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.