Nourishing Traditions

Do you ever wonder why disease, cancer, allergies, learning disabilities, psychological illness' are so rampant in our culture? There has to be some explanation besides the fact that sickness is a consequence of sin. I have been reading a most interesting book on nutrition, it is called"Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, Ph.D. It is a book that challenges the popular modern day thinking that a low fat and low cholesterol diet is important in order to ward off disease, especially heart disease, one of the leading causes of death in America. It gives a very thorough explanation of how we should eat and why, with numerous historical examples, statistics, and scientific research. This book points out very strongly that much of the research found today is left out or manipulated by those in the food industry in order to promote what we know as "the healthy diet", such as low fat, no saturated fats, low cholesterol, limiting sweets, lots of fruit and vegetables. Some parts of this diet are important, such as limiting sweets and increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables however, the rest is actually harmful.

Think about what you eat on a daily basis. Do you ever think about where your food comes from or what is done to it before you eat it? What has the industrialized age done to the nutritious food God has given to us? We take the natural state of wheat for example, in short, we mess with its genetics, strip it of its nutrients, refine it, bleach it, and sell it. Granted we probably do get a better crop production, longer shelf life, delicious pastries, bread, etc, but what effect does this have on our bodies over time? Take milk for another example, God made milk whole, why do we take it and make skim milk out of it and sell it as a healthy alternative? Farmers used to regard skim milk (after making butter, cheese, cream, etc) as worthless but we now drink it by the gallons. Wasn't the fat created to be part of the milk for a reason? Another example is the egg. God made eggs with the whites and yoke in perfect proportions, but we take just the whites, bottle them up and sell it as a health food. What is cholesterol? Is it really that bad for you? What is wrong with our modern day, highly processed, refined, prepackaged, convenient foods?

Here is an excerpt from the book that I found quite convicting.

" Before 1920 coronary heart disease was rare in America; so rare that when a young internist named Paul Dudley White introduced the German electrocardiograph to his colleagues at Harvard University, they advised him to concentrate on a more profitable branch of medicine. The new machine revealed the presence of arterial blockages, thus permitting early diagnosis of coronary heart disease. But in those days clogged arteries were a medical rarity, and White had to search for patients who could benefit from his new technology. During the next forty years, however, the incidence of coronary heart disease rose dramatically, so much so that by the mid-1950's heart disease was the leading cause of death among Americans. Today heart disease causes at least 40% of all US deaths. If, as we have been told, heart disease is caused by consumption of saturated fats, one would expect to find a corresponding increase in animal fat in the American diet. Actually, the reverse is true. During the sixty year period from 1910 to 1970, the proportion of traditional animal fat in the American diet declined from 83% to 62%, and butter consumption plummeted from 18 pounds per person per year to 4. During the past eighty years, dietary cholesterol intake has increased only 1%. During the same period the percentage of dietary vegetable oils in the form of margarine, shortening and refined oils increased about 400% while the consumption of sugar and processed foods increased about 60%. (Fallon & Enig, 2001, p. 5)

As I began to read this book, I thought of all the different opinions on healthy diets (i.e. Vegan, Vegitarian, Organic, Gluten-Free, Weight-Loss), each having a persuasive argument. But you never know who is right and who should be trusted. I am thankful that I can trust in Jehovah-Jireh(Provider) and do not need to fret over the possibility of disease. However, we need to be good stewards of our bodies and make wise choices for us and our children. Living in America has many benefits but our culture affects us in more ways than we realize.

As I read this book I hope to summarize some of the important information and post it for your benefit over the next weeks and months. I hope you find it interesting. Please respond and help me make sense of it all.