It’s about time the Calorie dies. I think it’s grip on nutritional and health minded folk is precarious. It ends up being a distraction from losing weight and/or being healthy. I think this because,
the Calorie is an invented unit of measurement.
That’s right it was made up. Just like most things we are taught. While, these made up conventions do allow for many things, we must always be careful we don’t use these made up conventions to make false implications. And this is exactly what has occurred with the Calorie!
Just like inches or meters for distance, some scientists created a measurement for energy, we call these Joules or calories. The commonly referred to Calorie on American food labels (C) is actually measured in kilocalories defined as – “amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.” If the body functioned like a steam engine I would more understand why nutrition would pay attention to the Calorie. The bottom line is our body does not demand food like a fire, to simply combust energy, and produce work. (See how they measure the Calories is food). The Calorie treats all food the same and it’s clear, food is not created equal.
Our body uses and needs specific nutrients and chemicals to operate, not an indiscriminate mass supply of energy. There are 3 Calories on a food label our body supposedly needs: Carbohydrates, protein, and fat. However, these are not interchangeable and have dramatic differences in nutritional value. The Calorie also does not include the wide variety of other nutrients, antioxidants, and compounds that we ingest from plants.
It is no wonder why Americans are so unhealthy. We have no idea. Nutrition & health literature are so perversely flooded with diets that use the Calorie as a focus. People struggle with these diets, that don’t account for corn, grain, and/or soy, genetically modified foods, and don’t encourage to eat vegetables and roots. You cannot extrapolate eating on it’s own, eating on it’s own terms. Eating is a huge component of the ecosystem and these ‘systems’ directly affect us.
Some advice, if you will ~
It’s simple. Eat vegetables.
- Do not eat fast food. Meat used in fast food, comes from cattle fed corn, grain, or soy as food. Cows are supposed to eat grass! What happens when they’re on this diet? They get really fat and develop all kinds of diseases. So the meat you ingest contains extreme amounts of fat, antibiotics to keep the cows from dying because their diet compromises their body so much, and other toxins associated with manufacturing meat. (Pink slime, yum!)
- Eat whole foods! You don’t have to shop at Whole Foods to get real food. Actually, Whole Foods has become it’s own problem by favoring shipping organic foods from far away rather than working with local farmers. The main point is that most of what is in the ‘middle’ sections of a grocery store, comes in a box or bag, comes from and primarily contains corn. Since the United State Government began subsidizing agriculture in the 1930’s, many problems have come out of this policy. Farmer’s were incentivized and still are to produce larger and larger amounts of corn. With huge abundance of corn, research quickly began and continues how to use this over-abundant crop as a raw material in as many other things as possible. This is how High Fructose Corn Syrup was invented as well as many others. If you haven’t noticed, everything in an average grocery or convenience store contains a corn derivative. (READ THE FULL LIST OF CORN DERIVATIVES)
- Why is corn bad? Corn is not evil and it’s not out to get you. It is a high caloric plant with a ton of carbohydrates, quite a bit of antioxidants and healthy nutrients. But this would be well grown sweet corn, whole produce. The culprit is mostly what is made from corn. These manufactured corn derivatives tend to have very little nutritional value. Many of the ingredients are made to be water insoluble. Water is essential in digestion as the polarities of water break apart cells at the molecular level. When you eat something that is water insoluble, your body has a very difficult time with it. Fat is an example. Fat is difficult for your body to break down, but it’s still able to with the enzyme ‘Lipase’. The modified corn derivatives are a different story. There is a reason why people that get fat consuming corn derivatives cannot lose it. Your body stores the fat and it gets stuck. Other fat clings to this fat just like that game of monkeys!
- What is corn good at? Making you fat. Corn is relatively very high in carbohydrates, mainly starch. This wouldn’t really be that big of an issue if a ‘high carb’ material wasn’t used in mostly all foods people consume. All these unused carbs get converted into fat as storage, and not just a little bit. Most people consume so much fattening foods in their diet that no matter how much they exercise, they will continue to convert and store fat. This is due, in part, to our high sugar diets and high stress lifestyle!
- Don’t eat fast food – Part 2. ‘Comprised foods’. I hope this doesn’t make things confusing, but I wanted to mention this point. I may make another post about this because it is very interested. There is much reason to believe that the quality of your food matters. Well obviously it does. But this applies when eating an organic and/or local produce v. Mansanto product. When you eat, say a tomato, from Mansanto, you are eating a compromised plant. The plant exist out of the natural balance of the ecosystem. To keep the plant alive and well, all sorts of chemicals, pesticides, sprays, fertilizers are needed. Plants produced in balance with the natural environment contain more healthy nutrients for your body and don’t pollute your system with all those highly toxic chemicals. Taste is a natural sign of vitality for plants and a sign of good value. It’s hard to know without a developed palate sometimes, but organic and/or local produce taste better. It taste better because it contains more nutrients, or as they refer to them ‘secondary metabolites and/or bioactive compounds.’ Science has been able to trick our perceptions, modifying plants to look nicer, but these are empty aesthetics.
You don’t have to become a “vegetarian”, but you do have to eat a lot more vegetables. Eat a wide variety of leafy, roots, plants, there are more vegetables then I really ever knew about. Each plant has it’s own unique properties and interactions with our body, especially root vegetables. There is a reason why, Radishes or Kale has so much hype. Every plant has the energy potential absorbed directly from the sun and that is where nutrition is. I still enjoy the taste and eat meat, but in terms of efficiency, eating 75% vegetables, I spend less, eat less, and feel better. This allows me to afford the way more delicious grass-fed beef, organic chicken, and fish.
And yes, Corn is a vegetable, but eat it in balance considering how much corn you already eat.
Losing the glue-like foods from your diet can also really increase your energy levels. Also, known as vegan.
Give it a try, you never know how you will feel until you try.
Some reading:
*This is not meant to be a scientific article. It uses common sense, reason, and my intuition Often if we stop and think, we have all the knowledge we need, and reality becomes much clearer. This is how Leonardo da Vinci worked. He didn’t have the internet, public libraries, or much of the scientific knowledge we have nowadays. But this didn’t stop him from making observations and thinking critically. His ideas, his inventions all came from within his own mind and should stand as a model that each and everything one of us has ‘an intuitive sense of knowing.’
>> RELATED POST: ‘EAT LOCAL & ORGANIC!’