After reading, Nourishing Traditions* I wanted to know more about the nutrition in our diets as we eat them now and when we ate a more traditional diet with whole foods. Or what this author calls real food. The take away lesson is: Processed and refined sugars and starches (and food in general really) = bad. Whole, fresh, real food = good. The problem with nutrition, as a science, is that it is very complicated. There are lots of nutrients that are dependant on or work better with other things. This is very hard to test for and scientist always want to isolate ONE thing to study and and nothing else. This doesn't work very well. Plus, every one is different we process nutrients differently based on genetics, age, gender etc. So it's virtually impossible to find a perfect control group. Having said all that I can sympathize with scientists. And I know they hate anecdotal evidence BUT isn't it an amazing coincidence that heart disease, diabetes, obesity etc has increased exponentially over the last 50 years or so as the food in this country has gotten more and more industrialized and processed?? And doesn't it make sense that fresh meat, dairy, and veggies have been staples for human diets for centuries and we did pretty well on them that they are probably good for us??Now for me personally the problem is cost. Organic and a lot of whole foods are expensive (it's one reason I want to live on a farm again and produce a lot of our own food) so we don't eat near as much of them as I would like. But when and where I can we eat as much fresh real food as possible!
Rating: 5 stars
Recommendations: The author actually includes a reading list (yay!) She mentions Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin. Both of whom I have read and enjoyed!!
277 pages in about 3 hours
* denotes a book I have read and reviewed on this blog.
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