[Editorial Disclaimer - 10/22/2009: I wrote this at a time when I was living in a significantly different frame of mind, at least in regard to dietary principles, and my typical lack of posting speed has kept it high enough on the blog queue that I figured it was worth a note. I stand by what it says - eating the way suggested here is undoubtedly of great health value - but I now have reservations about the primacy of raw foods in the human diet. This isn't to say, of course, that I have returned to eating a traditional, American diet. Not by a long shot. Perhaps, sometime, I will expound upon the topic.]
Amidst the expansive, capitalist book stacks of Barnes & Noble, I see all the familiar categories: Science Fiction, History, Reference, Art, Children’s, Fiction, etc. One heading, however, stands out, its associated shelves much longer than I recall seeing them in years before. “Health” has become a huge section in the modern incarnation of the former, town book seller, and it even has sub-categories now. “Medicine” and “Fitness" are there, along with “Diet.” The latter should not, I suppose, be surprising. With American health at incomparable lows, the market for improving the state of our glutted, obese, physically repulsive selves is a strong one. After all, who wants to be fat? It is both unattractive and unhealthy, regardless of what some social activists may try to claim as they push personal agendas to moderate bigotry towards the obese.
The truth is in the money, which is in the book sales, which can be counted in the sheer variety and number of diet plans for sale. People don’t want to be fat or unhealthy, as this robust industry proves, and every conceivable solution (respective validity’s aside) is there. The Glucose Revolution. The 12 Day Body Shaping Miracle. The South Beach Heart Health Revolution. The Fat Flush Plan. Dr. Gott’s No Flour No Sugar Diet. And that’s just what I can read, in the biggest print, from where I’m sitting. If all of this is indicative of anything, though, it is that the health industry wants you to be fat. A cruel truth that may be hard to swallow, but a truth nonetheless. After all, if someone found a method that worked, would anyone keep buying these books? Would anyone keep buying strange pharmaceutical drugs to keep them “healthy”? Would anyone invest money in the systems that produced this “Health” shelf? Obviously not, because everyone would be healthy and would have no need for any of it. The knowledge of how to be healthy would be in our heads already, immune to pricing schematics and investor returns. Thus, is it any surprise that this shelf grows in proportion to American waistlines? It should not be; the two are symbiotic.
So what does one do? How does one gain this knowledge of how to be healthy if not from Barnes & Noble? One suggestion I might offer is to consider information offered by those who have no profit motive. Sans money-making potential, information is purely that, a hopefully altruistic and harm-free transaction. Another suggestion? Listen to me. I am both conceited and hugely self-interested, but, to my credit, I never give advice that I don’t rigidly adhere (or try to adhere) to. Considering the previous qualities outlined in my self-description, you can trust that I would not steer myself wrong. Without any profit motive, therefore, I suggest the following methodology by which to achieve superior health. It is both simple and logical, requisites of all systems I impose upon myself:
Eat primarily (~90%) plants and vegetables.
Reason: look at your nearest genetic relatives in the ape kingdom. What do they eat? Humanity, having ages ago forsaken intuitive wisdom, has no choice but to infer knowledge by comparison. There are no other apes – none, whatsoever – that subsist on less than 90% vegetable matter.
Stop cooking your food. This means:
a. No more bread (or crackers, or wheat, or cereal, or…)
b. No more packaged, factory foods.
Reason: reread the reason from #1. What other animals cook their food? In particular, which other apes? Same answer: none, whatsoever.
Stop eating/drinking the milk of animals other than your mother. This means:
a. No more cow milk.
b. No more cheese.
c. No more dairy based creams
Reason: I will restate it, again, for the slow. Which apes drink the milk of other animals? Which apes, as adults, continue to consume dairy of any kind, even their mother’s? You know the answer.
That’s it! Three main, simple rules, that form an umbrella under which some other, few, secondary “suggestions” lie, but the first three are entirely adequate on their own. But why? Why follow the behavior examples of other apes? Our myriad similarities to the great apes make them ideal candidates for comparison. What better methodology for figuring this out is there? Studying our ancestors? Do not even get me started on the countless, non-dietary mistakes those eternal blunderers made. If history is any lesson, our modern ancestors are best disregarded in virtually every practice and tradition they have tried to pass along to us. Simply put, we, like apes, are products of evolution* - roughly similar evolution, at that - and this process has left us with bodies that are physically unsuited to the types of modern, dietary choices we are making, a fact made ever more stark by the opposing actions of our near, genetic relatives.
Can we, or should we, eat meat? Sure, but not a lot. We do have the digestive system of an omnivore and the front teeth of a carnivore, and many of our closest ape relatives do eat comparatively small amounts of meat (raw, I might add), but the human body isn’t meant for excessive meat consumption. People CAN survive primarily on meat, but not well. All manner of physical ailments stem from this. Every doctor and mother on earth has been telling us, for years, to eat more fruits and vegetables (maybe there is some intuitive wisdom left, after all). Listen to them. I know you are worried about protein. Stop. The vegetable kingdom offers countless sources of protein, both in complete, direct forms and in combined forms derived from multiple plant-nutrient incorporation. Besides, we don’t need nearly as much protein as the beef industry (profit motive, anyone?) tells us that we do. Stop eating so much. You can thank me later when you don’t get a kidney stone at 40.
“Why can’t I cook my food?” Two reasons. First, the cooking of food destroys all manner of nutrients that are in what you will consume. This is why they change color and eventually blacken…to ash. Why would anyone want to eat something that is halfway to becoming soot? Cooking food is illogical. Secondly, cooking food allows people to digest certain things that they are not evolutionarily designed for. Bread is the big one. What apes eat wheat? Rye? Flour? You guessed it: none. But why? Very simply, because these things, raw, are indigestible. They act as poisons in the system, substances that are beyond our ability to normally process and must, therefore, be expelled in manners by which their nutrient quantity is not made available to us. Yes, cooking DOES allow us to absorb some of these nutrients by making things like wheat digestible, but at what price? If we were never designed to have those nutrients in the first place, does that mean that we are forcibly incorporating a poison into our systems? You don’t want me to answer that.
“But what about carbs?!” Our ape relatives have lived for many thousands of years without energy drinks, power bars, or even the basic, sourdough sandwich. Fruit provides incredible, sugar based carbohydrates to the body in an easily digestible manner. Ask any chimpanzee if he gets lethargic after eating a mango and swinging through the trees all day.
The Red-Bull-free Energy Miracle Plan.
Compare this to how very lethargic you are after eating a slice of thick crust pizza. And speaking of mozzarella…
Milk is for babies. This is true of every mammal species on earth (by the way, you are a mammal too, you know). Humans love cow’s milk, from which we often make cheese, but who is the milk actually made for? Its for calves, obviously, and what do calves turn into? Yes, you are right: ½ ton heifers. And we wonder why everyone is fat! It should be unsurprising that a great number of people are lactose intolerant. What is surprising, however, is that this is treated and viewed as a detriment, when in reality it is simply their bodies functioning optimally, rejecting the substance. Though our bodies often can process dairy, they are not developed, physically, for it. “But what about calcium?” It may be hard to imagine, but even a creature as massive as a gorilla is able to keep up a skeleton that can support his musculature, all without milk. How? Green vegetables, eaten in quantity, provide more than adequate amounts of calcium. Where, after all, do you think the cow gets the calcium that goes into its milk? Dairy related health problems are innumerable and debilitating, plus that coat of mucus on your tongue is repulsive. If you really must consume dairy, keep it to the type of dairy that you are built for. Drink human breast milk. When thought about logically, that is far less disgusting than drinking something out a cow’s udder. Better yet, don’t consume dairy at all. It’s a simple compound for infants. Be an adult and digest something a little bit hardier.
A clearly calcium deficient vegan.
I will hear your next line of argument, but I will lambaste you for it. “But I LOVE this food. I just can’t stop eating it!” That is fine with me. Frankly, I don’t give a damn if you live or die. Actually, if you did die I would likely be better off; there are too many people on the planet anyway. Unfortunately, though (for you, especially), you won’t die, at least not immediately. You’ll live, though increasingly miserably. You’ll enjoy sickness, incurable weight problems, bouts of cancer, slow body-failure, and every other conceivable joy that man has unleashed upon himself since he chose to live in disharmony with his evolutionary design. But if you are going to “live” in this wretched manner, don’t do so ignorantly. Every time you are wracked with illness, every moment you spend with a beloved family member that is dying from cancer, every time you, in your own conceit and self-interest (I assure you I’m not the only one), look at your physically unappealing self in the mirror, say to yourself, “But I love eating this.” Stuff your face with pizza and beer and buy another useless diet book. Watch yourself not get thinner, not get healthier, and remember that I gave it to you for free, right here, and that you chose pizza instead. Sorry that I couldn’t package it with a smile, but short a profit drive, I had a hard time scraping up the motivation.
*If you don’t believe in evolution, all bets are off, though you might do well to reconsider your faith. In my personal study of religion, I have yet to find one modern god that increases the overall happiness of his followers. Misery seems to be the norm for the deeply religious.
