops need 72 soil nutrients we consume crops that have three nutrients injected into them. The dwarf wheat we eat in every meal has been on the planet for a only a few decades and was created in a lab and has never been tested on humans. We do more research on which mini-van or plasma TV to buy but we give NO thought on what we eat. That is the most intimate process and decisions we make and we do it with the least information, and worse yet, with bad information.
Dr Daphne Miller hits these problems head on in her book The Jungle Effect: Discovering the World's Healthiest Diets, Why They Work and How to Bring Them Home. (youtube lecture here). In her book she instructs us how diets around the planet took 20,000 years to make and they were tweaked over each generation to produce food choices and ingredient combinations to make humans feel good, have no diseases and live longer. Food chosen based on the health effects on the consumer. This seems like some new-fangled concept... Example: Icelandic people eat no veggies or fruits. They consume reindeer and the reindeer eat moss (rich in Vitamin C) - the people get vitamin C through the meat the eat. In today's way of feeding people, we'd cram reindeer together and force feed them subsidized corn (which is poison to them) pump them full of antibiotics to keep them alive long enough to grow quickly. Consuming this reindeer meat would contain no Vit C and we'd all die of scurvy. And/or science would work on pills to treat the symptoms of scurvy :). As I keep saying you are what you eat AND you are what you eat eats.
A new book has just come out on this topic that I look fwd to reading: Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World. (podcasted interview here). Written by the farm here in VA that gets it!! I have access to their meats at my local crossfit gym. The author feels we'll look back on this period of history with astonishment wondering how we consumed things that make us sick, then a separate industry comes in and treats this sickness. When did it become normal to consume more chemicals that an advanced chemistry set in every meal?? Well it's not normal. The processed foods commercials are not accurate in telling you that their products are in any way good for you. The average distance traveled for anything you pick up at the grocery store is 1,500 miles. Cheap food? You're spending more on fossil fuels than you are on those bananas. I wish these costs were unhidden and common sense could someday rule. Our grandchildren will get it. Gonna kindle this book now.
**My lunch today cost me $10, I ordered it from catalyst meals (no link,i'm not advertising for them). It was made from 4 pronounceable/identifiable ingredients and has all that I need.
If you have a different opinion, I'd love to hear it.
