Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Why don't they teach this in school?

Someone sent this to my, but it's pretty profound. Especially where my family and I are right now in our lives.

Sad that we have to go what is considered extreme in order to live a healthy life. I know my parents think we're crazy for reading labels and not letting our kids eat that junk, but in short...it's bad for you. I'm just saying.

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You know why we're obese? We eat too much! And we eat the wrong things.

For millennia, humans lived agrarian lifestyles. They worked the fields and ate what they grew. That usually included one staple whole grain (rice or wheat), a large number of leafy greens, fruits, berries and nuts. Much of it was eaten raw. Meat was used as a flavoring ingredient in small quantities because raising it was too resource-intensive for all but the very rich. And of course, everything was organic because there was no such thing as non-organic. This is how we evolved. It's how are bodies run best. The human engine knows how to process that mix of fuel.

Compare that to how we live and eat today. We hardly exercise. Whatever grains we eat are stripped of their essential nutrients (i.e. white flour, white rice). The primary part of our meals comes from animal protein. Fruits and vegetables make up the smallest portion of our diet. And everything is heavily processed and/or treated with chemicals that don't exist in nature.

Much of this is a product of wealth and industrialization. There are parts of the world where they still live the agrarian lifestyle of our ancestors. These are the undeveloped, rural areas without access to the modern conveniences. The way they eat has come to be known as the "Poverty Diet", and it is marked by the lowest incidence of disease in all human societies on the planet.

So, if you're over 30 and you eat fast food more than once a month, you're harming yourself. If you're not out walking at least a mile a day, you're sedentary compared to the blood line you evolved from. If the food you buy in the store has ingredients you can't pronounce, think about whether your ancestors ate that stuff, and then imagine why there's a huge increase in cancer rates over the last half a century.

We're killing ourselves, all while we've all been conditioned to believe that our lifestyles are "normal." Sure, "everybody eats at McDonalds," but that's why so many of us are fat and sick. A person who simply eats what the average human diet has consisted of for eons is regarded today as some kind of "health nut," whereas the vast majority of Americans eat like they're from some other planet.

1 comments:

j said...

After working for 1 day on the farm with Sunshine, I realized why "Gym Memberships" are a relatively new concept.

Who liknks to me? Ask me how....just kidding. Just click here.