Who Are the Food Faddists?

WHO ARE THE REAL FOOD FADDISTS?

They may not be whom you think!

by Dr. Lawrence Wilson

All information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.

THE COOKED VEGETABLE FOLKS

Some people say that eating piles of cooked vegetables is faddish and weird. But it is not faddish at all. It is necessary today for many reasons. Among the main reasons are:

1. Vegetables supply the most alkaline reserve minerals of any food available to us. Everyone today is mineral-starved due to modern agricultural practices, food refining, stress, impaired digestion, and perhaps other factors.

2. Vegetables also supply hundreds of phytonutrients that we need for nutrition, detoxification, healing the body and more.

3. Cooking breaks down the tough vegetable fibers. It makes the minerals in the vegetables far more bioavailable. Cooking also makes the vegetables much more yang, an important physics quality today. Cooking also helps to make sure the vegetables are free of bacteria, viruses and parasites. Moderate cooking does not destroy minerals at all, and, in fact, makes them much more absorbable, especially if one’s digestion is weak – which is almost universal. Cooking damages a few vitamins that are easily replaced.

THE WHOLE GRAIN AND KELP CROWD

Do you eat brown rice and other whole grains? Some call this faddish, but I say it is not. These staple foods have been around for thousands of years, long before the word 'faddism' was ever coined.

White Bread. The faddists are those that favor white bread - a relatively new food, bleached white with lethal chlorine and bromine for good looks. It is promoted on appearance and 'fluffiness'. It is even 'enriched' for our health. However, the label fails to mention that 40 or so nutrients have been removed, and only four nutrients replaced. The label also doesn't tell you that white bread is enriched by law, because the FDA found it to be dangerously deficient in vital nutrients. It literally killed animals fed this fake food.

I have found that the best use for white flour is for paper mache. The mushy concoction known as white bread is also great for mopping up messes on the floor, or for blowing your nose if you don't have a Kleenex.

Kelp. Kelp, by contrast, is a seaweed that is widely used as food in the Orient. It is extremely rich in minerals, a natural food and it is inexpensive. It contains some toxic metals, as do all products from the sea. However, it contains large amounts of substances called alginates that prevent the absorption of most of the toxic metals in the product. Some people do not like its fishy taste, but it can be obtained in tablets or capsules. It is an excellent mineral supplement. Most everyone today is low in iodine and many other vital minerals. Taking kelp daily, far from being faddish, is a wise decision for most people. Do not take it if it makes you jittery, however.

ALL-NATURAL, NO-ARTIFICIAL-ANYTHING

Some argue that the 'all-natural' trend is a fad. And surely there are abuses of the phrase. It is true that lead and arsenic are totally natural. Some argue that everything that is manufactured must be natural or we couldn't make it. But this is playing with words. In fact, the idea of eating natural foods is not a bad one.

            The Synthetic Chemical Crowd. The faddists, in my opinion, are the folks who gobble up the synthetic foods - margarine, cola drinks, artificial sweeteners, and thousands of other chemical foods. They often look and taste good, but contain little or no nutrition. I suggest that cola drinks are good for cleaning the terminals on your car battery, and that is about all. Cola drinks are so acidic that a nail left in a can of cola will often dissolve in a few days.
            As for margarine, the best use I have found for it is as a substitute for bicycle grease. Just don’t eat it unless you are hoping to shorten your life and make yourself ill.
            Those cute, sugar-covered, multi-colored cold cereals would make good packing material or possibly decent wall insulation. Just don't feed them to your children unless you enjoy hyperactive behavior and learning problems.
            As for chemical additives, the faddists are those who don't mind eating the several thousand chemical additives that have not been thoroughly tested. This is why they are on the Food and Drug Administration's 'GRAS' list - "generally regarded as safe". That is about all that can be said about them. Combine 20 or thirty in one meal, as often happens today, and you are definitely playing guinea-pig for the food chemistry industry.

THE 'ORGANICALLY GROWN' FOLKS

'Organically grown' is a trade term for food grown without chemical pesticides and herbicides. In California, it carries a legal definition. This is no longer faddish, so it is harder to write about it. It is, in fact, the fastest growing segment of the food market in America today.

But many doubt it still. Organic agriculture, of course, was the only method of growing food for thousands of years. So is this faddism? The movement to obtain organically grown food is only common sense.

After all, who really wants food laced with chemicals so deadly that they have decimated entire animal species? Rachel Carson and others have pointed out that pesticides have the same gene-altering effects as atomic radiation. We can also thank pesticides for the contamination of most ground water supplies, topsoil erosion, and even contamination of the oceans.

No, the faddists are the chemical advocates - duped into believing that we will starve without the toxic chemicals. The truth is quite the opposite. In a recent California drought, the organic farmers fared better, and their crops are more pest-resistant as well. Organic produce lasts longer on the shelf, and tastes better. If you don't agree, your taste buds are probably numb from years of eating all those chemicals, along with over-sweetened, over-salted food.

HOW ABOUT FISH OIL, EXTRA VITAMIN D AND TMG?

Surely, you say, this is faddism. But wait. These are nutrients that, in fact, are needed in larger quantities today because they are not provided in the diet or from other sources.

Fish Oils. Fish oil is very rich in what are called omega-3 fatty acids that are required to stop inflammation in our bodies and protect our cell membranes. Without enough of them, our nutrition suffers, we age much faster and we often end up with aches and pains, and even dementia, prostate problems in men, and many other ailments.

Vitamin D is supposed to come from being in the sun, or from vitamin D-enriched foods. The trouble is that for some unknown reason, the sun is not causing enough synthesis of vitamin D today. I would never depend on that source. Vitamin D is so critical to prevent cancer, and dozens of other conditions that a supplement of about 5000 iu is needed by all adults.

TMG or trimethylglycine is an unusual health food store item made from sugar beets. It is a methyl donor. It turns out that when we have toxic metals such as mercury in the body, it reduces methylation, a critical biochemical process needed for thousands of essential chemical reactions in the body. Taking extra is not faddish at all, but merely a compensation to help us thrive in our toxic world.

No, the food faddists are the ones who are content with food stuffs that look, taste and feel good, but con tain little or no nutrition. The Ding-Dong, Twinkie and microwave brownie crowd - you are the faddists, I say.

VITAMINS, MINERALS, HERBS, AND OTHER SUPPLEMENT PILLS

Herbs can hardly be called faddish. They have been around for a long time. Herbs have been part of every culture in recorded history. While some caution should be exercised, (see the article on Why Take Supplements?) some herbs are wonderful when used carefully.

Vitamins and minerals are essential food components that have been researched, many for over 100 years. Today, soils are depleted of nutrients, food is often refined, and stress and toxic chemicals in the environment and in prescription medication deplete nutrients.

In view of this, taking supplementary nutrients is a wise idea. Perhaps that is why at least 40% of Americans take nutritional supplements, even if the surgeon general doesn't approve.

The obvious fashion-conscious faddists are the ones who take the patent remedies we call pharmaceutical drugs. These go in and out of fashion every ten to twenty years as the patents expire and they are replaced by the latest models (which are at times worse than the old ones). These people deserve our pity, as they are caught up in an advertising scheme and nothing more, in too many instances. This is faddism in its purest sense.

ISN’T DRINKING SPRING WATER FADDIST?

No! While it may have been the case 100 years ago, I would say that today the folks who drink Evian or Crystal Geyser water are not faddish at all. Good quality spring water:

1. Has been filtered through the earth to cleanse it of most impurities.

2. It is tested and regulated by the government. I get tired of people telling me that spring water is unregulated, when this is not the truth in the USA and around the globe.

3. It contains vital minerals our bodies desperately need.

4. It contains subtle energetic qualities that make it among the best water to drink.

5. I find that the plastic bottles it comes in are not a concern, no matter what anyone writes or claims to the contrary. It would be nice if the containers were glass or easier to recycle, but the plastic is not a poison and all plastics today can be recycled.

In contrast, drinking reverse osmosis water or RO water (also called purified water or drinking water) always leaves a small residue of plastic in the liver of anyone who drinks it. RO is made by passing water at high pressure through a plastic membrane. RO water also does not hydrate the body well enough, in most cases. It does not matter how much of it one drinks.

RO and distilled waters are also very mineral-deficient and for this reason, they are too yin to drink in macrobiotic terminology. Adding minerals back to RO water or distilled water does not work well, in my experience because one does not know which to add, how much, and how to integrate the minerals into the “whole food” that is water. Please avoid distilled water and purified or drinking water made with RO.

Alkaline water is also too yin and not a good idea, in my experience. It is okay for short-term use, but that is all. The way to alkalinize the body is to restore the alkaline reserve minerals by eating a lot of cooked vegetables. Drinking alkaline water is a short-cut that does not do the same thing.

So-called designer waters sold at health food stores are often made from RO water or distilled water, and are therefore not healthful.

Carbon or sand-filtered only tap water. The second best drinking water, in most cases, is carbon or sand filtered-only tap water. This is not quite as good because:

1. Most often the water contains traces of pesticides, heavy metals, and even patented drugs such as high blood pressure pills, birth control pills, heart drugs antibiotics, and hundreds of others.

2. In addition, most all cities add several toxic chemicals such as chlorine and aluminum to the water to treat it. Far safer methods of water processing such as ozone can make for delicious and safer tap water.

Fluorides. The worst additive is the fluorides. Most chemical fluorides added to water supplies are actually the waste products gathered from smokestacks of fertilizer factories. This product, called hydrofluosilicic acid, also contains toxic metals, kerosene, radiation and other things that have no business in the water.

Pure spring water is no fad. It is common sense. It was the 'normal' state until short-sighted policies, corrupt legislators and callous individuals allowed various industrial and agricultural chemicals, medical drugs and heavy metals to seep into the water. This has destroyed the purity of the water supply for generations to come. For much more on this subject, please read Water For Drinking on this site.

CONCLUSION

In summary, there are plenty of foods and diets that are faddish, but often they are not the ones we think. So let's not go nuts over the food nuts. They may have something to offer.

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