"In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" - Real Food & Your Health

I read a really great book this last week. It is called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. It has some really sound advice on eating and how to improve your health. It hearkens back to the days when people ate real food and focuses on eating a diet filled with real food whether it is high in fat, meat, vegetables, or fruit doesn't matter as long as it is real food.

It tells of aborigines that were eating the western diet high in white flour and sugar and had developed numerous health problems because of it. As part of a research study they were sent back to the bush to their native diet and within a few weeks of eating real food, their health drastically improved and most of their type 2 diabetes symptoms were reversed. It also cover some of the amazing research done by Weston Price looking for western diseases around the world and documenting what people ate. He didn't find many western diseases in any other population around the world that ate real food. It appears that it doesn't matter what you eat as long as it is real (the problem is highly processed food like white flour, white rice, and sugar). Some of the people ate high fat diets and were skinny and extremely healthy with no tooth decay or health problems. Amazing!

It also covers the failed lipid hypothesis in terms of heart disease. Cholesterol does not cause heart disease and you shouldn't need to limit cholesterol in your diet. The real problem is indicated by high triglycerides and not by excessive cholesterol or too much so called bad fat (except maybe transfats which are not real food). The book clearly takes down many of the fallacies perpetuated by nutritionist and the medical community. The medical community really doesn't want to admit that they were completely wrong and look like idiots, so they perpetuate the myths. They perpetuate the myth that many fats are bad and that we should be on a low fat diet to be healthy, which is obviously not true. High carb low fat diets (high in sugar and white flour) actual lead to weight gain and western diseases like metabolic syndrome x, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and all the other maladies you hear about in your communities.