What foods are good for me?

Like I'm going to give you a straight answer!  There is no straight answer.

First and foremost I want to tell you that there is no answer to this question.  The only answer is "the foods that make your body feel good."  Now this is when this gets tricky.  If there is one philosophical explanation for nutrition it is this "One man's medicine is another man's poison."  I think if you truly understand and take this quote into play you will have an excellent diet.

10,000 years ago we didn't have markets, fast food, restaurants, or any other convenience that we do today.  Instead we gathered and hunted our food.  Those in the tropical region adapted to more fruit and veggie diets, but still ate meat.  Those in northern regions adapted to a very high animal diet, because when winter came the ground froze and the only thing that was eatable was walking.  When thinking in terms of nutrition one must always think of history.  This is why I always flash back to 10,000 years ago.  It is estimated that we mutate at the rate of .01% every 100,000 years.  Basically this means that we can typically only eat what we ate 10,000 years ago.  This is all that out stomach/intestines can process.  There are a few exceptions, but generally this rule goes through.  So my second principle is "if you didn't eat it 10,000 years ago don't eat it now."  This rule is easier said then done.

Having said that I have to tell you that historically there have been no healthy civilizations that have been vegetarians.  My apologies for those who are vegetarians.  My mother is a vegetarian, and she and I have discussed everything in this matter.  She is a vegetarian for her religious beliefs.  She also has come to terms with the fact that her vegetarian diet might not be the best for her body.  Vegans and vegetarians are not doing good to their body.  The words "healthy vegan" or "healthy vegetarian" are an oxymoron.  Now for those who are vegan and vegetarian, I want to thank you for your sacrifice and your intent on reducing the amount of killing on this earth.  My main fight has always been not to reduce killing but to reduce poor treatment.  Death is something inevitable, but how an animal is treated can be controlled.  An animal like a cow would not exist had it not been because of human existence, and our domestication of this animal.  For this very reason, when I tell you that meat is good, know that I am only talking about good quality, sustainable, fed correctly, organic, free-range, etc.  Conventional meat doesn't even hit a part of the surface compared to organic.

There is something that is called metabolic typing that also comes into play with a person's diet.  As I explained earlier we have evolved from tropical or freezing regions.  Metabolic typing is an attempt to figure this out some how.  The Chinese population is a perfect example.  Most of the world thinks we are veggie type people but in fact northern regions are far from veggie.  So metabolic typing has 3 classes of people Carbohydrate, Protein, and Mixed.  Now these types can and will be broken down more, but for the sake of simplicity we will stick with these 3.  These heavily pertain to our ancestral background but much can change with time and migration.  If you are a protein type go follow Atkins and you will function well, if you are carbohydrate follow Pritikin and you will function well, and if you are Mixed you are much like a zone style diet.  Basically carbohydrate diets are 30% protein/fat and the rest are carbohydrates.  Mixed is 50/50, and Protein is 40/60 or even 30/70.

My father always told me as a child that the key to eating healthy was to eat a variety of foods.  Little did I know at that time he was right.  It is funny, because we are all very much concerned with the Micro nutrients otherwise known as calories (carbohydrate, protein, and fat).  We don't put much emphasis on micro nutrients.  It has crept into our diets in supplement form, but who thinks of food when they think of a vitamin.  We are so used to thinking of micronutrients in pill form, that we forget that they are from food.  This is what my father so forcefully taught me as a child.  We rotate and eat different varieties of food to get all of the nutrients from this food.  Eating a good variety was very important since man is very much a scavenger.  We have evolved because of our adaptability to eating a wide variety of organic matter.  This mixed variety is hampered in the western societies, which is now spreading to the eastern cultures.  Humans were meant to eat 10 or more different varieties of meats, and hundreds of different fruits, veggies, fungi, etc.  It just doesn't happen in today's society.  And we wonder why cancer risk is at an all time high, we hate life, and we are overweight.  Could it be due to our variety?

A lot has evolved since our time of the hunter gatherer.  A man by the name of Westin Price did a world wide study on native tribes who were still pretty much hunter gatherers.  Whats interesting is that in these tribes and in many more native colonies around the world, disease and obesity is few and far between.  People had to move and eat correctly that was their purpose on life.  They respected the land, the others that lived on it, and themselves.  Our evolution might have brought the very screen you are reading this on, but our evolution also brought, the worse diseases known to man.  As unfortunate as it is, Mother Nature uses diseases for pest control, and we are the pests.  Plants and pests have a symbiotic relationship with one another.  When a plant isn't healthy and destructive it sends a signal to nature to send pests to kill it.  That is what we are subconsciously doing to nature.  The difference is that we keep trying to invent ways to fight this natural process.  Unfortunately, the only answer is for us to go back to what we were doing before we started attracting diseases:  Go back to our native diets, Respecting the land we live on, and moving for our food.  Without a close simulation of this true health isn't available.  There is not short cut, instead the answer is really simple:

Eat a mixed variety of foods

Eat good quality foods (i.e. sustainable, local, organic, etc.)

Find your Metabolic Type and eat accordingly

Stop counting calories, and listen to your body

I hope you enjoy my observation on health, and I welcome criticism, comments, and suggestions.

Until Next time,

H

For those who wanted further definition of a protein, a carbohydrate, and a fat:

A protein will be classified as anything with eyes

A carbohydrate is something coming from a plant.

A fat would be an oil or an animal fat.