PLEASE NOTE, This is NOT a blog.
It is a book I am trying to write, I have tried to give it a quick check. Do not take it as a finished article but it has been suggested that it should be saved somewhere on the net. I welcome corrections, or if you don't understand, which I may or may not use.
FOOD OUTSIDE THE BOX, bottle, packet or pouch.
Chapter 1
I am so frustrated. I have tried and tried to write a book that might help the millions of people that are unwell and suffering at this very moment for lack of simple information. My first thought is who the hell am I to tell other people how to eat? I have no qualifications and I fell into all the bad eating traps that everyone else has fallen into. Yet with all that I have read and listened to I cannot find a simple book to offer people. Secondly, for whom am I writing this book? Is it to try and warn the young, the under 50s, or to tell over 50s you still have time to change your lifestyle and eating habits and be well? I ignored all thoughts of good eating when young and have had to do something about it starting at age 81. A wise friend says I am writing for both.
Yesterday I was out at a giant shoe shop to buy a new pair of summer mules. Got speaking to a lady I thought was about my own age and before we had got very far she talked about her ankles swelling and other problems. I took a deep breath and started my 60 second, hopefully, helpful talk that goes something like this.
"I used to be very ill but I changed what I eat. I cut out all packaged food, sugar and just basically have home cooked meat, fish, cheese eggs and veg. Forget about low fat, that’s all rubbish. It’s called LCHF or Keto if you want to look for it on the internet. It will help your problem”.
I got the response I often get,
"Well you look very well on it. Thank you, I’ll have a look at that".
So what more could one do in that brief moment? Some people who have come to the same knowledge as me have a card or leaflet with them but I would not want something pushed at me like a religious tract, or maybe I should get a card printed up with a link to this book or Facebook page. By the way, she was not my age but ten years younger. This is not a one time happening. One is no sooner out the door before you run into some sign of the terrible scourge that has overtaken the world. Don’t get me wrong, there is a ton of information out there about the subject of this book, the connection between food and ill health, but is mistakenly known as a DIET. Diet has become a dirty word, something that is painful to do and needing lots of self control you feel you haven't got. But isn’t the discomfort of the many illnesses and diseases that the population is now suffering painful?
A lot of this book is not so much a way of eating but more a way of NOT eating. Not eating the things we have, in the last 50 years, come to think of as food. At my grand old age I can remember eating home cooked meat and two veg and a pudding for my lunch. I remember loaves that were not sliced and fruit and vegetables from the garden. But the rot was setting in. During WWII we had got used to having to accept certain foods or go hungry. One I remember well was margarine as a substitute for butter. You cannot imagine how small the ration of butter was for a week. Today it would be used to cover about two slices of bread for one sandwich. Although making a butter-like substance was not new to the world at that time, it was detested by the British public, only tolerated because there was nothing else.
Yet today in the supermarket you will see row on row of man made ‘butter’ and you will be told that it is better for you than real butter. I know, I fell for it myself and now curse what it may have done to my body all those years. How do I know? Well for the last three years I have been studying the subject of the food we eat and the deep dark troubles that it has thrown us into. Yes I know, three years is not long but at 84 I don’t know how long I have got to get this book off of my chest and be of some help to others. My researching has been consistent and deep but I admit I am no scholar, no academic and certainly no doctor. So what am I doing trying to write this book? I think the answer is to lay basic principles and show how the reader can find the truth for themselves. How they can help themselves find good health and maintain it. And how they have been conned!
***
It is unbelievable that anyone could induce diseases with the food they eat but believe me it is possible. By diet I mean the everyday food that most people eat. For the last 50 years plus people have been buying and eating foods that were not known to our forefathers and mothers. Even not so far back as my own early days of life. I guess you could call me Great Grandmother Age particularly to those born since 2000. But I have lived through all the years that we have been told lies about our food, the most important life sustainer. After air we need food and water. But the air and the water are polluted with man made chemicals and the food is more than polluted, it is poisoned! More on this later but just to say most people are taking into their bodies the makings of chronic disease.
Later I am going to use my own life as a sample of this happening. But first what is a ‘Chronic disease’? A simple statement would be a disease that cannot be passed person to person by a microbe or virus. So not a cold, flu, measles, whooping cough or HIV. But a disease that often comes on slowly over the years and disrupts ones life. Here is a list of some you may recognise in yourself or in friends and loved ones.
Type 2 Diabetes,
Irritable Bowel Syndrome,
Low or High Thyroid,
Hypertension - High Blood Pressure,
Non alcoholic Fatty Liver disease
Psoriasis (scaly skin)
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome,
Stomach Ulcers
Cataracts
Gall Stones
Asthma
And the very bad ones
Epilepsy,
Parkinson’s,
Heart disease,
Lupus,
Depression,
Cancer,
Multiple sclerosis (MS),
Dementia.
These are a few that are caused by what we eat, drink and breath. The environment we live in day to day. There is a story behind this regarding food told by many other writers with far more knowledge than I but here it is as I saw it happen. When I was first born in the Thirties my mother cooked our breakfast, lunch and supper. It consisted mostly of Meat, Fish, Dairy, Vegetables, Fruit, in season and flour in some of its products like Bread, Pastry, and biscuits. By the thirties there were some factory processed foods like cereals and bakers goods. But on the whole my mother cooked from scratch. No fridges except the for the rich like an aunt of mine. Unluckily my Dad was the black sheep of the family, we had no money so no fridge. We had to go to town to shop every day and buy food from the butcher, the baker, the grocers and the green grocer. I remember a big shop of a company still around in UK called Sainsbury’s. There they sold eggs, bacon, cheese and butter plus things like tea. Mother and I had to traipse round to each shop and curse when the green grocer put mud lumps in with potatoes to make them weigh more.
Then came World War 2 and you were lucky to get the mud with your few potatoes. Food was still much the same but of course, but a lot less. I understand we did better than in the first World War where people definitely went hungry. I only remember hunger when I was later put in a boarding school where the food was small and mostly uneatable. But at home there was enough. I think it was at this time that we began to accept food that was processed in factories. Dried foods like milk and eggs, I rather liked the eggs but most didn’t. And the horror of horrors, margarine instead of butter we called Axel Grease.
When the war finished my life changed completely, like many families in the war my parents separated and I had to live with my Father. I was 10 and for a while I was farmed out to various relations where I lost a year of my schooling, I just was not sent to school and the education I’d had already was not up to much. I sat in the 11 plus exam and could only put my name and address. So I was brought back to live with my father in various rented rooms in what were then called ‘diggs’. I was sent to a good private school which did me no good at all, the lessons were beyond me. We were thrown out of several of these houses because of my father ill temper. Eventually he bought a very primitive caravan (Trailer) and I was sent to board in a nearby convent in term time.
It was at this time I first learnt the rudiments of cooking. To dad’s way of thinking was is a female so she must be able to cook. In truth neither had the slightest idea where to start. Our cooking stoves were primitive, oil lamps and a camping Primus that I hated lighting. I burnt my hands several times. We could only shop once a week as I was at school and dad at work. Food was as primitive as our stoves. You have to remember that food was still rationed and scarce after the war. We managed some fresh meat and vegetables once a week. But the rest came out of tins and packets. Much as it would for those without means today. Corned beef, pork spam, ready stewed meat. As today macaroni cheese was a favourite when we had any cheese to spare or it was out of a tin. We also had tinned fish. After fresh veg had gone it was it was also tinned like peas or carrots.
Breakfasts were eggs and bacon, mostly at weekends or oat porridge or a boxed cereal. So what was the difference to today if you ate like this? I think the ingredients of these processed foods were made of better ingredients. Possibly less added chemicals. I don't really know. But this was what we ate for a year or so until I was sent to live with a family. This was to be for the last year and a half of my school life. And my best years ever in a school as I was by now a higher standard than most in my lowly new state school.
Here I had what is sorely needed today. Domestic science lessons. Learning how to cook and look after a house. I also learnt a lot from my guardian who came from a Yorkshire family that knew how to make ends meet. Her husband was a fishmonger so we always had fish if nothing else. Left me with a life long dislike of the stuff, good as it may be for one. I also learnt that dad and I had rather large breakfasts and I had to trim my sails.
We did have fruits in season from the garden, mostly apples, black currents that we picked, topped and tailed and bottled for the winter. There was a big cupboard stacked with Kilner jars of blackcurrant and gooseberries. Yes, can't look at them now either. But we were never hungry. There were stogy homemade cakes and buns and one filled up on bread and margarine, yes it was still around.
This brings us up to 1950 and I hope it gives you an idea of food during this first period of my life. Of course those who had money or lived on farms had a better choice. Rationing did not end until July 1954. Can I say here that we were not sick from our food, very rare to see a fat person or child. We had energy and to spare, walking, cycling, swimming, sports and gym at school. If you take all the diseases in the list above you would have been hard put to know somebody with any one of them. I knew one girl who had Asthma. I was fit, brown as a berry from being outdoors all the time.
I should mention sugar here as it is now the scourge of our times. It was severely rationed along with confectionary. My sweets were also rationed by my tiny pocket money. One small bar of Cadbury's milk chocolate a week or two ounces of some kind of boiled sweets like fruit drops or humbugs. And shall we talk about takeaways here. Unknown except for British Fish and Chips. I was lucky to get three penny's worth of chips (fries) once a week. Remember we had a fish monger in the family and were not going to waste money on other fish. Those chips were delicious, fried in beef tallow. Not todays terrible seed oils. More on them later. So it was no wonder we did not balloon up like the children do now. We got up from a meal with a corner that never seemed quite filled particularly during the war. It seems now that this was a healthy way to be. We were given, by the government, orange, black current or rose hip juice for Vitamin C and liquid cod liver oil on a spoon, yuck, not the pills of today.
This brings me up to where scholars of nutrition today say it is the beginning of modern eating. Possibly not so much in the 50s but certainly in the 60s. USA, always ahead of us in UK, were unfortunately known by us as being fat. (My apologies America but this was so). We thought that as you had so much food that you kindly sent us some. We thought that it was just that you ate too much rather than what you ate. But it was 'what' you ate as we shall see.
Chapter 2
So the people of the world ate the foods they had eaten for thousands of years but in later years with a little more finesse. Meat was cut up and cooked in skillets and ovens, served with nicely trimmed and cut vegetables to look palatable. Sauces and condiments were added to enhance flavour. This was not bison or antelope killed on the forests or planes, dragged home and gutted before being shared out to the tribe when it might or might not be placed in or over the fire. The North American peoples known as Inuits ate their seals and other catches raw. There were the gathers as well as the hunters and they, when possible, added vegetables and fruits to the diet. The basics here are humans eat meats and vegetables in their original state or sometimes changed them with the use of heat.
But possibly before the start of the 1800s it was rarely brought to the ordinary consuming public in boxes, tins and packets. They bought loose ready ground flour from the local miller to make bread, grew root and other vegetables to add to their food and if rich enough some had chicken or fish to add to the pot. Indeed for hundreds of years each household had a large pot of these ingredients to which they added what ever they managed to get each day. It was often called pottage. Grains like oats might be added to make it more filling. King Henry lV of France is purported to have said he wanted everybody to have a chicken in every pot for Sunday. This was in European countries and it varied across the world.
A better version of this was doled out to workers. In very early history of Britain's castles it was poured into a long wooden trenchers and people sat on either side grabbing what they could. A man who ate a lot was called a 'good trencherman'. To this mess was added rough bread as a filler. Were they fat, these trenchermen and women? I doubt it but their betters certainly could be. Henry the Eighth of six wives fame for instance. The difference was not only the best picking but as time went by they were the people who could afford an addition that was going to become man and womankind's downfall. Sugar! They added carbs to fat and made the same mistake we are all making to this day. Honey was a sweetener in early days until the crusaders brought back sugar with them in the 10th century. More and more sugar was added to the diet so that by today most people cannot have anything to eat to which sugar has not been added. Even savoury foods.
What a long way off we are to what our forbear's ate. It if often said that these pre civilisation humans did not live long. This is not true. If they managed to escape being killed by a wild animal, had an accident or suffered starvation they lived well into old age as has been discovered by anthropologists. Today we suffer more from abundance than lack of food. Our trouble is that the abundance is without proper nutrients and is of poor quality. Even if, like myself, you are trying hard to get the best quality for your money that you can buy there is still a deficiency in the modern products available at the shops and markets.
Take yourselves to any supermarket, expensive or cheap, and what do you see? Aisle after aisle of manufactured foods in boxes, tins, bottles and plastic packets. More than nine tenths of it are made with three or four ingredients - Wheat, Soy, Seed Oils, and Sugar. What is wrong with those you might ask? Well the first one is not the wheat our forefathers grew and ate, and is, more than likely, like soy genetically modified. Seed oils were invented to replace Whale oil in engines and not for human consumption and sugar - well it was not meant to be eaten in the quantities now consumed by most people nor in the forms that are added today. To these four ingredients have been added a plethora of chemicals as additives and flavourings because without them we would all turn our noses up at these so called foods. If you would really like to know the ins and outs of how our foods are made you can do no better than read Joanna Blythman's book Swallow This available on Amazon or you can just turn over any box, bottle or tin and read the list of ingredients.
You will often read today, if it has more than three or four ingredients don't eat it! Particularly if you don't understand or recognise any of the names or they look like gobble de gook, put it back. So what the hell are you left with to eat because these injunctions of mine even applies to such simple things as bread.
Why do we want or need to know about all these foods? Everything is checked as suitable for humans to eat isn't it? They are safe to eat, taste good and most of them come at a reasonable price. We have been eating them all our lives be we 10 or 80 or more. Yes we have! Including myself. And how well are you and yours? I personally have been through so many health problems and surgical operations I have lost count. As I write this I have just had my 3 year anniversary of changing the way I eat. I was 81 as I did this, 81 years of not knowing that I was poisoning myself everyday with this so called food. This apology for food. And I ate probably better than most knowing how to cook from scratch with simple ingredients. Yet I was ill, just as ill as many folk I see every day. It is not always the those you might expect because you can see they are severely overweight. But it is even those who look quite healthy and say 'oh I can eat anything!.
***
I have told you of my journey through my eating habits over the years. Now it is time to tell you of the many disastrous things it caused in my body. Perhaps you will, recognise some of them or have had or have equal problems. I will cover some of the ones I have managed to escape later because I guess I have been moderately lucky. From what I have read all the things I mention may not have happened or may have been less of a problem if I had eaten according to my new knowledge.
Although I don't remember it I had double pneumonia at 18 months old and I was told, I nearly died. I don't think this was due to diet as I was breast fed until nine month old. I don't know what I was fed in the 1930s but probably ground up food much the same as I fed my son in the early 60s. After that except for the usual, for then, childhood illnesses, I was fine. The first one that may have been food related was abbesses in my ears. Very painful and persisted for 2 or 3 years.
By now it was war time and food was rationed. This most probably kept me healthy right through to my teenage years. With the exception that when my periods started at 13, I had bad pain and heavy flow. This continued all the time I menstruated getting progressively worse over the years. I would have a high temperature and often had to resort to my bed with hot water bottle in hand to cuddle. I have often read in the last few years that this could have been prevented with a low carbohydrate way of eating. If you suffer this, try cutting carbs. I ate plenty of carbs, that's for sure. More on how to do this later in this book.
At 18 and in the Air Force I suffered from enormous eruptions on my eyelids called Styes. One was so bad I had a course of thick white penicillin injections for 7 days. My first go of antibiotics. About the only good thing was I stopped having these horrible styes from then on. I also had bad bleeding gums. Probably bacteria I caught from my father who had the same thing. This is now thought to have much to do with bad eating. At this time I ate Air Force food which had many carbohydrates in them. I was a Physical Training Instructor so for me life was regular with lots of exercise. Near the end of my service time I noticed I was putting on weight. Realisation that I was eating to much chocolate meant I only had to desist and I lost the extra weight.
I was then very healthy, bar time of the monthly pains, until my middle 20s when I had my son. First of the women's type problems started and I had an operation. Told it would stop the monthly pain but it didn't. Coped with it, as we ladies do, until I worked in a London hospital in the early days of computers. Here I had more pain in the gut and had a laparoscopy. The first time of being told that nothing could be found wrong with me and not the last. Ring any bells with you?
At 40 I still played tennis and badminton when a pain flared up like a knife being stuck under my knee cap. Still at the hospital I sought help only to be told 'I had an incredibly wobbly knee cap'. Bandaged and told not to bend it. Sports and dancing, both my loves in life, came to a halt. It was the beginning of Arthritis but nobody told me. This is one of the big autoimmune problems of today and can be helped with low carb diet. Are you beginning to wonder what I mean by Low Carb Diet. As mentioned before it is cutting out many of today's foods and particularly sugar and wheat. Be patient, I will tell you simple ways to do this that are easy and tasty. Meanwhile try to cut down on sugar, it's a start.
Now a series of what are termed 'Women's Problems' happened but in my case they were intestinal as well, not that I was told this. Lots more operations climaxing with a total hysterectomy. Yes, I remember hearing one surgeon saying 'cut the box out' to fellow doctors. In my case the pain did not stop and I was told as so many times before and since, there is nothing wrong.
Then came Arthritis in both knees and two ops for knee replacement. Both reasonable successful even 12 years later. By now I had been told I had Low Thyroid problems. How many of us, male and female, get told this. We are put on thyroxine pills that are increased all the time. This is well known to be an autoimmune disease along with Arthritis. Will talk about that later too. But when you are told you will always have to take thyroxine it may not be true. I have managed to reduce how much I take and wish I could stop it altogether.
Of course as I got older I was told I had high blood pressure and had pills for that. Off of them now. I also had digestive upper stomach pain and had to take Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPI) pills. This was found to be a small ulcer and hiatus hernia. Plus later having to lose my gall bladder. I am running these all together because this was just before my Damascus Light went on. The ulcer was cured by a diet they advised and I stuck to, not low carb, anything but, but it worked.
I am now up to the age of 80 and the stomach pains had resolved into terrible continuous diarrhoea which I had suffered on and off for some 40 years. I eventually managed to get my doctor to say I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which of course is a catch all. I had very embarrassing happenings, now I would hardly go out unless I was sure there was a toilet near by. My health deteriorated and I was very depressed, not like me at all. I pondered what I could do to stop this. Needless to say doctors were not much use. I got send for a bowel scan which of course made me fear the worst. Was it cancer? The scan came back with the usual 'Nothing Wrong'.
At this good news I sat down and cried. I had the Cri de Coeur so many of us come to "What do I do to be well again?". Something clicked in my mind. I had cured the ulcer with a diet. Was there something that could help my lower gut? I am very computer literate for my age and so did the thing doctors hate and often have to do themselves - I turned to Dr Google and YouTube
Ch 3
So how could eating these processed foods give you all these health problems? Why is eating carbohydrates wrong? First of all what are Carbohydrates or Carbs as they are often called. In every day shopping terms they are things like Bread, Pastry, Cakes, Waffles, Muffins, Pasta, things usually made out of some kind of grain, Wheat, Barley, Oats etc. Then the most pernicious carb of all to my mind - Sugar. The connection is that all the things made of grain are sugar in a different form. They turn into sugar the moment you eat them. Take a bit of white bread, put it into your mouth and chew for a while, so it will taste sweet as your digestive juices start to break it down into sugar molecules.
So eating any of these products is loading your body up with sugar. The point is that our bodies are not meant to have that much sugar running around inside us. It is astonishing to learn that at anytime we only need a teaspoon of sugar in our blood to be fine and dandy. We all have so much more at any given time. The body is unhappy and sends out a thing called Insulin the clear it away, make it go into our cells that need it for energy, and bring our blood sugar content back to normal. BUT when there is too much sugar for the insulin to do its work properly things go wrong. So the message goes back to the Pancreas that makes the insulin to send out more - and more. The body cells get to the point of saturation with sugar and shout - Stop! They can not take in any more sugar. But for you it is coffee break time, what do you do? You, like most people, push more sugar into the body in the form of sweetened coffee, muffins and confectionary bars.
Simplified I know, but we do not need all this carbohydrate. We have been given messages from the medical world all our lives that we 'need it for energy'. That the brain cannot work without glucose, another name for sugar or carb. This is absolutely not true as I will discuss later. All this sugar being refused by the cells of the body is known as Insulin Resistance. It is the start of so many chronic diseases, making so many of us ill. How do we turn it around? By learning more about how we use, or misuse, our body and with the food we put in it. Start by learning where sugar is hidden in the food we choose.
Have you thought you were being good by having a diet cake lately? Or a low fat yogurt. It has a lot of sugar added to make it tasty enough to eat. Otherwise, as Dr Robert Lustig says, "It tastes like cardboard" It may have more sugar than a conventional cake or yogurt. It may or may not say 'sugar' as such on the description but in some form or another, possibly under two or three other names, or more, it will have had some form of sugar added.
This is where I start to say that we, the world wide public, have been cheated by the food makers and politicians. Low Sugar is the latest thing written on packets to attract us and it may possibly be low in actual white grains of sugar. That flowing white crystal that we all think of as a bowl of sugar. But other names for sugar-type products can come under more than 50 different descriptive names. (Note I have taken this from elsewhere apologies, it will not be use when published)
As you can see it gives manufacturers plenty of scope to fool us. Who thought of Fruit Juice as sugar but it is. Well not sugar - it is another type of sugar called Fructose. The place it should be is a in a bit of fruit. It is not that a small amount of fructose would really hurt you but in its latest incarnation it is a terrible concoction to put in your body. It is called High Fructose Corn Syrup. Yes, not even a fruit, it's from a cereal grain. Something that is cheap to grow and used in so many products today. They even try to hide it by changing the name to - Corn Sugar - They became even more sneaky by saying it was a Natural Sweetener. Well the original corn may be natural but by the time you eat or drink it, and it is mostly in drinks, it is very processed and to my mind, very unnatural. Of course sugar is processed as well, it does not come out of a sugar cane in lovely white crystals. The truth here is that sugars in all forms are best left alone, not eaten or drunk at all.
What! No sugar! At all! Well very, very little and I will go into this later, tell you what some consider the best ones to eat but always in small amounts and not often. If you are trying to reduce sugar please just start by reading the ingredients listed and see for yourself. I will tell you that both my husband and myself, after several years of not eating or drinking sugar, cannot stomach things with all these added sugars. Yet when young my favourite was a sugar sandwich! In my years of trying to reduce my size I ate multi-tons of 'low fat' fruit yogurts. Full of sugar. No wonder even though I lost weight I always regained it, something that does not happen on my Low Carb - Healthy Fat Keto way of eating. Well not unless you are stupid and go back to eating a standard western diet.
While we are talking of carbohydrates there is one thing I would like to say. Not all carbohydrates are bad. There are some foods that are carbs but low in carbohydrates. What are these? Why vegetables. Yes all vegetables are full of carbs and you can eat them all if you have a mind to. Some are better for you than others and the best way to explain it is
"Eat the vegetables that grow above ground first."
Root vegetables have far greater amounts of carbohydrates in them. Although they they do also have many good nutrients, vitamins etc. But there is one root vegetable that is better left alone just like the grains - the potato. Change to sweet potato if you must, delicious. Some people cannot take what are called the 'Nightshade' vegetables, peppers, aubergine and of course among these are potatoes. But I say don't eat potato because it is full of carbohydrate, it is akin to eating a lump of sugar.
.............
FAT!
Here we leave sugar and carbohydrates for a while and come to what might be called the second cause of terrible eating mistakes in the world today. Fat! In fact looking at the history of nutrition it was the fear of fat in the matter of heart attacks that caused the start of people eating too many carbohydrates. But first we must discard the lie we have been told for decades.
"It is not Fat that makes you Fat - it is carbohydrates including sugars".
Now here is somewhere you will have to adjust in thinking. To most people this does not compute. Surely fat would just add on to a persons own fat. Not so, the body likes to burn fat as well as sugar for energy. It all rather depends on the type of fat you eat, good or bad. Again we have been told that the fat that is good for us comes from what are called seed oils, unsaturated fats that are purportedly ‘Heart Healthy’ ,long with those carbohydrates. I for one chugged them down for years along with the bread, biscuits, cakes and so on. The other fat called Saturated Fat was vilified and despised and the cause bad "Heart Health". Saturated fat comes mostly but not all, from animal products. Here is a pocket history to put it in perspective and then reasons why Saturated Fat is OK.
To light the Victorian's lamps in the 1800 and possibly before, they burned whale oil in their lamps. In America they grew a plenty of Cotton and after using the fluff ball to spin cotton they were left with a lot, a lot, of cotton seeds. Some were fed to animals but the rest was waste. A way was found to get oil out of these seeds and it began to replace whale oil - good for the whales at least. This went on for a while until somebody discovered Black Gold, Oil from the ground, that still makes petrol to this day. This oil was cheaper than cotton seed oil and once again they had a lot of waste seed to get rid of.
Clever business men came to the rescue and decided that human beings could eat it. They adulterated good olive oil by mixing the cotton seed oil in and selling cheaply. Italy was horrified and banned all so called olive oil from being imported from America. But as time went by and gas and electricity started to light the night they had to find another way to sell the cotton seed oil. They put it through a chemical manufacturing process and made it into a hard white lard like substance. This was christened Crisco in the States and was sold to the housewife to make her cakes and pastry. They brought out a cookbook where every recipe used this white fat as shortening and gave it away for free. Soon Moms everywhere used it to do their cooking. Later they changed it again to replace butter by adding colouring and flavours. This is what we call margarine and was particularly used in the wartimes.
Further seeds and grains have been used to make oils and changed into anything they wanted to make it. So today we have shelves and shelves of these oils. Anything wrong in that? I suppose not if we had been left alone to choose the fats humans have always eaten, lards, tallows and butters. But we were about to be railroaded to consuming these man made horrors that would do significant damage to our bodies. Later these were called Trans Fats and banned. Back to little more history or how it all came about. Every book of this genre has this this story but it needs to be retold here. If you hate history I will try to keep it short.
In the 50s, 60s Americans were dying of heart disease. I expect it was happening elsewhere in the world but let's go with the story. Top doctors tried to find out why this was happening from the President down to the ordinary man in the street. When they looked at the hearts of those that had died they found their arteries and hearts filled with fatty substance called cholesterol. Ah, penny dropping with you. After some rather odd and even dubious research it was pronounced that people must cut their fat consumption because of this fat called cholesterol. Particularly a fat called Saturated Fat that mostly came from animals. Now oils and margarines were not Saturated they were Unsaturated or Mono Unsaturated. We will not go into it here what all that means but big business soon saw the possibilities. The medical world wanted you not to eat animal fat and here was all this non animal oil and fat ready to sell.
Well that last sentence or so is rather my way of looking at it but it happened never-the-less. The American government told the population not to eat what mankind had always eaten and swallow manufactured processed oils. Something humans had never eaten. Wonder why it has gone wrong? Because gone wrong it has. We will continue this in the next chapter and bring round full circle again to carbs and sugar consumption.
THE BLISS POINT
Ch 4
Which is worse, Fat or Carbohydrates? Well neither really because what seems to be the very worse is Fat and Carbs together. Particularly sugar and fat together. But let us get this very straight - the fat I am talking about is not Saturated Fat but the fat we talked about in the last chapter, Seed oils, manmade manufactured oils. When carbohydrates and these oils are brought together in processed foods it causes even more of the dire chronic illnesses we suffer so much of these days. Probably because the two together are so addictive, yes addictive. We have seen that high sugar in the blood leads to Insulin resistance in the end, now let us look at why seed oils are not good in our bodies.
For this we have to go a bit deeper into the structure of our bodies, indeed even down to cell level. Much of our body is made of fat, indeed our very brain is full of it. But it needs good fat to create good structure. Humans have always eaten fat and most of it was saturated fat. There was a small portion that was natural unsaturated or monounsaturated fat. In the body it is used to manufacture many parts of us particularly the membranes of our cells.
The difference between the Saturated and Unsaturated is the former is stable and the latter is unstable and it can go rancid. It is a matter of the number of bonds of the molecules. This can make the cell membranes weak and unstable leading to many inflammatory illnesses. Imagine building a house with good solid bricks or choosing a cheaper version that crumbles easily and is attacked by the weather. Building your cells with good strong saturated fats keeps them strong whereas unsaturated oils are likely to be attacked by oxidisation. Rust! Mostly you can recognise saturated fat by the fact that when cold it is solid. Unsaturated is usually liquid. This latter fact we have mentioned before in that manufacturers found a way to make the liquid fat solid.
We now can see that these three ingredients in so many processed foods are available cheaply and in large quantities. Vast fields of wheat, soy and corn subsidised but the governments. Sugar, as if there was not enough of it, was joined by turning some of these seed crops into a new form of sugar, again making it very cheap. And again these seed crops were turned into the new forms of fats. It is a fact that when these ingredients are processed by very clever industrialists abetted by even cleverer scientists, and they are mixed together in innumerable forms that taste good, they are cheap to buy AND ARE ADDICTIVE!
You do not have to read and research far to find articles on how addictive these foods are, foods that we all take for granted as being OK to eat. The normal stuff of life. Walk down any street and see people with these things, pies, wraps, pannini's, rolls, sandwiches, clamped in their hands and mouths. Let alone those eaten in restaurants or taken home for the family. This is before we even look at take-aways, the ready meals in supermarkets, the boxes, packets, bars and jars full of things that often are truly made out of only these three things with a tiny bit of filling to give a semblance of real food.
But I said addictive. It has been found that many of these 'foods', particularly sugar, actually light up the same part of the brain in scans that hard drugs illuminate. Yes, cocaine, hash, heroin and the rest. So it creates the "I want more" situation. The manufactures play to this and get their scientist to find what is called "The Bliss Point". You didn't know you were being manipulated? No I didn't either for more than nearly 60 years. Not only that they have the gaul to call it 'food'. When you eat it it tastes so good, and being mostly carbohydrates, you very soon feel hungry again. There are three reasons for this.
- There are no good nutrients in these things and the body asks for more to find what it needs.
- There is no good fats in them to make you feel full, called satiety.
- After giving you a high spike of sugar in the blood stream it quickly drops and you have low blood sugar. You need more.
There you are left back where you started. Craving more of these processed things. Cravings are one of the things that you leave behind when you eat low carbs and high saturated fat. Yes really, cravings for sweet things and carbs can be brought to a minimum or even completely stopped. Wouldn't that be brilliant. So now you know some of the reasons why modern manufactured, processed foods are not good for humans (or our animals, fat dogs and cats) I will give you a starter to try and show you a new WAYOF EATING. ( Referred to in this book as a WOE) Nothing - nothing can convince you of the benefits of eating this way more than giving it a go. Even just two weeks may make a difference. I will continue with more whys and wherefores later in the book.
Yes, but how do I start?
If, as suggested you have already cut out sugar, say in coffee of tea, you are well on the road. But as you can see it goes a lot deeper. To start with you may have been looking at food labels ingredients with a different eye and been horrified how many thing have sugar in them. If you haven't please start now. There is probably a packet in your kitchen right now that could show you this is true. But then you may say, I don't know that I can understand anything on these labels. And there we have it! The way to eat Low Carb-High Fat (LCHF) is to only eat natural things, not those in a box, packet, jar or tin.
If you have made the decision to try to improve your health, lose weight and get fit, changing what you eat is the right place to make a start, leave the worry of over-weight or unfitness till later, they will come of their own accord, yes they will. In my humble opinion it is best to decide on a day to start and make that very simple. I am going to talk about animal foods as your protein, if you are a vegetarian then you must work to your limits. It is harder but possible. First lets make out a menu for three meals a day. This will be for an absolute beginners guide. Buy some of things on this list....
Meats, of all kinds including 'Bacon'
Fish and Sea Foods
Eggs
Cheese, all kinds.
Full fat cream
Fats like butter, ghee lards, tallow, coconut oil. And good quality olive oil. (No seed oils)
Above ground vegetables including Avocado.
Nuts and seeds
Vegetables can be cooked or raw.
Plain Yogurt. (No added sugar) possibly Greek.
Berries - blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries.
The only sweetener I think all right at this point is a liquid Stevia. I use the one with vanilla flavouring available on line at Amazon
Now we have to make these ingredients up into a very sustaining meals. Obviously they have to suit your particular lifestyle, if you work and have to take a meal with you, have to cook for others, choose things to suit. Cooking for others is quite easy really because a meal of meat and vegetables may be something they can eat as just well with an addition of potatoes or bread for them.
Breakfasts can be cooked eggs and bacon, sausages, tomatoes mushrooms, OR yogurt, berries, nuts and seeds and CREAM. Or a little of both. I often have a small yogurt mixture and then some scrambled egg and a bit of bacon.
Lunches can be meat or eggs or cheese and vegetables. Again these can be hot or cold meals. Workers can make up a box of salad plus the meat or eggs or cheese etc.
Evening meal is easy, basically the same as lunches. You can swap them around, cold or hot you could have the yogurt mix for a pudding instead of at breakfast.
The choice is yours. Work out a three meals a day menu for one week, go out and buy the things you need. Obviously you may need fresh things during the week but these days with fridges and freezers it is probably possible to get it in stock.
Keep it very simple and easy to do. You will find the benefit to this later. It helps cut craving.
Amounts - oh this is the good part - have what you need to fill you up. There is NO COUNTING CALORIES, no specific amounts. The only thing I will say is you MUST eat fats at every meal in a good amount. Full fat everything!
IT IS THE FAT THAT WILL STOP YOU FEELING HUNGRY.
So cream and full fat yogurt, add a small amount of chopped nuts
Full fat cheese and butter. No fat reduced stuff.
Salads with plenty of olive oil for dressings. Add meat and cheese if you want to, have full fat cream cheeses.
Cook meals in plenty of fat. Buy meat with fat not lean. Bacon with fat. Add butter to everything.
Vegetables can have melted cheese or fat on them. One book I read said 'all vegetables can be improved with bacon added'. I add to that cheese can also improve any meal.
OK, so the first scream is "how do you eat it without bread or potato?" Strangely it is not as difficult as you think. Once the first week is over the second is not so bad. None of it is bad actually because you will have found and remembered the taste of REAL FOOD. A sliced avocado with eggs and bacon is delicious.
On the first shop you will notice, or should, how many aisles in the supermarket you do not need to go down. Two things to remember when tempted to just buy that salad dressing, you are just trying this for two weeks, and you are doing this for improve your health problems. Are you suffering one of the chronic illnesses I spoke of before? Then imagine it lessening in intensity. What in two weeks? Yes it is possible that you could see a difference, not saying you will but it is possible. My IBS was unbelievably better in that length time. Even diminished pain can be a blessing. Make it fun in the buying and organising. Or make it a learning experience. Remember old flavours you liked and savour new flavours.
Is this going to be more expensive? Difficult to answer. If you can afford to buy all Organic foods then yes, it may well be. But that can be something you leave for now. I suppose the green stuff can lose it freshness but the fridge should help that. If you don't have one then maybe you will have to shop again later in the week. But I suppose nothing is quite as cheap and easy as bake beans on toast but then again it is eating that way that may have led you to having a chronic disease. Bake Beans? Yes, they have tried to reduce the sugar but it is still very high. For quick meals think eggs and cheese in any way of cooking without the toast of course.
For those that work I would recommend that you take food with you. Of necessity it is likely to be salad in a box with meat, fish, cheese or boiled eggs. You can prepare this the night before. To get to have a 'wrap' is either in a lettuce leaf or make a large one egg omelette and let it cool.you can roll or fold things in this. Add some loose nuts if you like but not too many. They can come in useful to pop if you have to wait to get to your meal. Or feel hungry. Drinks should only be water, teas, and coffee. You can put cream in the coffee, or milk in the tea. Forget all canned drinks.
Here is a hard bit. It is a colleague birthday and the cream cakes are going round, or that gooey Birthday cake slice is being offered. What do you do? Say no thanks and offend or take it and eat it? I suggest you be prepared with a bag of some kind, take a very tiny bit of the cream and make noises of pleasure then put it in bag to take home. You could make some excuse of saving till later. Bet there might be somebody at home that would help you out. Or - you have to be brave and honest, announce to the world that you are trying to help you health by giving up sugar for a while. This does bring on questions and comments but it is one way to deal with this and why you are eating the way you are at meals. Good point here, when it is seen that your health does improve, that you look better, they start asking how you do it. Tell them about this book. More on actually implementing this WOE later.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5
The last chapter was just to give you a start rather than wait until the end of the book. I have been annoyed by that in several books when I was researching. There is so much more to it yet than those simple ideas on what to eat remain the basic of a Low Carb Way of Eating. What I feel one wants to know is how and why it works in simple terms. How can it be that what you have been eating for many years and probably your mother before you, can cause such devastation. As an exercise I would ask you to look around your friends and family, obviously politely, and see how many of them have one of the chronic diseases I spoke of in the first chapter.
After writing this I happened to stop and had a chat with a neighbour. Within minutes he admitted he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He had no idea about not eating carbohydrates nor was he on the internet. I did my 60 second talk and he said his wife cooked all the bread and cakes. Well at least they were homemade. Then he said something that really struck me, he said that he had never seen so many sick and ill people as there were around these days. I had to agree.
The first thing to notice is the tummies, are they tending to be on the large size? It can vary from just a bit podgy to gentlemen with what I call Bowling Ball stomachs. Or just that filled in look from the bottom of the ribs. Ladies do tend to put it on round the hips which is actually not as bad as on the stomach. Not good, but not so bad unless it gets beyond a joke, so to speak. But ladies can puff up under the ribs as well, it is that straight down look from bosom to top of legs. This if a really good sign that the person has a lot of fat stored in a wrong place, stored round the inner organs like liver and kidneys. It is called visceral fat.
Good news, good news, it is often the first fat to go when eating a this WOE. This fat is not only stored around the organs but in them as well. The best known of these is something that has soared in the number of people with it, Non Alcoholics fatty liver disease. Even children have it mostly because they drink so many sugar filled (well High Fructose Corn Syrup to be correct) cans of soda. It means the liver cannot do its work properly. Other organs can also have fat lodged in them but the worst place is the liver because it is our things happen that keep our body ticking over. Clearing out the Fructose is one of them.
In older people you see they are losing their ability to move properly, limping, bent backs and rounded necks and mis-formed hands.This latter is trying its best to get me. Much as I am over 3 years into eating this WOE I ate like everyone else for so many years. I am sure it would be much worse. If I didn't watch my food very carefully.
In the young we have an epidemic of ADHD and other similar problems. Problems that are known to get better when their food is modified, modern processed food is removed from their diets and particularly sugars. So many tales of pandemonium at Christmas and birthday parties where they are fed not only sugars but chemical colours. More on those later.
Here is a shock, even those that look slim, fit and well may not be inside. They too can have visceral fat round their organs! My husband was very surprised when he came to retire from a job that required a lot of physical energy and movement. He decided to eat the same way as me when he saw how well I became. After six months he found he had lost quite a lot of weight and we had to buy him new clothes, his waist had shrunk. He is in his early 70s. This is known as being TOFI. Thin on the outside Fat on the Inside. Why? Because of the way we have all been led to eat, Pizzas, Pies, chips, sandwiches, takeaways, and on the sweet side ice cream, sticky toffee puddings, confectionary of every kind.
