Nutrition: An American Tragedy

The cause of health continues to elude the majority. The reasons are simple but complex. Simple because the majority consumes "foods" that are addictive and toxic. Complex because addictive toxic substances are very profitable, and consequently there are powerful motives for the food and health care industries to deliberately mislead us about nutrition, profiting on diseases caused by addictive and toxic "food like" substances.

And addiction is a problem. It dulls emotional pain, keeps us in a stupor, and makes us physically ill. How do we deal with emotional pain? Healthy relationships, and if need be, therapy. Or perhaps therapy, leading to healthy relationships.

Surprisingly perhaps, while nutrition can be complex, the basics are fairly simple. And so ironically, most of us have begun developing the consequences of ill health for decades.

 Meanwhile, for the most part we are basically lied to by the health care industry, and the primary lie is that drugs will keep us healthy. Obviously, when we are taking prescription drugs we are not healthy. What can be done about this? Learn the basics of nutrition! It is what makes and keeps us healthy.

Nutrition is found in whole foods, and not found in fast food, processed food, or roughly 85% of the "foods" on sale at standard grocery stores. Yes, even grocery stores are in on it.

Restaurants are in on it too, they are selling something called "hyper-palatability". Let's ask AI for the definition of hyper-palatability...

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Hyper-palatability refers to foods formulated to combine fat, sugar, sodium, and carbohydrates in specific amounts that bypass your brain’s natural fullness signals. These specific combinations trigger the brain's reward system, making it difficult to stop eating them even when you are full.

The Science Behind the Cravings
Studies show hyper-palatable foods generally fall into three distinct nutritional combinations:

Fat and Sodium: (e.g., Bacon, pizza, hot dogs) - calories from fat, combined with sodium.

Fat and Sugar: (e.g., Ice cream, cake, cookies) - calories from fat, combined with calories from simple sugars.

Carbohydrates and Sodium: (e.g., Chips, pretzels, crackers) - calories from carbohydrates, combined with sodium by weight.

Why They Are Hard to Resist
Dopamine Release: These combinations stimulate the release of dopamine in the brain, offering a rewarding sensation similar to addictive behaviors.

Lack of Satiety: Because these foods are typically highly processed, they often lack the protein and dietary fiber required to make you feel full, which leads to passive overeating.

Ubiquitous: Studies have shown that the food system in the United States consists of hyper-palatable foods, including items often marketed as healthy or low-fat.

How to Mitigate Hyper-Palatable Food Consumption
Since HPFs can drive calorie intake and weight gain, dietary management often involves specific strategies:

Base meals on whole foods: Unprocessed, whole foods (like vegetables, fruits, and lean meats) rarely occur in hyper-palatable combinations and are rich in fiber and protein.

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Let's emphasize this part:

"Unprocessed, whole foods, vegetables, fruits, and lean meats, rarely occur in hyper-palatable combinations." 

Which means the vast majority of restaurants are in the hyper-palatability business. But we can eat in restaurants with no health penalty if we order dishes made with simple whole food combinations, and no sugar salt or oil.

There is a common error in the AI version above, and it is confusing and conflating "macro-nutrients" with junk food. 

There are only three macro nutrients: carbohydrates, fats, and proteins (and there are thousands of micro nutrients, vitamins and minerals, contained in the macro nutrients).

The above AI article conflates "junk carbs and junk fats" with healthy whole food macronutrients. This is one of the ways the food industry deliberately keeps us confused about nutrition. 

Why would they do that? Profit! Do they care about us? Not really!

So, if your carbohydrates are whole fruits and whole vegetables, they are nutritious, if you are eating salted "french fried" potatoes (cooked in oil), it is a toxic substance and really should not be called a carbohydrate to begin with. 

All you have to remember is this: macronutrients are a whole food, and all three categories, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, are healthy. Sliced and diced with refined sugar salt and oil, they are not.

Reverse Alzheimers? This Harvard Doctor Explains the Truth

The title of this post is the same as the title of the YouTube  I just watched. I usually do not use the title of a YouTube as the title of a blog post! This has to be one of the best YouTubes since the beginning of YouTubes. There isn't anything for me to add except watch it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27etnL4lTL8

mRNA and cancer

The studies showing the damage mRNA shots have caused are still coming out, and then many of them are retracted. We are living through an odd moment in the history of technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr-WKRRLi9U

Loma Linda Protocol

 

Rebounding Is WAY More Powerful Than You Think

Rebounding is really quite an interesting health intervention, particularly as we age. Dr Yonatan Whitten does an excellent job at explaning why this is the case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9_xuadwB9Y

The secrets to healthy eating

Eating healthfully is one of the "secrets" of health and vitality. There are others, good sleep, loving relationships, balanced and dynamic movement of the body. I don't know if any of the "secrets" to health and vitality are more important than the others, but I do know eating healthfully is, let's say, a bit more of a mystery or point of contention than some of the others. Good quality of sleep for example...most will agree that good sleep is one of the more important aspects of health and vitality. The various aspects that induce the best health may all be equal, but even if so many of us will be less informed on one in particular.

Meanwhile, the foods we eat have become a huge point of contention for those of us who are interested in optimal health, vitality, and longevity. It is fair to say however, the "diet war" group is for the most part considerably healthier than those who pay little to no attention to quality of food and diet. The obesity rate in the US is the clear marker of this unfortunate state of affairs.

So then, what are these "secrets" of healthy eating? I may not know them all myself, but I will do my best to identify them.

One of them is "easy to digest". This may not sound like a big deal, but in fact is huge. Now, ice cream is easy to digest, but is also lacking in nutrients, so another qualifier of healthy eating is "high in nutrition". Easy to digest and high in nutrition means we are using less energy to aquire our nutrition. More "miles per gallon", we might say. On some level it's all about efficiency.

Let's also say if we tried to live on a diet of pills we wouldn't get very far, so then it becomes obvious that "real food" is the critically important element. 

Then let's also separate the junk from the real, the primary distinction being non-fractionated "whole" foods that arrive to our tables and bodies in as close to their natural state as possible. 

One problem however is whole foods may not taste as good when they are not "seasoned" with highly palatable substances that create a dopamine cascade in the brain. It's not unusual to hear some people refer to destructive and addictive drugs as "dope", a slang term for toxins that make us feel better in the short term, and worse over the long term.

So then one of the conditions that reduces optimal health is "over seasoning" our food, which then creates a pleasurable dopamine cascade in our brain, which reduces the power and efficacy of whole foods. It's a bit odd that we post industrial humans have come to the point we do not necessarily realize the whole fresh unprocessed foods we are biologically adapted to are those that are maximally effective in creating health.

"Frankenfoods", even over seasoned foods, are a mostly unrecognized problem that is highly profitable, for pretty much the same reason drugs are highly profitable...the dopamine cascade in the brain. Restaurants that serve up overly stimulating calories, which is most of them, are to some significant degree responsible for the health destructive obesity problem in the post industrial world.

Food as a drug? Sure, it can be. It's probably safe to say most of obesity is down to this problem because food as a drug is a mostly invisible problem. The profiteers go unperturbed because they are not responsible for the paucity of reliable information on nutrition. 

Table salt is toxic, a primary contributor to the various cardiovascular diseases that kill most of us prematurely.

Another drug masquerading as food is table sugar...100% calories, zero nutrition. (Eat whole fruits, they are real food, and are nutritious, delicious, and quell the refined sugar addiction.)

Another problem hiding in plain sight is refined fats, which we know as vegetable oils, and 100% calories but zero nutrition, and a major contributor to obesity. We don't even know these empty calories are in most foods, and dangerous. After all, they are tasteless. They are also the other major contributor to premature death in the US. 

If refined oils in foods are so destructive to health why are they there to begin with? They make cooking highly palatable substances easier.

So the primary secret to healthful eating is to know the overstimulation of our brain and body with toxic substances is a template unique to post-industrial humans. And then endeavor to adapt to real foods that are non-fractionated and whole. They may not stimulate the taste buds quite as much at first, but as we adapt we will recognize that we feel better, and healthier.

As I've done many times in this blog on health, I will recommend a book that has helped many understand the "food as a drug" problem:

The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health & Happiness.

What's all the fuss about whole food plant based?

A physician I just learned about will explain it better than I can. Hint: it's multifaceted, perhaps infinately so. 

Meet Dr Rubin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3vvPnOpKBg