Most people think the regular cooked diet based upon official food pyramids is just fine. Some eat predominantly fast food. Others advocate veganism (eating only plant foods), or lacto-ova vegetarianism (plants plus milk and eggs). There are also advocates of special foods such as fresh juices, soybean products and wholefood cooked grains and rice.
Everyone can make arguments on behalf of their beliefs. They can cite examples of people who have escaped disease and lived long. Some argue morality and ethics, such as those who say sentient animal life should not be sacrificed for food. Others set their eating practices by the standards of holy writ that eschew certain forms of foods and sanctify others. Others just eat what tastes good and that’s logic enough for them.
Eating beliefs seem to take on anearly religious character. People feel guarded and pretty zealous about food and don’t like others meddling. But since health is closely linked to what we take into our mouths, thinking, honest reflection and willingness to alteration are in order.
It is relaxed to be deceived because wrong food choices may not manifest their full influence until late in life. Nutrition can even pass through hereditarily to affect later generations. In this regard, food ideas are also like religion in that hundreds of different sects can every claim to have the truth. But none of them needs to fear disproof since settlement will not occur until everyone is dead and gone to the afterlife.
The body is extremely adaptable and will effort to survive on whatever it is given. If the food is incorrect there is usually no immediate harm. But the body will finally be stressed beyond its ability to adapt, resulting in disease, degeneration and loss of energy. Unfortunately, such consequences are so far removed in time from the eating regimen that caused them that few understand the relationship.
So be careful before subscribing to bold claims about what is or is not good to eat. The true test of any health idea lies too far out into the future. Our best hope then is to be well grounded philosophically before we slide our legs under the dinner table.
How do we develop a healthy eating philosophy and sort through all of the competing eating ideas? I am going to explain here a very simple principle that is so equitable you need not even look for proofs. Follow along with me and see if you don’t agree.
Consider the following three premises:
- Just like a tree is naturally adapted to absorb certain nutrients from soil, and a lion is genetically adapted to thrive on prey, and a deer is genetically modified to browse on vegetation, so too, are humans genetically adapted to certain kinds of food.
- The majority of foods we are presently exposed to are a product of the Agricultural/Industrial Revolution and inhabit a small part of the genetic history of humans. (Refer back to the 276-mile time-line in which only a few inches represent industrial-type eating practices.)
- The natural, genetically modified to food for humans must predate them. In other words, how could humans exist before the food they required to survive existed? We were completely industrialized biologically prior to agriculture and any method of food processing. That means whatever diet archetypal humans ate was the faultless diet because that was the diet responsible for the existence and development of the incredibly complex human organism. That diet was the milieu, the environmental nutritional womb, if you will, from which we sprung.