For a hundred years now, we have been altering our foods to try to improve on Mother Nature. I don’t understand this. Why would we mere human beings believe that we know better than God? Why do we think He would mistakenly give us foods that would cause disease? Isn’t it more logical to think that maybe we are misusing nature and that that’s why we have disease today? Maybe it’s what we are doing that is wrong!
Let’s start at the beginning. During the early part of the last century, wars were creating havoc with our normal way of life and starvation became a real concern. It was discovered that wheat flour went bad quickly. Rancidity was a real issue and bugs kept getting into the flour, further spoiling it. Something “had” to be done to stop this – to improve its shelf life. So they discovered that if we took the nutrients out, that the bugs would leave it alone, and if we refined the oils out, the rancidity problems were resolved. As a side note here: I find it interesting that the bugs had the common sense to leave it alone, knowing there weren’t enough nutrients in it for a bug to survive, yet somehow we believed it would nourish our bodies!
More and more we altered foods, trying to give them a longer shelf life. More and more nutrients were being removed. Finally, much to our dismay, we found that this was making us sick. Vitamins (originally “vital-amines”) were discovered during this time, and as the original name implied, found to be vital to health. However, if we put the vitamins back in, we had a bug problem again. So it was found that if we could make a synthetic look-alike vitamin, something chemically resembling a vitamin, and spray it back in, we could solve the issue. Before we had time to determine if this would help, the Germ Theory surfaced. Now we had something we could blame all of our health maladies on – germs! It wasn’t our poor nutrition that made us sick, but these nasty guys called bacteria that would jump on our helpless bodies (without our permission, even) and attack us, making us sick.
However, germs didn’t answer some of the medical questions we still had. Such as why are more people having cardiovascular diseases? A few decades previously, cardiovascular disease was an extreme anomaly. Why is it now a problem? Soon the answer surfaced – butter. Butter was the cause. So, despite the fact that people had been consuming butter for thousands of years, butter was suddenly the culprit. Once more science comes to the rescue and we have “oleo-margarine”. Now butterfat was no longer clogging the arteries. Man improved nature and marketed us into believing that man did better. Remember the margarine commercial “it’s not fair to fool mother nature!”
Now we know we didn’t fool Mother Nature. She fooled us. Since the introduction of margarine, not only has cardiovascular disease skyrocketed, but so has obesity! Some studies show that margarine has contributed to 40% more heart disease than butter ever supposedly did. During that same period of time, while fat intake decreased by 33%, obesity also rose by 40%. But that’s okay. We are so technologically advanced now that we can do bypasses and even heart transplants – we’ve certainly fooled mother nature haven’t we?
The next Mother Nature faux pas is artificial sweeteners. As the rate of obesity and diabetes climbed we had to once again change nature. Since sugar is now a well known contributor to both obesity and diabetes, we had to find a way that we could still enjoy eating a horrible diet, flooded with sugar, yet somehow control obesity and diabetes. Once again scientists came to the rescue and found a sugary substance (chemical of course), that would fit the bill. When saccharin was found to be carcinogenic, instead of taking it off the market, we simply added a warning label. When the fear of cancer, coupled with a bitter after-taste caused saccharin to lose its popularity, they came up with other chemicals.
Aspartame, under its various trade names, had less bitter aftertaste. The marketing campaign was one of the largest in the history of foods, and soon a whole line of “sugarless”, “no-sugar” and “diet” products flooded the market. Only one problem. The side effects listed with the FDA is enough to make your skin crawl! Why would anyone want to consume that stuff? It’s because the fear of gaining weight or becoming diabetic (or worsening diabetes) outweighs common sense. We’re becoming desperate, yet unwilling to make the sacrifice of simply getting the sugar excesses out of our diets.
Sucralose, touted as “from sugar” outsold aspartame and all other sweeteners with rocket speed as the taste was even better, and because of it’s “sugar” association. Touted as the safest sweetener, it’s list of side effects should halt you in your tracks as well. There is no question that sugar, even the real stuff, causes so many health issues it should be considered a drug, and we need to stop consuming it. However, once again we could not improve on Mother Nature.
So what’s the answer? Eat as Mother Nature intended. We don’t have famines today. We don’t have a food shortage at this time. There is no reason why we can’t eat real food, the way Mother Nature intended. We don’t have to have complex sauces and fancy meals. Simplicity is key. Simplicity builds the body. The essential components naturally found in food is what we need to counter heart disease, diabetes, obesity and the myriad of other nutritionally-based diseases (which accounts for about 99% of our diseases today). We simply need to get back into our kitchen, back into our gardens, and back to how man has survived for thousands of years. We need to be willing to put out the extra effort to eat well. Nix the microwaves, the pre-packaged foods, the artificial sweeteners, the margarines and hydrogenated fats and get back to the real stuff. The butter, honey, land-grazed foul and meats, and vegetables straight out of the garden. Get back to how Mother Nature intended it, because no matter how hard we try, we can’t fool Mother Nature!
© 2008 Holly A. Carling, O.M.D., L.Ac., Ph.D.
