When I was growing up, I remember listening in on several conversations about the validity of popular expressions such as "everything in moderation," and toying around with them in my head to figure out how I felt about them. The biggest problem I was facing with accepting the "moderation" perspective was that it was almost always used to justify negative behavior or habits. I heard a lot of people disagree on destructive patterns on behavior and agree to disagree with the simple quip "well, everything in moderation!"
Now, none of these conversations were about nutrition necessarily, but the back-and-forth argument has circled around my head throughout the years. Unfortunately, it was mainly in moments when I felt I needed to justify a negative eating choice. This, and many other lies like it, are part of a slippery slope of logical fallacies that are keeping so many people overweight and unhealthy. Today, I want to dive head-first into some of these (maybe) well-meaning, but faulty statements.
"Everything in Moderation"
So by now, in 2018, we all basically know that smoking cigarettes is bad for us, right? We've all seen the horrifying commercials and ads campaigning against cigarettes and chewing tobacco, showing us black, calcified lungs. We've all changed the channel when the woman with the voice box implant in her throat comes on to advocate against cigarettes. However, it took people in Western civilizations about 100 years to figure out that nicotine was addictive and smoking toxic. Given that we know what we know now, none of us would look at our loved one in the midst of their pack-a-day habit and go "well, everything in moderation!"
The things we all agree on as a society are few and far between, yet there are some things we can just agree are BAD for us. Smoking is bad. Crystal meth is bad. Drinking and driving is bad. Drug addiction is bad. Are you with me so far? We agree these things are bad for us, yes?
If we can agree that things that kill us, shorten our lifespan, or pose a severe detriment to our health are bad, why is it so hard for us to understand that there are just some foods that are "bad?" We will all agree with great enthusiasm that nobody should ever be advised to only do cocaine in moderation, and yet, we get quickly defensive when that argument turns around and points at our food choices.
The harsh reality is this; sugar is just flat out bad for us. No way around it. Studies done in recent years have shown that sugar is EIGHT TIMES MORE ADDICTIVE THAN COCAINE and significantly harder to withdraw from. Research has shown us that the same parts of the brain that light up when an addict gets a "fix" look eerily similar to the brain when it receives a hit of sugar. Not only that, but there have been tons of long term studies done where sugar was removed from the diets of people with autism, epilepsy, diabetes, thyroid disease, and yes, even cancer, showed significant improvement and even have been healed from the symptoms that make their day-to-day functioning so miserable.
Furthermore, the "business" of sugar has gotten so entirely out of control in the US that we can't get away from it. In my switch from standard eating to a Ketogenic diet, I took special care to make sure that I consumed zero sugar, including any added sugars. This meant a lot of reading labels. What I found was a TON of food that you'd never even associate with sugar containing loads of it. The first ingredient in the seasoning salt I'd been putting on all of our food? Sugar. Walk to your fridge, pick up a condiment, and I guarantee you one of the first five ingredients is sugar. Same goes for your pantry. Same can even apply to your meat. I just had someone message me today and say she was starting keto but struggling to find bacon with no added sugar. BACON. Why? Because sugar is addicting. You buy more of the things you crave and you crave more of the same when you are addicted. Is this making sense to you yet? I may sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist here, but the facts and the science backs me up on all counts. There is an unspoken assumption between us and the people who produce our food that they are giving us the basic human decency of protecting our health and being honest in their marketing, but that assumption would be wrong. The major food producers do not care a single thing about the consumer, they care about the revenue provided them by the consumer, end of discussion. When you can produce a product that's 8x more addictive than cocaine and widely accepted socially, and make a killer profit, why wouldn't you?
"But they all have to answer to the FDA"
Ah yes, the FDA. Now, I'm going to go off track for a few minutes, hang in there with me folks.
There was an episode towards the end of the TV series Parks and Recreation where the people of Pawnee were slowly discovering that a wireless internet company "Grizzle" was "data mining" and stealing personal information about the residents in order to turn a profit. The city had won a promotion for free internet a few years prior and had become one of Grizzle's largest consumer markets since they were pretty much intertwined. When they first suspected the data breach, they thought for sure they were protected legally by a clause in the contract that had first been created when the free internet promotion started, years back. They just knew they would be protected by law in the case of The People vs. Grizzle and were very confident that they could nail them on the charges of Data Mining. At the last minute, they discovered that several versions of the contract had been drafted in the years that passed, and several different additions and adjustments had been made, most of which were almost invisible to the untrained eye. At the end of the day, Grizzle couldn't face any legal charges or even the threat of losing customers, because they hadn't broken the law and they had a customer base that was so thoroughly dependent upon them it would be too much hassle to find another internet provider.
If I've lost you and you're not seeing how this fictitious universe is at all relevant here, I will break it down for you:
We, the consumers, are the citizens of Pawnee who have been taken advantage of.
"Big Sugar" or, most packaged food producers in western civilization, are free internet.
The FDA is Grizzle.
They haven't necessarily given us free food, but they've put out an addictive product that we've come to believe is the easiest, cheapest way to eat. Processed, sugar-loaded food has become such a staple in our households that we really can't imagine life without it, and even if we could, it's too much of a hassle to do things differently.
Not only that, but the FDA has worked overtime to make it easier and easier for big-sugar to just straight up lie to the consumers. I can't tell you the number of times that I've read "healthy," "low carb," or yes, even, "SUGAR FREE" on a label to flip it over, read the ingredients, and find sugar and high fructose corn syrup among the ingredients. I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. These brands are banking on the fact that 1. people won't actually read the ingredients, and 2. people will trust whatever they put on the box. It's dishonest, manipulative, and it's killing us. But they can continue doing it, because they are protected by the FDA, not blatantly, but in some 3948th version of the contract in the teeny, tiny font at the bottom of the page. Why have they worked so hard to keep us in the dark? Well, because there's money to be made from sick people. Diabetes is a huge business for the "D" section of the "FDA." When people stay sick as a result of their dietary choices, they need more medical treatment. When they need more medical treatment, they need more drugs. The cycle continues as time goes on and these big administrations get richer and richer.
Don't believe me? During the reign of the Obama administration, Michelle Obama made it a personal goal to raise awareness about diet, sugar intake and the importance of a healthy diet, with an emphasis on children. It didn't take long at all before the FDA got in her ear and the campaign for healthy eating quickly shifted to a campaign to get children more active. Still useful? Yes, but not if those same children are eating a diet that consists mainly of sugar and processed carbohydrates.
Still don't believe me? Let's go back a few thousand years and think about how our ancestors ate and lived. They didn't drive to the store and buy food that could live on the shelf for months and months without changing. They hunted, gathered, harvested. They ate organic meat, vegetables, fruits, fish, nuts, berries. None of it was genetically modified or tampered with. None of it was processed or had anything added to it. It was just real food. Adam and Eve were vegans as best I can tell, until the fall, and the generations that came later all ate what we would consider a strict Paleo diet rich in healthy fats from animal fats, nuts and seeds. And guess what? They lived 4-5 times longer than we do now. "But that's because we have new factors and illnesses they didn't have back then!" Yup, and one of the main ones is our diets. We've devolved; we move significantly less and eat more empty, useless calories... and as a result, we get fatter and sicker every day.
How do we fix this problem? Well, as my Dad has always said, you vote with your dollars. Guess what happens if we start to educate ourselves on the hazards of sugar consumption and refuse to purchase anything containing it? Manufacturers of processed food take a hit, start to scramble, and start figuring out how to win back your business. Already, since Paleo, gluten free, low carb diets have risen in popularity, the options on the market have increased significantly. A few years ago, you couldn't have found sugar-free low carb keto-friendly cookies, now you have options as to which brand you want to purchase. A few years ago, it was almost impossible to eat gluten-free, now gluten free options are everywhere (and thank goodness!).
"But, we need carbohydrates!"
Nope. There's actually science on my side for this one too. In the human body there are essential proteins and essential fats. You have to have fatty acids or your body will literally break down and die. But there's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Ketosis isn't a made up thing, it is a state that your body is inherently capable of entering when it is deprived of carbs. It is a very natural state of existing and has been proven to provide benefits that outnumber mere weight loss.
You may have heard it said that our brains run off of glucose, and therefore, we need sugar to keep going... and that's also wrong. The carbohydrates that our body was created to process were whole, natural carbs like organic fruits and vegetables, and organic grains. Most of the time, what we are giving it is a cheap substitute. It's as if we are taking our cars that need gasoline to run, and pouring vegetable oil in the tanks and saying "well, it's still oil!" It's not, and you're not going to run the same. In most cases, you're going to run into engine failure, break down and end up on the side of the road. Imagine if you only got one car for your entire life. You would make a point of putting the best gasoline in it when you filled up. When you needed an oil change, you wouldn't hesitate. You would drive carefully, use your turn signal, and avoid aggressive driving. You would go to the shop the minute the engine light turned on.
In this life, we only have our one body. And yet, we live as if we can trade it out for a new model every few years. Imagine how things would change if we decided to treat our bodies like the only ones we were ever going to get?
Comments
Post a Comment