Modern, mainstream nutritional dogma tells us that eating a lot of fats, a lot of calories, and not exercising are the primary causes of the degenerative process leading to heart disease, Diabetes, obesity, and perhaps Cancer. People unaligned with mainstream thought on the subject of human health say that those claims are full-blown BS. Gary Taubes, who researched the subject for half a decade before writing his human health opus, Good Calories, Bad Calories, has pretty much established that it is in fact, BS. Still, on his side of the fence, carbohydrates are the root of all evil ? the cause of the entire degenerative process ranging from your good ole? heart attack to Alzheimer’s. Yet, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, whatever ? have been staples of various human diets throughout history without causing any sign of disease whatsoever. So common sense tells us that none of the natural constituents of food are innately harmful ? from sugars to saturated fats, red meat to grain, and so on.
Perhaps any harm or disease that natural foods might contribute to is contingent upon something else entirely. Some quotes presented last week by Gangsta Mack certainly bring up an interesting contingency that I’ve been thinking about for quite some time. Consider these statements one by one in terms of the correlations being observed in the world today.
?It would seem that, in the presence of deficiency of Vitamin B (common among refined grain/sugar eaters), fats are incompletely oxidized and yield products which are harmful to the organism and to certain organs in particular.
Fats are incredible. They taste amazing and often are the only foods that really leave us feeling stable, nourished, and satisfied. Weston A. Price concluded that the healthiest food on earth was butter (albeit a much healthier version than you can find at your local supermarket). Yet fats, particularly butter and other saturated fats are maligned with being the causes of heart disease, something Weston A. Price never saw, even among Eskimos and Masai tribesman woofing down over 200 grams of fat per day (the equivalent of 2-4 sticks of butter). McCarrison observed, quite clearly, that fats administered in the presence of dietary deficiency (such as one with white rice stripped of most of its B-vitamin content), were quite harmful. In fact, his test animals died more quickly on a butter and rice diet than a diet of rice alone.
So yes, the contingency of food deficiency caused by the consumption of devitalized food caused an otherwise healthy food, butter, to be harmful ? damaging organs and bringing about earlier death. If you’re looking for evidence that a high fat diet may increase the chances of disease, then look no further ? but remember that there may only be a weak correlation and that it’s only true for a diet that also consists of a great deal of processed food. And it’s not just fat that may be harmful, but any food substance that is consumed with devitalized food. The American diet, high in protein, fat, and carbohydrates ? and the world’s highest in processed, non-nutritious, devitalized, empty calories is the most disease-causing. In other words, when eating significant quantities of non-nutritious pseudo food, overall calories then becomes an issue. The more you eat, the more damage you cause ? and food, glorious food becomes an enemy. I think this explains why light eaters like the French and Japanese, despite their love of alcohol, cigarettes, and refined foods, live longer, with far less degenerative disease than all-you-can-eat Americans. Since all modernized nations eat refined foods, any correlative data could show that the more fats, calories, etc. consumed ? the greater the rate of degenerative disease.
??in the absence of vitamins or in their inadequate supply, neither proteins nor fats nor carbohydrates nor [minerals] are properly utilized; some are largely wasted, while others yield products harmful to the organism.
Along the same lines, McCarrison points out his conclusion that lack of vitamins (which are diminished in a number of ways in today’s day and age) can cause ANY type of food to become pathogenic. It also ?yields products harmful to the organism? which is probably the primary cause of food allergies, autoimmune diseases, and most Cancers ? although toxic crap from outside of our bodies can certainly do it if the concentration is high enough.
?Disordered endocrine function leads in its turn to imperfect carbohydrate assimilation, to marked disturbances of carbohydrate metabolism??
?Disordered endocrine function? was always the result of an inefficient diet composed of white rice and an inappropriate amount of complementary foods to make up for the deficiency (leading to an endless litany of functional disability, most notably digestive and respiratory). Thus, eating refined sugar or grain, stripped of its natural components, could turn carbohydrates into a pathogenic food over time. One of the marked disturbances he noticed was atrophy and decay of the pancreas. This is incredibly important to consider when looking at the massive increase in the onset of Diabetes. It also explains why I have encountered two diametrically opposed treatments for Diabetes. One is to nourish the pancreas with natural, nutritious, raw carbohydrate foods like carrot juice, raw milk, and ?3/4 cup of raw honey per day (Vonderplanitz). The other is to minimize the demand placed on that organ by avoiding carbohydrates, especially simple sugars ? or at least minimize them in the diet. Both I suspect, are viable treatments. I’ve personally met with Diabetics who have fully overcome their illness on both of these programs, and have even met a Diabetic who overcame the disease through supplementation alone.
Basically, any claim that you want to make about a food substance being helpful or harmful, the evidence is there to back that up. Anyone familiar with this being done? But telling people what is and is not good for them from a list of natural foods that have nourished mankind to a degree of health far greater than anyone is currently experiencing will always be half truth. Only through understanding and seeing the whole picture can we really understand where we’ve gone wrong and begin strategizing ways to recover as individuals from the damage already done. I think all dietary and health information out there has some merit, and I hope to continue bridging the gap between the many arguing sides into a fundamental unifying understanding that is palatable to anyone of intelligence.
And due to McCarrison’s work and personal observations I’ve made within myself and globally, I am retracting the idea that the focus of your food choices should be based solely on getting as much nutritious food into your body as possible. In actuality, if you are still eating significant amounts of refined, devitalized foods every day ? then even nutritious food will most likely afford you little protection, and may even backfire ? exacerbating the deficiency by keeping your metabolism running on high (and increasing the demand for nutrients you are already deficient in ? not to mention the fact that they probably won’t digest or assimilate well; thus yielding toxic by-products). Nourishing foods must not be a complement to devitalized foods, but a REPLACEMENT.
(Quotes by Sir Robert McCarrison)
Huh, huh, he said exacerbate?
Excellent comments, Matt. Have you read Nutrition Against Disease and Biochemical Individuality by Roger J. Williams, PhD? Dr. Williams suggested that lack of supportive nutrition, especially B vitamins, is what causes arteries to clog.
Would you mind editing this sentence?
“Perhaps any of these foods supposedly causing harm and leading to disease is contingent upon something else.”
Suggestion: Perhaps the observed tendency for any of these foods to cause harm leading to disease is contingent upon something else.
“McCarrison observed, quite clearly, that fats administered in the presence of dietary deficiency (such as one with white rice stripped of most of its B-vitamin content), were quite harmful. In fact, his test animals died more quickly on a butter and rice diet than a diet of rice alone.”
It could also be said that refined carbs administered in the presence of fat were the problem. To quote Taubes, there’s no arrow of causality. Unless McCarrison fed another group just the butter, then we can only say it was the combination that was harmful, not the addition of the butter to the rice. Maybe animals eating just butter would be better off than animals eating just white rice.
Not saying anything down about fats, just showing how one could see that fats are associated with disease and blame the fats, when it’s clearly the deficiency that is the underlying cause. McCarrison had nothing against fats or any other natural food. He just noted the dangers of deficiency. The addition of the fat probably just kept the metabolism running higher and used up nutrient reserves faster, thus causing a quicker death. That’s my guess.
I know you’re not saying fats were bad, but it’s kind of implying that fat was the problem, rather than the white rice or the mixture. Maybe if McCarrison had fed the butter by itself, they wouldn’t have developed a deficiency (except of protein). I believe Stefansson said you you could go a long time with just fat and no protein. Since fat requires very few nutrients to handle it seems likely that the carbs are the problem, not the addition of fat. As you said, any extra calories are toxic in a deficient diet. So what causes more deficiencies, white rice or butter? The mainstream view of things is wrong, because they blame all the health problems on fat, rather than the mixture or the refined carbs.
That’s exactly what I was trying to get across. It was an attempt to point out that even if a large scale study showed that people who ate the most fat diet fastest (not that such a thing exists), that doesn’t, in any way prove fat to be an unhealthy food. A recommendation to eat less fat, because those who live longer typically eat less, would be blind advice with no understanding whatsoever as to why that might be so. Your answer in this scenario – nutritional deficiency. Fat doesn’t kill, but in this case nutritional deficieny caused fat to speed up death. Amen.
” A. Price never saw, even among Eskimos and Masai tribesman woofing down over 200 grams of fat per day”
He never saw simply because he never looked for.
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/1/26.abstract
Still the American diet mainly comprised of hot cooked meals is not good. Cooking destroys all the nutrients in food. Eating cooked food is of no value to the body.
A diet with lots of raw fruit and raw vegetables is really good as long as lots of fresh fruit and vegetable juice is included. Juice everything yourself.