CHAPTER 1
The History of Food
For more than five thousand years, humans have used foods to prevent or ease the symptoms of various diseases. The old adage "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" has recently been scientifically validated.
The truth is that modern medicine has a history of pooh-poohing old wives' tales, only to then discover they are based on verifiable scientific facts. This attitude is ironic, considering that using foods as the first choice to heal or prevent diseases was laid out by the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates, more than two thousand years ago.
In the modern world, it is important to find a great whole-foods micronutrient-support program. Sadly, most people today eat a diet filled with foods that not only do not but cannot actually nourish them.
Even seventy-five years ago, you didn't really need to think about what you ate — or even know what foods nourished your body or how. If you ate it, you would be nourished.
Until the mid-twentieth century, the majority of foods eaten on a daily basis were homegrown or locally sourced. Seventy-five years ago, the foods we ate were raised without an overload of herbicides or pesticides. There were no concerns with GMO contamination.
Milk wasn't homogenized for shelf life and then pasteurized to protect us from the results of cattle being raised in unhealthy conditions. Cattle weren't fed antibiotics, hormones, and steroids to increase productivity. Until the 1950s, practices such as shipping from massive farming complexes and using chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides were not the norm.
After World War II, we experienced a dramatic downward shift in nourishment from our daily foods: the proliferation of convenience foods, fast foods, and foods shipped from around the world, rather than foods sourced locally.
Our diets moved away from freshly harvested, freshly prepared whole foods into convenient and fast foods. Today the average fast-food meal has about eighty synthetic additives to enhance flavor and texture. Any single one of these additives could cause slight changes in brain chemistry. Added up together, they can spell disaster for healthy brain function, especially in young, still-developing brains — yet doctors wonder about the increase in autistic and hyperactive behavior and say they can find no cause.
We now eat far more processed foods and synthetics than have been determined to be safe. I — and many health educators and health professionals — believe the side effects we deal with due to the addition of these additives and chemicals include dramatic increases in chronic diseases and a lowering of our standard of health at younger and younger ages. We see upward climbs in profound brain dysfunction and other diseases at early ages. ADD/ADHD, ASD (autistic spectrum disorder), juvenile diabetes, and asthma are just the tip of the visible health dysfunctions increasing in our children.
It's not only foods we have to worry about. There are increasing numbers of lab-created "nutrients" and synthetic supplements. They seem to offer everything you need. But synthetic nutrients, isolated amino acids, processed fatty acids, minerals from rock, or any type of genetically modified (GMO) foods don't — can't — offer wholesome nutrition.
The reason for this is simple: we don't assimilate them. Our bodies cannot easily utilize isolated nutrients, and some the body won't assimilate at all, let alone recognize as food.
In the last decade, people have woken up to the problem of not being able to find actual, real, healthy nutrition in the foods they eat. This has spurred a huge increase in sales of natural, green, and organic foods and supplements. Sales of supplements and organic foods are in the billions — and both categories have been growing yearly for over a decade. This isn't a trend — it is a movement. As such, manufacturers want in on the sales action, even if what they offer isn't really all that healthy.
There are trends within this movement toward healthier foods and supplements. Often these trends are a reaction to the problems caused by eating too much processed and fast food. For example, a scientific study will show a problem with salt or fat, but rather than saying, "Don't eat processed and fast foods, loaded with salt and trans fats", the advice is to remove that single nutrient, which is also found in healthy forms in whole foods. What all these trends have in common is this: if people will pay for something, a manufacturer will create it then sell and promote it.
Often this leads to some manufacturer making a "safer, better" food — usually through replacing the nutritional culprit with a different processed ingredient, which often winds up being far worse for your health. Let's look at a few examples.
One of the first trends was to limit salt. Indeed, high levels of regular table salt are deadly! However, rather than providing education on the need for drinking healthy amounts of good water, Americans were advised to simply eat low-sodium diets. Sodium continues to be a concern for many, primarily because most processed foods and restaurant-chain meals contain obscene amounts of salt as a cheap flavor enhancer for low-quality ingredients. Salt substitutes came into being, but information and understanding about the need for healthy salt is not readily available and information on the dangers of salt substitutes is hard to find.
Fast Fix: If you use boxed or canned foods or go to fast-food restaurants weekly, begin by replacing a single meal a week with whole foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans and rice that you purchase and cook yourself. Use flavoring spices to replace salt. Spices like paprika and mustard work with nearly any meal. Add garlic and other aromatics to add flavor. You will be in control of the amount of salt you add. Use a natural, unheated salt, such as Celtic Gray, and discover just how little salt you really need to add great flavor.
Next came the trend to limit fats. And like the no-salt/low-salt fad, people are still looking for a low-fat/no-fat number on their food — and too often pay next to no attention to any other information on the label, such as synthetic additives needed for flavor. Manufacturers have created chemicals that will prevent fat absorption — which are now found to lead to vitamin deficiencies and other severe digestive problems. Only this year has the government stepped in to actually limit sales of trans fats — processed fats that are known to lead to chronic inflammation, which is a root of hundreds of diseases and conditions. In recent years, the need for healthy fats has spurred people to add "good" fats back in through the practice of adding omega fatty acid supplements.
Fast Fix: Eat real foods with good fats in moderate amounts. Half of a raw avocado or a small handful of seeds and nuts are fantastic sources of healthy fats; either will provide an amazing energy boost in the afternoon. At only sixty-six calories, two teaspoons of virgin olive oil or virgin coconut butter adds a ton of flavor to a salad, cooked vegetables, popcorn, or even granola.
Refined sugar — and its real dangers — has been a problem for decades. But in recent advertising campaigns, the differences between highly processed sugars and sugars that naturally occur in fruit and other minimally processed sugar sources (such as honey) are minimized and even outright denied. Instead of limiting or eliminating soda and candy, people use deadly synthetic substitutes, which are finally being proven to be not only dangerous but ineffective at helping control weight loss.
Fast Fix: Use one or two teaspoons of raw honey, real maple syrup, or yacon syrup to flavor foods. Eat fresh, raw fruits. Eat a snack with fiber if you want something sweet; fiber slows the absorption of sugar into your bloodstream. If you crave juice, make it raw and fresh; the cost will keep you from drinking more than is good for you. In addition, the fiber is healthy.
We are now in the midst of a trend to remove gluten from all foods. Many people believe they have celiac disease, a very severe immune response to a protein found in gluten, which is always in wheat and often in other grains. However, there is a fundamental and large difference between true celiac disease and gluten sensitivity. I personally believe the dramatic increase in gluten reactions is a by-product of the fact that nearly all nonorganic grains contain deadly pesticide residue, leading to chronic inflammation. And some grains are now also genetically modified (GMO). GMO grains have protein sequences that can stimulate immune reactions similar to those associated with celiac disease. But the issue of a GMO-protein intolerance or inflammation caused by pesticides or other toxins mimicking gluten sensitivity is barely acknowledged. As a result, people are paying double and triple the normal cost of an item for that gluten-free product they think they need.
Fast Fix: Use all organic grains to minimize exposure to pesticide residue and GMOs, and see if this helps with your grain-sensitivity reactions. Instead of buying processed grain foods (e.g., pasta, breads, and so on), choose whole grains, such as steel-cut oats, quinoa, and brown rice. Eat no more than 1 cup of any grain per day. Eat sprouted grains when available. Note — if you have true celiac disease, you need to be 100 percent gluten free.
Naturalwashing and Greenwashing
Greenwashing is the term used to describe the practice by which a manufacturer uses meaningless terms and words coupled with impressive marketing to give the impression their product is environmentally safe and friendly, natural, and good for you — even if their product is known to be toxic. Examples of this are Coca-Cola using plant-based plastic in their new bottles and Clorox purchasing Burt's Bees to sweeten their corporate profile.
Naturalwashing is the supplement equivalent of greenwashing. Words like natural and plant-derived sound encouraging, but they have no actual meaning with regards to the safety or quality of the product. Examples of naturalwashing include:
• Natural — This word has no legal meaning when it comes to supplements or personal care. Basically, if it is on our planet, we can claim it is "natural." For example, Crystal Light, which is mostly synthetic flavors and aspartame, is called natural.
• Plant-derived — This can mean just about anything, since plants form the majority of edible products in one way or another. For example, petrochemicals are plant-derived.
• Contains no artificial (flavorings, ingredients, and so on): Since the word natural has no legal definition, the definition of artificial is nearly as meaningless.
• __________ blend (proprietary protein blend, trademarked vegetable blend, and so on) — Trademarked or proprietary, blends are a great way to hide the fact that the main ingredient within that blend might be cheap filler. It works like this. US labeling laws require that ingredients are listed in order, from greatest amount to least — with the exception of proprietary blends. All ingredients within a trademarked or proprietary blend are allowed to be listed in any order the manufacturer desires. For example, a powdered vegetable drink has only one organic superfood, and it represents the least amount in the formula. On a regular label, it would have to be the last ingredient on the label. However, if the manufacturer creates a proprietary blend, that lone organic superfood can now be listed first instead of last.
• Contains 100 percent recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamins — Increasingly, supplement manufacturers will add a few real food ingredients to mostly synthetic products in order to woo people who are looking for real food formulas. People see foods like blueberry powder or kale and assume the list of synthetic vitamins that follows are from the foods listed. To my knowledge — and I have looked at hundreds of food-based vitamin formulas — no 100 percent food formula contains exactly 100 percent of all vitamins. If a drink blend is created from various dried foods, they will not contain exactly 100 percent of all vitamins. They might contain more than 100 percent of a very few vitamins (for example, a drink with camu camu may contain several hundred percent of vitamin C's RDA). When you see vitamins listed, followed by similarly high percentages of the RDA for them all, you can safely assume the product is fortified with synthetic versions of those vitamins. For example, legally, you can create a 100 percent synthetic vitamin formula, add it to a fermentation vat with a whole-food base, and call your product a 100 percent whole-food vitamin formula. There are at least three very popular whole-food vitamin formulas that do exactly this.
• Clinically proven — "Clinically proven" can mean something ... or nothing at all. Consumers are aware that marketing and product promotional materials are filled with deceitful statements. So they are cued in to look for some sort of scientific validation, and the gold standard is a scientific study or clinical trial. I want to clarify that I am not saying trials and studies are worthless — not at all. A peer-reviewed double-blind placebo-controlled study or good clinical trial can offer valuable insights into whether a product contains an ingredient (nutrient) that offers certain specific benefits. However, both trials and studies also have potential flaws with regards to determining the value of food-based supplements. They include the following.
1. Most studies focus on a single nutrient, and it is often synthetic. This allows the cause and results of the study to be easier to track and verify. However, whole foods have multiple nutrients, working in concert. Therefore, the result of a study done on a single nutrient may not reflect the entire range of benefits found in a whole food.
2. Many studies on specific formulas or products are done for a week or two, on a few people. This is a cheap way to get a clinical trial without an extreme cost.
3. A clinical trial or scientific study is, by definition, a narrow snapshot of the whole. It can be extremely valuable to learn, for example, that a key nutrient is an anti-inflammatory. What is the outcome of this? Which is actually better for you — a product that is highly processed to extract that single proven nutrient or the whole food containing that nutrient and hundreds of others which have not yet been studied?
4. Clinical studies and trials are extremely expensive. There is a lot of private money to back most decent scientific studies or trials. Ask yourself, "Who makes the money back?" The answer — drug companies. The dependence on this type of science as the only good science, with the dismissal of all other forms of proof as being irrelevant or bad science is directly correlated with the rise of drugs and drug use to replace foods as our primary way to handle health and prevent disease. Foods are not easily quantified or qualified via the narrow parameters that are inherent in a study.
• Phony testimonials — People love to hear success stories, and companies know this. You can go from product to product online, and you will see that many of the personal testimonials use exactly the same wording, with only the name (first name only) changed. These are not real. These are lures, designed to hook you into trying a product that may not even be safe for you to use, much less good for you.
Functional Nutrition
This book will help you navigate through the minefield we just looked at by teaching you the four simple tenets of functional nutrition. Functional nutrition is the basic philosophy that the human body is designed with the ability to grow, regulate, repair, and defend itself when given natural, whole-food nutrition.
Functional nutrition recognizes the scientific fact that in order for our body's cells, organs, and systems to function normally, we have certain basic biological or physiological needs that must be met via our diet. Functional nutrition states that if we provide the correct raw materials (nutrients) via the foods we eat (our diet), the human body will naturally function at its highest health potential.
