Going back to food as fuel and medicine

Once upon a time our ancestors knew what they had to eat to give themselves enough fuel to work, and the medicine to keep healthy.  We have since lost that knowledge.  We have also lost the knowledge to grow and cook from scratch and many people now adays rely on meals from the supermarket. or take aways. When did we stop thinking about food as fuel and nutrition and start thinking of it as a treat, a pass time or something to be indulged in?  How did we lose all those skills over a short period of time?  I blame the food industry, and us for believing the hype and opting for convenience.

For years I thought  that I was eating a healthy diet, but lots of times it was full of hidden ingredients that could harm me  I bought supplements as a safe guard, but again they were often full of hidden nasties. No one tells us that not all supplements are equal and eating a healthy, balanced diet is so important. Lots of people cheat and eat and drink rubbish and then take a few supplements thinking that they will be ok as they are getting the nutrients that they need. Good quality supplements are really useful like magnesium as you get older, and B12 if you are a vegan, but I don’t believe that we should just rely on them for our health.  Everything that we put into our mouth is important and impacts on our body.

The trouble is, that a lot of foods that we find on the shelves in the supermarket are addictive and our body is not designed to deal with most of them.  Unbeknown to many things like sawdust are added to bulk food out. I was really addicted to chocolate but have found since I started taking some magnesium, that my addiction has reduced. Trying to be healthy is so hard and confusing now adays.  The things that I learned in school that were nutritious, I was later told were bad for me, even though they had been eaten for hundreds, if not thousands of years.  I believed that recent technology meant that we now knew better.  I was wrong.  It was mainly a marketing ploy.

Now adays, I try to stick to a diet of mainly things that my grandparents ate as they all lived into their nineties.  However,  food is not the same and has been tampered with, unfortunately.  The flour has been hybridised, the vegetables are full of chemicals and preservatives, and the meat is full of hormones.  Even ‘organic’ does not mean the same as it used to.  It feels nearly impossible to make sensible, healthy choices, sometimes.

Pills are pushed on us and illnesses are ‘cured’ by taking a pill with a long list of side effects. Sometimes these drugs are even given for preventative measures before we are even ill. This can make us complacent about our health as it is a quick fix. Meanwhile, we are surrounded by weeds, bushes and plants that Mother Nature gave us to cure or improve our health.  Unfortunately we don’t value or know how to use them.  We didn’t listen to our ancestors and thought that we knew better in this modern age.   This last few years I have been trying to incorporate herbs and items I have foraged, and regain some of that knowledge.

How are we supposed to know what is really safe, either food or medication wise?  We get given one medication to relieve one symptom, that gives us another symptom and so an added medication is given to deal with that symptom.  Before we know it we are on at least half a dozen medications, and have no real idea about how they are impacting on our health.  Can we really trust the doctors when they are paid to prescribe by drug companies. I want to, but I find it hard as I know that they get very little training in nutrition and have been trained to look after us in this way.

I am trying to improve my general health at the moment. I am over weight, pre diabetic, and have bad knees. I let myself go in my 40s when life was very hard and stressful.  Although I weigh a lot less than then, and am over all healthier (I walked with a stick then), it is so hard to get out of bad habits. It is also not easy to  more or less unlearn everything that I have been taught over the last 40 years.  I was told fats were bad for me and to use seed oils instead.  These low fat diets have now been linked to increases in insulin resistance and heart disease. I was advised not to drink full milk or full fat yoghurt for the same reasons, even by doctors, which seems incredible when low fat products often contain hidden sugars and higher amounts of salt.  Too many eggs were supposed to be bad for me.  It was impressed on me that I just needed to count calories or ‘points’ to lose weight whilst not being advised about nutrition.  All that mattered was what the scales registered.  Until I started growing my own food, and did a professional nutrition course, I didn’t always choose the nutrient rich foods that I needed for the general health of my bones or organs.  Magazines and the media kept giving me mixed advice, and when I was younger I thought that I was infallible.

A myth that I have recently started breaking is that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  However recent studies have shown that skipping breakfast and doing some intermittent fasting not only usually results in less calories being consumed. but that it can improve blood sugar levels and reduce inflammation.  Doctors also told me to use sweeteners instead of sugar when these are shown to be connected to changes in gut bacteria and increased diabetes.  I was also warned about other ‘old fashioned’ staples like potatoes, despite them being full of vitamin C, fibre, and potassium.  I now believe that having a balanced diet and moderation are more important, and the way that things are cooked.  I am more careful what I add to things like potatoes, as well and looking at what else I have eaten that day.

I have often been told that because I am ‘fat’ I am not healthy.  Meanwhile, thin friends of  my age are often sick and take a bag full of medication, whilst I rely on none. Many are on benefits and have had to retire early due to poor health. The government is even talking about giving the overweight unemployed  fat loss injections instead of looking at the reasons why they maybe overweight, which is often due to other reasons rather than being lazy or gluttonous.  I know that my weight increased last year. and my pre diabetes started, due to comfort eating as my brother was dying. Unlike me, my ‘skinny’ friends don’t have regular exercise, or particularly eat nutritious meals as I do, but I am still the one that gets the judgemental looks or lectures of disinformation.  I feel like the world has gone mad and that we need to get back to the basics that I learned from Mrs Roberts in high school.  Pictures of the 1960s and the 1970s did not show lots of overweight people, in fact there were hardly any.  On a trip to the swimming pool the other day I felt normal as most of the women were overweight or obese.  That is so sad as the majority of them were a lot younger than me.

We see all of these foods being sold as healthy in the supermarket like juices and smoothies but most of them are laden with sugar.   In fact the best way to eat fruit is raw and whole as we need the fibre.  Many ‘health products’ like probiotics are useless as they do not work if not constantly stored at the correct temperature, and studies show that they can actually be damaging as they interfere with the natural bacteria in the gut.  Another myth is that high cholesterol food is bad for us, like eggs and full fat milk.  Yes, I agree that these should not be over indulged in, but our brains actually need cholesterol to work well, and they make one feel full, and provide essential nutrients.  It seems a bit of a coincidence to me that dementia has risen significantly since we have all been encouraged to eat a low fat and low cholesterol diet (and are prescribed statins due to our age rather than our cholesterol),.

I think that I have often taken my health for granted. I have a bad habit of eating  less healthily over the winter.  I have no garden growing and I indulge in comfort eating (I hate winter).  However this year I am writing this to keep myself accountable as I really want to try to see my food as nutrition and medicine, rather than calories and a treat (except on special occasions).  Since March I have lost a stone, but that is not as important as the fact that I have lowered the amount of UPF that I eat, and increased my nutrition.  My goal is to build on that.  I want to lower even further the amount of ultra processed food that I eat, even though I can often get this food readily from the community fridge, or cheaply in the supermarket.  I intend to read every label, read all the medical studies, learn to forage more items that will act like medicine, and try to hydrate more.  I have already reduced the portions and the number of meals that I eat, but realise that I have a long way to go.  Staying healthy whilst losing weight is not going to be easy, but if I want to stay away from drugs, and live an active life as I reach my sunset years, it is something that I need to do and take seriously.  Hopefully it is not too late. Are you taking steps to improve your health?