disease, stroke, and diabetes than it does today. These diseases were quite rare
100 years ago.
Nowadays, you hear young people discussing their high cholesterol levels or
talking about their elevated blood pressure. You hear about women with breast
cancer in their thirties or forties. You hear about men who have heart attacks in
their forties, nonsmokers who undergo triple or quadruple bypass surgery, and
people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in their 50s or 60s. What is going on
here?
What Changed in Our Diet?
Food is medicine. To understand this, we simply need to look at the dietary
changes that took place in this country in the last century. Today’s diet is
certainly different from that of our grandparents. Our grandparents ate very little
processed food, and they rarely consumed refined carbohydrates, sugar, and
manufactured fats, such as refined vegetable oils or margarine. In their time, all
food was organic, meaning it was not genetically modified and did not contain
pesticides. Their diet included fresh vegetables, fruits, eggs from farmraised
birds, beef from grass-fed cows, raw whole milk delivered to their doors daily,
healthy natural fats like butter and olive oil, and whole, unrefined grains.
Unfortunately, today most food is processed, and much of the food we eat has
been chemically modified.
Most people today eat too many low-fat, grain-based products and highly
processed fats like refined vegetable oils. Our food is so modern that many of
our grandparents wouldn’t be able to recognize it. “Fatfree milk? What is that?”
This modern diet wreaks havoc on many of our hormones—and, in turn, our
health. Now, we fear cholesterolrich foods, including eggs, butter, whole milk,
and other animal products. Many view fat (especially saturated fat) as poison
and are obsessed with banishing it from their lives—a directive that stemmed
from the erroneous belief that animal products and cholesterolrich foods promote
hardening of the arteries.
How Our Modern Diet Is Failing
Probably the greatest dietary disaster that took our health downhill in this
country has been the general recommendation to follow a low-fat diet.
Surprised? I’ll bet you are. “Have fruit juices, eat cereals, consume three
servings of fatfree dairy daily, and always make low-fat choices” advises the
American Heart Association. Official recommendations like these have led