Whenever we consume concentrated calories we are veering away
from optimal sources of nutrition, and our state of health begins to deteriorate.
The optimum diet for anthropoid apes (including humans) is whole, fresh, ripe,
raw, organic fruits and vegetables, with occasional nuts and seeds. It's no
accident this diet has a very high nutrient to calorie ratio, is very high in
water content, and presents a very low "work" load to the digestive
system. This diet presents an optimal balance of nutrition, and the highest
"energy return" of any we can consume. And health (indeed, even
happiness) is all about optimal nutrition and return on energy.
How did we come so far off track as we find ourselves today?
Within the last 100 years so called "life-style diseases" have
appeared and proliferated at exponential progressions. At the current rate,
within a few more years literally everyone will die of one or more of the so
called metabolic disorders. How did it happen that virtually no one understands
the cause of health?
Animals in nature do not have to understand the cause of health,
they are forced by instincts and conditions to hue as closely to that standard
as possible. There is no processed food available, no couch, and no television.
The only food available is whole, fresh, ripe, raw, and organic, and they have to work hard
to get it. We humans on the other hand have been consuming cooked foods with
concentrated calories and an increasingly lower nutrient to calorie ratio for
1% of our time on earth. 1% of our total time on the planet is not very long in relative terms, but it might be long enough. And now so many of us find ourselves overweight, sick, and
dying prematurely of metabolic disorders, and the numbers continue to grow, as the demographic swept up by metabolic
disease progression is ever younger.
I'd like to look at the causes - I believe there are a
few. First main problem I think is a "technology era" distrust of nature. We know that nature
eventually kills us, and we would like to use technology to delay death as long as possible. Well that is simple survival instinct, but it is ironic in the extreme this impulse has backfired so proficiently. So what if
we stopped resisting nature and instead became partners with it, using technology instead to "get out of the way" of nature more efficiently?
This idea takes us directly to the impediments of that goal,
the vested interests and industries that have been built around the model of
"resistance to nature", and the idea we can do nature better than
nature itself. These interests essentially constitute the delivery system for concentrated
calories, and the "health care" system that has developed around the
challenges of dealing with the consequences. Those two systems might better be called the disease induction and disease management industries, symbiotically connected, and with vested interest in societal disease induction. (So is it any wonder we find ourselves here?)
They are by now the "usual
suspects" in the etiology of the "metabolic disease" health crisis: "big agriculture",
the chemical companies and "big pharma", the fast food industry,
and the medical/hospital/insurance industry, which are collectively generating the largest profit in the
history of the planet. And
let's be fair, this all began as an attempt to create conveniences that serve
modern industrialized societies, and that has been accomplished to a large extent. It is arguably more convenient to consume concentrated calories, because we spend less time
eating when foodstuffs are dense, and less time in preparation when foods are packaged. But as we are seeing in the overall, we lose far more in productivity than is gained in time
saved. Unfortunately however, the system is now deeply entrenched and seemingly
intractable, and leading us collectively over the cliff. What can be done?
On one level we can rest assured that the system as it
stands is not sustainable, and will collapse of its own weight at some point, sooner or later. An economic model that generates deteriorating health in an exponential progression is inherently self-destroying. But that fact is not reassuring to individuals concerned with their own health right now. Fortunately, in the near term,
demand does create supply, witness the advent and rise of the organic movement
- the sole result of an increasing demand for clean foods. The most powerful message we can send to profiteers is to buy organic fruits and vegetables whenever possible.
It may also help us to understand some of our resistances to
more efficient and energy producing lifestyle choices. Let's consider for
example those of us in the boomer generation who were bottle fed instead of breast fed. Formula was promoted widely as
"better than nature", which in retrospect seems an absurdity until we
stop and consider the many similar absurdities we continue to be presented with daily.
It's an alluring idea that's rarely true, so first we have to begin to learn to
trust nature and our own body "intelligence". And that is a multidimensional learning
process of education, reconditioning, and practice.
Formula impeded our development in two ways, first and most
obviously, nutritionally. It has been shown in study after study the myriad
benefits of breast milk in development and disease resistance. The mistake was
made of assuming we knew well enough the composition
of mother's milk to make an equal or better version. We now see the chemistry
and biology is more complex than we knew, but are we collectively any closer to the
idea nature cannot be improved upon? Some of us perhaps, but the vested
interests? They cannot allow such a thing when it negates their primary business model.
Well at least after we've destroyed our planet by sucking it dry and polluting it beyond the life sustaining level we can colonize other planets. Herein lies the essential insanity (and hubris) of our species. And why is it again we cannot simply live constructively on this god given paradise of a planet? (Do we really want to go live on some barren rock under an oxygen tent? Really?)
Calling Dr Freud... can I recommend to you his summation essay for the lay reader? "Civilization and It's Discontents"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents
And that leads to the second point, one that is not obvious,
and possibly as a result more difficult than the first. Consider: what we learn as infants about
survival becomes a deep part of us. Those messages from mother, family, and
through them society become nearly intractably associated with survival in the
deepest parts of our subconscious. If we had the
unfortunate experience for example to learn in our preverbal years that "Twinkies" are food, we are likely going to come to consciousness carrying an unconscious addiction to a toxic
combination of substances. What we learn is food in
the preverbal years has an abiding effect on our food choices for the
remainder of our lives, and in ways we cannot be fully conscious of, in the ways we also cannot remember "learning" language, or walking.
Many of us were also "put down with a bottle", and
this practice produced unfortunate emotional distortions around issues of love,
self-esteem, and food.
So learning the cause of health, and learning to trust
nature and our body intelligence is a two step process for many of us.
First we need to learn the basic mechanics of which foods are best suited for
our biology, and offer the more efficient returns on nutrition and energy. We
need to understand that sustainable energy is the cause of health and
happiness, and it comes from the foods that are highest on the nutrient to
calorie ratio. We need to understand that conversely, foods that are low on that scale are enervating, as are stimulants,
which afford temporary energy but leave us energy depleted and susceptible to disease formation in the long run.
We need to understand how to prepare and eat those foods.
This is actually very simple at the basic levels, which would surprise many
people. It's as simple as consuming whole, fresh, ripe, raw, organic fruits and vegetables. At the most basic level, all we need do is pick them up and eat them (when they meet the above qualifications they are inherently delicious). So when we understand that the mechanics of the cause of health are actually very
simple, what remains to stop us?
It's the associations we made as infants, reinforced over
and over through childhood and after, that toxins are food, and therefore necessary
for our very survival. We learned that processed, concentrated, heat damaged
substances laced with toxic chemicals are necessary for survival - so it's no
wonder we're in the health crisis we see all around us. So the second step in
the process is to reprogram our early conditioning, which can be done when we are
motivated. But it may help to recognize at the outset we are essentially working
within the parameters of addiction psychology, an awareness that can be very beneficial to the process.
Last, it's useful also to understand how we can be misled into something like putting an entire generation of infants on
formula, because this is essentially how the big vested interests continue to operate. In the case of formula we may see the first example of big
pharma kicking back profit to the entire medical profession who
prescribed or recommended it to new mothers. All manner of false messages are created and
propagated in this way, and are all the more confusing when the agents of such messages are "true believers" in the
power of science over nature. Let's not forget that science is a subset of nature (as are all things). And let us be informed, particularly when it comes to the matters of our health.
