Vegetables in Heaven, Twinkies in Hell: A Peculiar Neurosis of Western Civilization

Raw vegetables enjoy an uncontested position in the Western world as the healthiest of foods.  The reason: a quick glance at a chart shows that these foods have the highest concentration of nutrients/calories.
Yet only the most dedicated of health nuts have the fortitude to include huge portions of uncooked vegetables in their diet.  Eating a small amount of veggies with meals can be a refreshing side dish.  Making veggies the focus of one’s diet however, is singularly unpalatable.
The reason:  Large quantities of veggies are very difficult to digest.  They are leafy, tough, and fibrous; they fail to satisfy the stomach even as they disrupt its function.  The body nearly spends more energy processing these veggies than it gets from them.  Very soon, one is famished for something substantial; junk food becomes irresistible.  In polar opposite and cruel irony, the energy dense snacks that replace rabbit food are often all but devoid of nutrients.  Thus one of the peculiar neuroses of Western society:  perpetually switching between dieting in a joyless heaven and binging in a decadent guilt-ridden hell.
Strangely, it occurs to very few that the body has its desires for a reason.  In fact these desires were an excellent guide to what should be eaten until many critical elements of manufactured foods were replaced by highly processed imitations of the originals to cut costs and improve shelf life.  Every fiber of one’s body sends a clear message, it is not good for you to eat tons of vegetables.  Yes, they have vitamins, but they contribute no energy to speak of and getting at those vitamins is a hard task.
 
Clearly, glancing at the chart and ranking foods based on volume of nutrients alone leads to no good result.  There are other, equally important considerations.  Bioavailability is a key matter to consider here.  Raw spinach may have a lot of nutrients, but eating a meal of it would just result in an upset stomach.  Even from the most superficial examination one can ask: does it matter if this vegetable is #1 on the vitamin K chart if I can’t even digest it in any quantity or get any energy from it?
Strangely, it occurs to very few that the ‘decadent’ cravings they experience would go to rest if they ate substantial, digestible foods that also were nutrient dense.
 
These foods are generally have one or more of these traits:
-high in carbohydrates
-high in sugars
-high in fat
 
All of these attributes are of course the modern dieticians nightmare; lean meat and salad are the trendy foods right now.  However, these are the foods that nourish the body and satisfy the appetite.  These foods are not among the highest on the nutrition charts because of their high calorie content and are often actually demonized because of their high energy value.  Yet the very criterion of nutrients/calories reveals the sort of wrong headed dieter’s thinking that nutrients are good and calories bad.
The charts themselves address problems created by eating according to the charts.  Eating excessive calories is not a critical concern if one eats the right calories.
 
The right calories most generally speaking are dense in readily usable energy.  From this comes the correct criterion: maximum usable calories, and dense in nutrients, for the least digestive effort.  Digestion is metabolically costly, thus the more easily digested, the less one needs to eat.  The right foods are not only valuable for their nourishing qualities, but because they improve the digestion of foods they are eaten in combination with.  This is why it is easy to eat vegetables in combination with potatoes covered in butter and sour cream, but difficult to eat them exclusively.

The right fats, sweeteners, and carbs are wholesome in their own right and help unlock the potential of other foods.

For instance, olive oil makes an otherwise tough and heavy salad quite enjoyable.  The oil forms an ideal medium in which the digestion of tougher foods can occur.

A good example of one of the right foods is butter.  It is a healthy saturated fat that is an excellent source of Vitamin A.  It is one of the best sources even though carrots have far more per calorie because in butter it is far more readily available.

Vitamins and supplements frequently have many times one’s daily needs of a given vitamin yet they are made that way because even those who make them are aware that the human body can’t efficiently use their product.  A lesson that Western civilization has yet to learn is that the human body does not absorb its resources in isolation, but in combination.  The materials the human body needs are most usable when present in a food within a particular structure.  Eating a nickel is clearly not the best way to get dietary zinc, so it should easily follow that eating multivitamins or basing one’s diet on tough raw vegetables is not the correct way to nourish the body.

It is true raw vegetables may lose some nutrient value once they are cooked, but by so doing, the increased ease in processing makes up for it.  Furthermore, one can have the best of both worlds by eating fermented raw vegetables.  Cabbage, one of the most heavily touted of all vegetables, can be much more easily digested and enjoyably eaten in the form of sauerkraut or kim chi.

For every craving or concern there is a constructive non-guilt way to deal with it.

When planning a healthy meal, one should be conscious not only of getting the right nutrients, but eating a highly enjoyable, satisfying meal with digestion aiding combinations in mind.

Sugar is Good For You

It is an unchallenged maxim of mainstream dietary thought that sugar is ‘bad.’  This convention, like the aversion to fats, is terribly misguided and ill-conceived.  The very word ’sweet’ is often used to describe those things which are best in life, so strong is its appeal.  Yet guidelines set down by a multitude of well educated and intelligent individuals routinely exclude foods that satisfy one of the human body’s most essential cravings.  Once again Puritanical thought dominates:  if humans crave it, it must be temptation.  It is self evident, however, by means of basic reasoning that the human body has its cravings for a purpose related to survival.  Surely sweet substances ought to be good.

Indeed, this is true, but as with fats, the proliferation of highly processed products in the industrialized world has resulted in the problems that are blamed on all sweets.

Refined sugar for instance, has been stripped of the nutrients that would have been present in the original cane juice.  This common table sugar is sucrose.  The body must break it down into fructose and glucose to be able to process it.  Thus, the body must spend energy processing food that returns no nutrients.  Eaten in quantity it actually depletes nutrients from the body.

Corn syrup, contains fructose, one of the basic fuels of the human body.  The problem lies in the fact that corn syrup consists of 90% or more fructose, a ratio far beyond the 40-50% that the body is able to handle.  Eaten in quantity, it quickly outstrips the ability of the body to process it and causes insulin resistance.  High fructose corn syrup is used ubiquitously in the United States and its long term excess consumption naturally results in increased occurrence of diabetes.

Glucose and fructose are basic sources of energy for the human body, but what form they are consumed in and in what ratios is of critical importance.

People are attracted to sweet foods because, in nature, such sources of energy are especially close to already being in a usable form.  They require minimal processing for maximum gain.

Fruits are often the typical answer to this primal desire, but human beings are still left with a craving for sweetness in its purest form.  Honey, dates, figs, maple syrup, sugar cane juice very are sweet, gooey, extremely energy dense foods.  They are the epitome of what highly processed sweeteners have been designed to imitate.

To give some idea of their importance, glycogen is derived from the glucose we eat.  It is the short term reserve of quickly accessible energy as fat can only be tapped into slowly and steadily by comparison.  In endurance sports there is the term ‘hitting the wall.’  This is when an athlete reaches a point where they can literally no longer move.  Their glycogen stores have been depleted.  Such an extreme case illustrates the important of glycogen: it is the instantly available energy that allows to move about at will.  The sweetest non-industrial foods provide the components for glycogen formation not only in abundance but in a readily usable form.  It is therefore no surprise that human body tells one that sweet foods are particularly desirable.

The universal vilification of sweet foods is an immense misunderstanding.  These dense foods are among the most valuable of all because they replenish the body’s stores and they do it quickly.  Like the best fats, they have a way of putting the body’s appetites quickly to rest and thereby actually reducing the amount of calories one feels the need to consume.

Part of the travesty of industrial sweeteners, especially those without calories, is that they deceive the body into expecting an infusion of quick easily processible energy.  When the body’s expectations are not satisfied, one’s cravings go through the roof, impelling one to consume even more of these sweeteners.

Drinking heavily sweetend soft drinks along with sweet snacks is a frequent phenomenon in the USA, yet a similar binge on dates and honey would be unthinkable.  The stomach would quickly feel full to bursting and the body’s desires be satisfied in a way that is altogether foreign to regular consumers of junk food.

There is a great distinction that is not being made: tastes can be imitated, but when it comes to food, one should put even greater value on how such foods make them feel and how they affect the body.

Fat Is Good For You

The avoidance of dietary fat has for decades now been considered essential for good nutrition.  However, this approach is sadly mistaken.  The assumption that fat goes ’straight to our rears’ is misguided.  Food is broken down into its constituent parts before being distributed and then consumed.  Whether dietary fat or any other energy gets stored as fat in our bodies is dependent on any number of variables.
The truth is that fats are eaten in abundant amounts by virtually every traditional culture, yet widespread heart disease and obesity are a phenomenon that has existed only since the 1940s and 50s.  It was in this time period that processed fats largely replaced natural fats and oils.  Margarine replaced butter and hydrogenated vegetable oils and soy oils replaced all others.
Thus, most of the supposed ill effects of fats are a byproduct of eating the wrong kinds of fats.  Butter, far from being bad for health is a healthy source of vitamin A.  Meanwhile, margarine is among the harmful fats.  It is made like so many products from hydrogenated oils.
This means oils that have been heated at high temperatures, often for long amounts of time.  This process causes the molecules of the oil to begin to dissociate.  The substance is then removed from heat while still in a state of transition from one substance to the other.  Thus, the result is known as a trans fat.  These substances are not found in nature and are widely used in the food industry because they do not spoil.  The trouble with consuming these substances in food is that the fats are still in transition.  The reaction never completed, so when one eats these fats, they are taking a proliferation of reactive species of molecules into their bodies which proceed to wreak havoc.
One striking example of the difference is the Pima Indians in Arizona, USA are the most obese population in the world with a 50% incidence of diabetes in their population.  They have adopted a Western diet and sedentary lifestyle.  Meanwhile, Pima Indians on the other side of the border live off of potatoes, corn, and lard.  However, they are lean, fit, and physically active.
Another example is the South of India where highly processed vegetable oils are a staple in cooking.  Malnutrition and heart disease are pervasive throughout their population.  On the other hand, peoples from the North of India who use ghee(butter oil) as their staple fat have few of the same problems.
 
Clearly, mainstream nutrition has been shallowly reactive in its efforts to all but obliterate fats from the diet.  Only in recent years has there been progress in the recognition of the virtues of mono and polyunsaturated fats.  Even these efforts have led to new mistakes, however.  Newly promoted products such as canola oil are often just as highly processed as their vegetable oil counterparts, and in less processed forms have the strong toxins occurring in the rapeseed plant from which the oil is derived.  Perhaps most pervasive of all is the craze surrounding products made from soy.  In traditional East Asian cultures, soy was eaten in relatively small quantities or in fermented form.  Now, soy products are pervasive among ‘healthy’ and vegetarian foods.  While soy has good properties, it also is a natural thyroid depressant and contains compounds that mimic human(especially female) hormones.  Eaten unfermented in large quantities, its toxins can be quite damaging.  Depressed thyroid function causes lethargy, loss of muscle tone, and weight gain.  The hormone imitators reinforce these effects, sending the body’s metabolism out of synch.  It is these very effects of soy that makes it highly desirable as animal feed.
Though soy has become a centerpiece among ‘healthy’ foods, it is used even more extensively in highly processed food.  A quick look at ingredients for many products will reveal the presence of soy oil.  While soy beans are beneficial in moderation, eating a concentrated essence derived from them is beyond excess and among one of the most harmful substances in highly processed food.
To progress into further error: many health trends encourage the use of many mono and polyunsaturated acids in cooking.  In many cases, such as with flax oil this is a bad idea.  Many of these oils break down quickly under environmental stresses.  This phenomenon is escalated at high temperatures and forms many harmful and carcinogenic substances of the sort found in highly processed vegetable oils.
 
At this point I have addressed many errors in popular nutrition.  Use of Omega 3 oils does, however, generally prove to be beneficial.  Oily fish, nuts, and olive oil are examples of excellent foods.  However, the irrational stigma against saturated fats continues.
Butter, especially ghee(the oils derived from butter) are conducive to good health.  Coconut oil is another saturated fat is especially healthy and possesses anti-bacterial properties and lauric acid, a substance also prevalent in mother’s milk.  Coconut oil is almost pure saturated fat yet its regular consumption often results in the loss of weight.  Rich coconut milk is a staple food in much of Southeast Asia, yet the locals are typically quite slender.  Cocoa butter, the fat of the cocoa bean is a major component of chocolate, yet varieties with low or no sugar and high cocoa content are packed anti-oxidants and conducive to weight regulation.
Oily fish, nuts, and olive oil, great sources of omega oils, are also copious sources of saturated fats, yet they are still quite healthy for the human body.
 
‘Health food’ in the West is typically thought of as being ‘light’, unappetizing, and unsatisfying.  This is in large part because of the exclusion of saturated fats.  These substances are important aids for digestion, especially when eating foods with high fiber content.
Plentiful fat is what makes a meal feel truly satisfying and puts the stomach at rest.  Ironically, a ‘healthy’ diet tends to leave one hungry and ironically leads one to grasp for foods drenched in trans fats to put these monstrous cravings to rest.  It is a diet high in fat that leaves the stomach sated and which eliminates the desire for grasping for snacks.  A high fat diet eases digestion and the frequency with which one needs to eat.  One may generally observe across cultural and political boundaries:  peoples who eat plenty of the right fats have much smoother complexions, healthier hair, and less signs of aging.  The protective effects of the right fats are becoming evident as people who eat ‘healthy’ have begun to contract cancer and heart disease at higher rates than peoples of many third world countries.  One of the tenets of Western health culture is that one must triumph against temptation.  Perhaps such views have proliferated to such an extent in the anglosphere because of the way in which they mesh with the Puritan concept of this world as a transitory plane designed to divert us from everything that is good with worldly delights.
However, any endurance athlete knows to listen to his or her body and the subtle cues and signals it is constantly giving.  It is no different when it comes to eating.  Engaging in righteous masochism when it comes to providing the body with nourishment is self defeating.  In fact, restriction of fat intake actually causes the body to slow its metabolism and retain every bit of fat it can extract from the limited diet it is given.  Forcing the body to constantly strain to compensate is of course painful and unhealthy.

Perhaps the best visible representation of what people should want to eat can be seen in children who in an earlier stage of socialization are therefore closer to acting according to their most natural tendencies.  Kids prefer pizza to celery and salad and crispy chicken skins and lard to the actual meat it’s attached to.  These parts are dense in nutrients, and more importantly easiest to digest and thus conducive to the digestion of other foods.
 
Western culture is flagrantly backwards in respect to its attitude towards nutrition, but it has shown some progress, and increasingly, there is input from organizations such as the Weston A. Price foundation that are guiding people back towards the proper eating habits that were obvious to generations of healthy people across thousands of years.  The sad part, is that what was once a matter of common sense has been transformed into an often misguided mysticism often as flawed as the profit making interests that don’t care what their food does to people so long as it sells.  Too often, the mystics and the unscrupulous food manufacturers are one and the same and in the face of such opposition, it will be long and difficult to reverse the current, destructive trends.