Feb 17, 2011

A Practical Lesson of Evolutionary Nutrition:

Imagine a small, early history, hunting gathering village of people; our earliest known ancestors.  They gathered nuts, seeds, roots, berries, grasses, greens and herbs on a daily basis.  Often they had a small amount of game meat to eat.  They didn't salt their food, they didn't sweeten their food, they didn't add oil to their food.  They ate the food as it came out of the earth.  Raw, fresh and the truest sense of organic.  They worked hard gathering, walking and hunting their game, then cooking and making camp.  Now imagine centuries later, a small faming village.  They still gather what they can but they also cultivate their own vegetables and raise animals, like goats for milk and meat.  The goats eat their natural diet of grass and herbs.  They walk everywhere they go.  They are all strong and healthy, even the old.  When a villager is deficient or has a disease they increase a certain food, or add certain herbs to increase health and wellness.  No one craves sugar, or salty snacks.  They eat to live.  They eat moderately and mindfully of what will be available in the future.  This is how our bodies evolved and were meant to survive.
  Imagine many, many centuries later, people spend much of the day sitting.  They need food so they go to a grocery store where they can buy endless possibilities. The food is processed to the point where it's origins are uncertain.  They purchase nothing that is in the same form it grew in. Meat is from farms where the animals don't ever see the light of day, are sickly and given high doses of medication and they eat grain and feces of other animals.  Then they purchase milk from equally sick, medicated and undernourished animals.  They are fat but lack the proper nutrition to produce quality milk.   The isle of sweets is filled with the high calorie, nutrient deficient cakes, cookies and candies.  Each single serving containing an entire day or weeks worth of sugars to our early ancestors.  People trying to avoid the high calories go for the artificially sweetened products. These are products produced to allow people to eat endless amounts of sweet satiating, nutrient deficient delicacies.  With out even knowing where the food came from or what it contains the carts are filled to the brim with food that is high in calories, fats and chemicals and is practically void of any real nutrients that your body needs for energy on a cellular level.  An occasional few make it to the produce section where they buy genetically modified vegetables and fruits, that are twice the size they are meant to be and half as ripe.  They are laden with unnatural chemicals to increase shelf life and destroy diseases proliferated by under nourishing the soil and thereby causing disease in the plants.  They have absorbed the chemical pesticides or have a layer coating the outside that is not water soluble and cannot simply be washed away.  They go home and eat the sweets first and let the vegetables sit in the refrigerator until what little nutrition was contained in them  is destroyed.  They can't figure out why they don't have energy to make it through the day and they can't figure out why they are so overweight or suffer from headaches or chronic diseases.  It may not be obvious to all, but people were not meant to eat the modern day diet.  If you go to the source of our food it is clear that our animals and crops are just as vitamin and mineral deficient as  we are.  Our ancestors did not count calories.  They did not watch their carbohydrates or worry about how much protein they were getting.  They may not have been as lucky to have the sanitary and comfortable conditions we have now but they certainly had more energy to work harder and did not get the cancers and chronic conditions we face today.  If we are not feeding our cells with energy to repair and replicate we will feel very run down and unenergized.  Our cells are not looking for calories in and calories out.  They are looking for vitamins and minerals that are from plant sources, making it easy for our bodies to digest and use them.  Feed your body what it has cleverly evolved and been created to eat.  Not Wonder Bread...  Not Chips Ahoy...  Not Dunkin Donuts...  Not baked potato covered in sour cream, bacon bits and cheddar cheese...
-V

1 comment:

  1. Very nice post! I found you while searching about evolutionary nutrition. Your understanding is sound and your story telling is fun! I am trying to communicate the same info on a more academic basis over at Evolution Diet Hope you will visit and thanks for the great explanation. it really is "spot on"!

    ReplyDelete

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