You Are What You Eat!

Have you ever really thought about that old saying "you are what you eat"? Really what does that mean? If I eat Cheese doodles will I turn into a giant neon-orange-fake-cheese-flavored snack? Can a Cheese doodle, or Cheeze cracker or bright orange tortilla chip or any other packaged snack food really be all that bad? Well keep reading and consider this.....

In the 1930's a researcher named Dr Weston Price traveled the world over to observe populations untouched by civilization, living entirely on local foods. While the diets of the populations differed in many particulars, they contained several factors in common. Almost without exception, the groups he studied ate liberally of seafood or other animal proteins and fats in the forms of organ meats and dairy products: they valued animal fats as absolutely necessary to good health: and they ate fats, meats, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains in their whole unrefined state. All privative diets contained some raw foods, of both animal and vegetable origin.

Dr Price found fourteen groups- from isolated Irish and Swiss, from Eskimos to Africans- in which almost every member of the tribe or village enjoyed suburb health. They were free of chronic disease, dental decay, and mental illness: they were strong, sturdy and attractive; and they produced beautiful healthy children with ease generation after generation.

Dr Price had many opportunities to compare these healthy so-called "primitives" with members of the same racial group who had become "civilized" and were living on the products of the industrial revolution - refined grains, canned foods, pasteurized milk and sugar. In these peoples he found rampant tooth decay, infectious disease, degenerative illness and infertility. Children born to traditional peoples who had adopted the industrialized diet had crowded and crooked teeth, narrowed faces, deformities of bone structure and susceptibility to every sort of medical problem. Studies too numerous to count have confirmed Dr Price's observations that the so-called civilization diet, particularly the Western diet of refined carbohydrates and devitalized fats and oils, spoils our God-given genetic inheritance of physical perfection and vibrant health.
-Sally Fallon
Nourishing Traditions

Makes you think doesn't it? Perhaps that seemingly innocent snack food is a bit more serious than we had thought? Here are a few facts: Heart disease and cancer were rare at the turn of the century and now, despite billions of dollars in research and huge advances in technology, these are the two leading causes of death in this country. There is a long list of chronic diseases that are affecting a large portion of our population....diabetes, obesity, allergies, ulcers, mental illness, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, digestive disorders, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, epilepsy, and chronic fatigue. Learning disabilities including dyslexia, hyperactivity and attention disorders afflict more than 7 million kids. These diseases were rare just a generation or two before us. Chronic illness affects nearly half of all Americans AND causes 3 out of 4 deaths in the US.

Perhaps if we look back at the diets of our great Grandparents we can make some headway here. Maybe it is time for us as individuals to make our health a priority.

Hey, I have a wild idea! Instead of packing a handful of neon-orange-fake-cheese-flavored snacks in your kid's lunch how about an apple?