Real Food Shouldn't Be So Hard

We have to eat, but there's so much misinformation out there, how do we know what to eat? Every new study jerks you around: eat this; no don't eat this, eat that instead!

For most of human history people haven't been reading diet books and news articles about the latest diet study results. They had better things to do than over-analyze every bite that went in their mouths. I think they knew what was poisonous, and what was healthy, and they probably tried to eat the good stuff. They were not obese, they did not suffer from modern diseases like heart attacks and diabetes, they did not jump from diet to diet (they probably didn't have any other "diet" to jump to), and they would have been appalled to see what we call food today.

Obviously I don't want to go back to the days of having to hunt to keep from starving, or when lack of rain meant the crops would die and my family would be hungry. I like being able to go to the stores nearby or the farm up the road and buy what I need, it's truly a luxury compared to all of human history. When I think about it, I do appreciate the technology that allows me to have food --but most of the time I take it for granted.

However, when I feel overwhelmed with the stuff I read, and start wondering if I'm getting enough omega 3s vs omega 6s, and when did I take a multi-vitamin and is it doing any good anyway, and what if the new study is true that says red meat is bad...on and on... it's time to remember, "What is Real Food? It's mostly what people ate before the scientists and food corporations started processing food to make it an item they could improve. "

I came across a couple of comments at Mark's Daily Apple that I thought were very descriptive of our modern approach to food:

Our arrogance leads us to believe, time and again, that what we currently know is all there is to know. And reductionism triumphs. We think we know what is essential. But we don’t know what we don’t know. We think we’ve identified all the necessary vitamins, right? But that’s what we thought before we discovered the last bunch of vitamins we identified. What else will we discover later that is essential? That, perhaps, nutrients need to be consumed as part of real food for optimal health?

and

Science has brought us so many remarkable things that we rely on it for everything. It’s easy for us to believe that we’ve grown beyond the simplistic ways of our ancestors into something better-a better standard of health through science. And then they come out with article after article about how some fruit may prevent the growth of cancer cells or what have you, and people get into this cycle of buying a certain supplement or extract to achieve optimal health. But the lion eats antelope and maybe a little grass here and there and has optimal health, because it’s in his genetic makeup, so why is it so hard to believe that humans also have a very simple dietary standard that does the same?  

What have the food scientists and government recommendations brought us to?

 Look at this picture of  Chauncey Morlan (1869-1906), one of the freak show fatties who traveled with the Barnum & Bailey Circus.

This vintage photograph circa 1890 is the  “Human Freight Car” who was considered freakish and large beyond belief.  People actually paid for the privilege of looking at him. Morlan was 512 pounds at age 18 and was reputedly well over 600 pounds later in life.  While that's still remarkable, he looks hardly any larger than a lot of the people you see in any public place today.


After all these years of scientists and government workers telling us what to eat, why is a man this fat so normal looking?