Healthy eating

I popped over to Jimmy Moore's blog for a few minutes to see how he was doing.

If you're familiar with Jimmy Moore at all, he's lost over 100 pounds on a low carb diet. He has no heart blockages to speak of (yes, he's been tested) and he lost his brother to heart disease.

Over the past two years, he's gained some weight, inexplicably. He's lost some of it, but he's being tested for thyroid issues right now. All in all, he's a great guy.

He recently blasted Whole Foods for going with conventional wisdom and promoting a whole grains, low-fat based diet -- that same diet that has made many people sick and fat.

Arguably, a diet like that is the reason people go on SCD. Grains are extremely hard for people to digest, and refined grains are like pure sugar that feed all kinds of naughty bacteria. Add that to a history of antibiotic use (I myself had probably been on antibiotics more than 20 times before I was 20 years old), and you've got a recipe for gut dysfunction.

I was most disturbed by the comments section of the article, though. A lot of vegetarians outright mocked Jimmy for what they thought was an overweight guy. Jimmy is a HUGE man, but I wouldn't exactly call him fat. He's kind of like the Jolly Green Giant. Very huggable!

The other problem I had was that people automatically think low carb diets equal all meat diets. That's just not true. Jimmy eats a salad every day. I know, because he blogs about it. Most low carbers enjoy leafy greens, tomatoes, and fruits like berries.

Now I believe in real food. There are an awful lot of vegetarians who don't. But some do. And for the most part, our similarities outweigh our differences, so we shouldn't be fighting. Here's why.

Most low carbers who believe in real food will agree with vegetarians -- that factory raised meats are bad, that free range doesn't really mean much. The difference is that real food advocates who are meat-eaters will seek out pastured, organic meats. We don't believe in needless suffering and we don't believe in consuming unhealthy forms of meat. Those are commonalities.

Real food advocates (both vegetarian and not) also know the health dangers posed by overconsumption of polyunsaturated fats. It's the same reason that conventional beef is unhealthy -- the fat in conventional beef is bad because they are fed grain and corn, which are both very high in omega-6 fats.

The fat in corn oil is also bad for you for the same reason.

And that is why grains are bad for you -- they are filled with inflammatory omega-6. Yes, your body needs a small amount of omega-6, but we're consuming huge amounts that we'd never be able to consume or produce in a natural setting. Could you produce corn oil or refined flour without machinery? Of course you couldn't. It's not natural nor healthy to eat large amounts of those foods.

So while the vegetarians will likely mention that conventionally raised beef is bad for you, they won't draw that distinction back to the source of the problem -- grains.

So let's be on the same side here, veggies! Real foodists unite! :)