Eat Food. Not Much. Mostly Plants. A great article by T-nation author TC outlines 11 important rules for eating in the 21 century.
The farming world is very different now than it was 50 years ago and we are eating a bunch of food that didn’t really exist a couple generations ago. As a consequence our bodies are turning into temples of illness.
These new foods and the illnesses they cause are not isolated to humans. Cattle have had their diet of grass replaced with grain and corn feed.
Cattle don’t do well on grains. It makes them sick and they then require antibiotics. Furthermore, it changed the fatty acid content of their meat. Whereas normally the grass-fed creatures had omega-6/omega-3 fatty acid ratios more consistent with wild game or wild salmon, the corn-feeding turned them into hoofed heart attacks in waiting, the ingestion of which slowly clogged the nation’s arteries.
But we can now buy eggs that have been enriched with omega fatty acids to make up for the lower levels of these in beef – too bad for the chickens that their diet now contains food loaded with fatty acids. No doubt we’ll fix this by changing something else in the food chain.
3. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
We all know this one. The periphery of the grocery store is lined with fresh food, food that rots, food that’s alive. Those are the most nutritious foods. Of course, the suggestion isn’t fool-proof as Go-Gurt Portable Yogurt is in the dairy case.
Rotting good, staying “fresh” for years in a box bad.
6. You are what you eat eats too.
As discussed earlier in this article, cows and sheep are meant to eat grass, not seeds. If they eat too many seeds, they get sick and require constant antibiotics.
A grass-based diet for farm animals means the meat, butter, or eggs you eat, along with the milk you drink, contains fewer omega-6 and saturated fats, as well as higher levels of vitamins and antioxidants.
9. Eat wild foods when you can.
Wild plants are richer in antioxidants than their domestic cousins. Since they have to defend themselves against pests and disease without the help of man, they had to get tough — develop a bevy of interesting and potentially healthful (to man) phytochemicals — to survive.
The rest of the rules are worth reading although they may make you somewhat cynical about our abilities to continue to fed ourselves.