Eating for Optimal Health

A friend has requested some posts on gluten-free diets but before I do that I need to step back and talk about optimal nutrition, of which being gluten-free is an important part. Thus begins a series of posts on eliminating processed foods and sugars, and we will then specifically deal with the issue of gluten.

My mother was diagnosed with Celiac disease years ago which is an inability to digest food because the small intestine has been damaged by gluten, a protein formed when wheat flours come into contact with water. When people with Celiac go "gluten-free" or stop eating gluten, their intestines can begin to heal and they can start digesting their food properly. This requires the elimination of breads, pastas and anything made with processed grains, i.e. flour.

Another remedy for intestinal problems that emerged in the 1960s is called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which eliminates complex sugars and starches from the diet. The only allowable sugars are those naturally occurring in honey, fruits or milk. The SCD has been found to cure or aid a number of diseases such as Crohn's, IBS and Colitis.

A similar way of eating for health is Dr. Atkins "Revolutionary" Diet which calls for the elimination of complex carbohydrates (flours, sugars, starches) from the diet until maximum weight loss is achieved. Then certain carbs can be consumed until weight gain recurs and this demonstrates the allowable amount of carbs in that person's diet for the perfect balance.

Is this starting to sound repetitive? The common culprit in all the above dietary solutions is processed foods and sugars. If you were to live in a bountiful place just outside of "civilisation" where there were no grocery stores or food manufacturers, you might eat some grains you grew in a field. But the majority of your diet would come from meat and dairy from animals you farmed or caught and fruits and vegetables you grew or picked yourself. You would very likely not be overweight and would not have diabetes, cardiovascular disease or other diseases plaguing most people in the developed world.

This is not just my subjective opinion, because many scientists have catalogued the health of indigenous people all over the world who were free of diseases until people from developed nations moved in and brought with them their processed foods and drinks. Shortly thereafter, the indigenous people became ill and started to suffer from new diseases. This is the case with Canada's First Nations people who are now hugely at risk for diabetes, also for the Sioux and Pima Indians in the Southern US. Many medical experts are still muddling about trying to determine why these indigenous people became so fat and theorising that they're now sedentary since we pushed them onto reservations. But the most impactful change they've undergone is a drastic change to their diet. Read more about how the introduction of processed foods to indigenous peoples' diets has desecrated their health as documented by Dr. Weston Price in the 1930s, the studies discussed in Uffe Ravnskov's Cholesterol Myths, and many other studies can be found in medical journals.

While most of the medical profession is still fixated on telling us to eliminate saturated fats from our diet, they all must concede that elimination of processed carbohydrates from the diet (not green vegetables) leads to weight and fat loss. And while fat loss may not be everyone's goal, good health certainly should be. The most popular diseases today generally present alongside individuals who are overweight. Doctors are recommending weight loss to reduce their risk of disease and so obesity and overweight themselves seem to be predictors of disease.

They are looking at the problem backwards. What is causing us to be overweight is what's also causing these diseases: diabetes, high blood pressure, metabolic syndrome and more. What helps us to reduce weight also helps us regain our health, and our #1 enemy should be processed foods. We've existed for millions of years eating foods from animals, and plants, and we've only recently begun turning plant and grass seeds into the bulk of our diet (as flours) and our health has suffered drastically in this same period. I think it will only be a matter of time before doctors will start to shift their focus to the real source of the problem.