“What is the right diet?” If the scientific method is valid then it ought to be able to provide an answer to this simple question. After all hasn’t science provided definitive answers to other essential questions such as the existence and nature of God, the one best form of government or how to understand women.
Nowhere is there greater disagreement about what constitutes the optimal diet than among nutritional “scientists” themselves. To me that means either these “scientists” are practicing something other than science or that their “science” is not a valid method of determining the truth.
I remain incredulous that there can be such widespread disagreement on the most critical questions of what is nourishing. Should we eat meat? Milk? Should we avoid animal fat? Are vegetable oils harmful or beneficial? Are they better or worse for us than cream, butter and other animal fats? Which candy bars are best for your immune system? Should we cook our food? Is salt essential; or at least beneficial; or is it an insidious poison? How is the nutritional value of a single food affected when it is eaten in combination with other foods? Do we significantly diminish the nutritional value of ice cream when we cover it with chocolate syrup? Are barbequed or plain potato chips better for you? These questions are not trivial.
It seems ludicrous that science could be used to validate completely opposite issues such as veganism and meat eating. Most people are at a loss for where to turn for a reliable source of guidance about what to eat. Who and what are we to trust? After pursuing this question for most of my life I have come to a conclusion of such simplicity that I now wonder how I/we could have ever complicated it this much.
We modern, “civilized” human beings are the only creatures confused to the point of panic about what we should eat. The question does not even exist for any other living being. Aardvarks, snakes, coyotes, yaks, even earthworms exhibit not the slightest trace of confusion about what to eat. Interestingly we humans are also the most obviously malnourished, diseased, deformed and weak of all God’s creatures. There seems to be a direct correlation between sickness and “intelligence”, does there not? Perhaps what we call intelligence is actually the major cause of our sickness.
Not all cultures have been as sickeningly over informed as ours. Many indigenous cultures such as the Maasai, Eskimo, Hunzas, indigenous Swiss, Incas and Aztecs peoples all maintained a level of pristine health, free from all diseases even tooth decay. My point is they produced their impeccable health without a trace of our modern nutritional “knowledge”. The documented fact is that not only is it possible to produce perfect health by their ways of eating, it is the ONLY way it has ever been produced. These peoples did not know that vitamins or minerals even existed, nor did they have the slightest understanding of immune systems or endocrine physiology. Our knowledge of nutrition and medicine, while interesting and perhaps somewhat valuable is not essential to attaining perfect health.
Our obsession with what is non essential has obscured our perception and valuing of what is essential. Our ancestors foods have become as non-essential to us as the buffalo and clean air. Our dietary solution to our epidemic osteoporosis is not raw milk, exercise and sunlight but pills containing calcium hydroxy apatite and 1, 25-dihydroxycholecalciferol; we believe these chemicals to be “essential nutrients”. The real essential nutrients are the same ones that nourished our forefathers: carrots, pecans and eggs. We are drowning in the non-essential.
What is truly essential to eat? What must we have without which we degenerate? What is essential to nourish our blood and bones, liver and uterus, our minds and moods? What is essential for us to know… to love and to obey?
Nourishing oneself is ultimately simple. It comes down to an essential choice. Which will we put first, human intelligence or natural wisdom? Human intelligence manufactures non-essential things and calls them food: sports drinks, energy bars, lasagna and hot dogs. No amount of human intelligence can “manufacture” a peach. Likewise no human intelligence can create a healthy body. Living food and human bodies are created and maintained by a wisdom and power beyond human understanding. Our body is inseparable from, cannot exist without, eternally loves and longs for… peaches. Our body’s illnesses are his cries to Mother Earth for her foods, protesting against being starved and poisoned.
Rather than putting so much faith in pills, put it in real food. The more a substance has been defiled by human “intelligence”, the more you should be suspicious of eating it. If you were an Arapahoe or Ute living in Colorado one thousand years ago what would you have eaten? Everything essential for perfect health was present in the foods our ancestors ate. Train yourself to eat in this one and only proven way. Stop eating corporate foods. Stop it. Look at “new discoveries” as useful perhaps, but secondary at best, clearly not essential. Stop eating what isn’t a living miracle. Choose a more simple and humble path… nourish yourself from the hand of god. Feast on the miraculous.