>> Craig, it would be nice were it that simple, but you're spouting opinion and ignoring history <<
Isn't it all just opinion? Aren't there hundreds of different opinions out there about the right way to eat? Obviously I am spouting my opinion, just as you are spouting yours. Nothing wrong with that. Everyone evaluates information and is left to formulate their own opinion.
>> Perhaps you think the history of infection across all species is just coincidence? Such as plagues that wiped out huge #s of populations--like the flu of 1918, or the black plague, or AIDS, or ebola--a better diet would have prevented them? <<
Hold on just a second. I started out talking about heart disease. I suppose it would be better if I used the broader term cardiovascular disease. Almost 70% of ALL deaths in the US are from CVD/Cancer/Diabetes. I do believe we wouldn't have CVD, diabetes, and most cancers if we ate a proper diet. We didn't used to have these diseases until less than a century or so ago when our diet began to radically change. Now you are trying to shift the focus to infectious diseases which kill many times fewer Americans than chronic diseases. Nevertheless, I do believe that people who eat a proper diet and exercise, combined with low stress have much stronger immune systems and can ward of infectious disease much better than those who don't.
>> What do you think about the fact that h. pylori causes ulcers--and that a simple course of antibiotics cures them? <<
Don't even get me started on antibiotics. Those are so over-prescribed and often cause more harm than good. Just like eating sugar, antibiotics can weaken your immune system.
>> It's not that they give wrong information, they tend NOT to give information at all <<
Well I'm not just referring to practicing physicians. I'm referring to the scientific community in general who are mostly doctors.
>> but then again, maybe the patient should go to a nutritionist to educate themselves, and not expect a heart surgeon to sideline as a nutritionist. <<
You're missing my point. The vast majority of nutritionists & doctors have absolutely no clue what they are talking about when it comes to proper diet and nutrition. That's why the public has been misled about how to eat, and that's why a majority of us Americans end up dying from heart disease & cancer.
>> Eating junk food, empty calories w/o nutrition, is surely going to lead to illness <<
Yes, the problem is junk food. But here's the point I'm trying to get across. A bagel is junk food! But most people are taught that it's healthy. A piece of bread is junk food. Most rice is junk food, most pasta is junk food, and cereal is junk food as well. People are told to eat their fruit and vegetables, and they think they are eating so healthy. But what the dimwitted doctors haven't made clear is that not all vegetables and fruits are the same! Most people are sugar addicts and so they gravitate toward the sweet vegetables like corn and potatoes which are mostly junk food as well. So they have a little vitamin C. Big whoop. One serving of broccoli has 200% of the RDA of vitamin C and one serving of cauliflower has 100%. One leaf of lettuce has twice the anti-oxidants as a whole banana. So people eat corn, potatoes, and bananas and think they are eating healthy. Well they are just eating a bunch of sugar. They eat yogurt because they think that's healthy, because the yogurt carton says fat free. It's loaded with SUGAR. Some people's idea of eating fruit is drinking a glass of juice. Did you know that apple juice can have more sugar in it than a can of Coke? If you're big on fruits you should eat them in their natural state with the fiber and all, instead of thinking you are eating healthy by just drinking the sugar squeezed out of them. Most fruit is loaded with sugar anyway and not that good for you. The berries are the best. Strawberries, blueberries etc. They are lower in sugar and higher in anti-oxidants. It's far better to eat leafy green veggies such as broccoli, spinach, asparagus, brussel sprouts, celery, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard greens, green beans, green salads, etc. Yet sugar addicts gravitate toward sweet peas and sweet potatoes and yellow potatoes and yams and beets and corn and carrots and all the sugar laden vegetables.
Rice aint good for you, especially the kind you find on most grocery shelves. Rice-a-Roni, Pasta Roni, Hamburger Helper, Campbells Soup, etc all contain hydrogenated oils which will clog your arteries. Many salad dressings do too so you have to watch out for those. Speaking of salad dressings, the low-fat dressings are the worst. Take a look at the nutrition label the next time you go to the grocery store. The full fat dressings will have hardly any sugar in them. The low-fat ones are loaded chock full of sugar and are worse for you. If they take the fat out they have to replace the taste somehow, and they accomplish this with sugar. This goes for almost all food. The lower the fat usually the more sugar. Well the full fat products are better for you just as long as it's a natural fat and not a trans fat. All the stupid idiot doctors told us for decades that we should eat margarine instead of butter. What a crock!!! I should eat something that has been heated up to 500 degreees and bombarded with hydrogen molecules to alter the chemical makeup? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let's tinker with nature some more and only eat egg whites and not egg yolks!! Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I can just see our cave-man ancestors separating their egg whites before they ate them. Apparently we think we are smarter than mother nature who made eggs one of the best nutrient sources on the planet. After all, the nutrition in an egg is supposed to support life--an unhatched chicken. Let's throw out the yolks, which contain most of the nutrients. All this talk about eggs are bad for you and cholesterol is all bullshit. Did you know that in a 24-hour span your liver produces the equivalent of about 10 eggs worth of cholesterol on it's own? There is no correlation between cholesterol in the diet and cholesterol in the blood. There is a correlation between sugar (carbs) in the diet and cholesterol in the blood though.
So junk food is just about anything that comes out of a box these days. It's cheaper and food stores longer when they use partially hydrogenated oils instead of natural fats. More profits for them and the drug companies, worse health for you. Count the ingredients on the side of a box. If it's got more than a handful of ingredients and most of them have names you can't pronounce, it aint good for you. If sugar is one of the first few ingredients it's even worse. Oh and trust me sugar can go by about a dozen different names so they try to disguise it.
Bread, pasta and rice is garbage food. All the nutrients have been stripped & processed during refining. All the fiber is gone. They have to enrich the food again because they just robbed any nutrients out of it. A piece of bread is just a slice of sugar. A baked potato is practically pure sugar. Bananas apples oranges, grapes, etc just satisfy people's craving for sugar. They have some vitamins and fiber in them, but a lot of the benefits are outweighed by all the sugar in them. You can get all the vitamins and fiber (usually more) in those fruit without nearly as much sugar by eating those leafy green veggies I listed. Not only that, there's little point getting your vitamin c from fruit if your eating a bunch of sugar along with it. Your cells will have to compete with the sugar for the vitamin c and most of it won't be absorbed.
Sugar rots your teeth. Just look at people they dig up from thousands of years ago. Archaelogists can tell instantly if they were a hunter gatherer meat eater or a grain eating farmer. For one thing their teeth are all rotted away if they ate an agricultural grain based diet. Their bones are weak and brittle and their brains were smaller. they are usually about 6 inches shorter--not nearly as robust.
Sugar weakens your immune system and robs your body of vital nutrients. Sugar makes you addicted and irritable because you are in a vicious cycle of hyperinsulinemia. You are constantly hungry every couple of hours because sugar isn't sustaining food. Sugar has no nutritional value and is not essential to human health.
Ahh, but sugar is cheap and it tastes good, so you will find it as the #1 ingredient on grocery store aisles across the land. |
