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Meats & Sweets ~ A High Vitality Diet |
After having earnestly tried so many dietary styles over the course of many years, our Meats & Sweets, A High Vitality Diet is like a home coming. It’s versatile, balanced, liberating and very simple and satisfying while being easily adaptable to individual preferences and needs.
Don and I each have spent decades traversing the dietary spectrum with our quest to resolve various health issues. Our dietary experiments included high and low-carb, cooked and raw, and with or without grains, dairy, sugars, all plant foods, and even minimal plant foods. We've eaten vegan, fruitarian, macrobiotic, low-carb, Hypercarnivore (as in 70%+ animal-based), and ketogenic diets. Despite many ups and downs ~ including losing then regaining body fat ~ we did learn a thing or two after all that experimenting! I share some highlights of what I've learned, below.
In the end, Meats & Sweets best replicates the true original American diet, and that of our European ancestors ~ long before the advent of food processing during the Industrial Revolution. Foods that could be grown, raised, or gathered are nutritionally superior to mass produced refined processed foods containing excesses of salt, fats/oils, refined sugars, and other unidentifiable, non-food ingredients, including preservatives, dyes, gums, and others. This should be obvious! And now we are in the genetic revolution, as foods continue to be tampered with, without labeling or accountability.
I thought I’d share a few things I’ve discovered through all my years of dietary experiments ~ always focusing on what I believed to be healthy while more or less avoiding processed refined poor quality low nutritional foods. (Believed being the operative word here.)
In a nutshell: animal foods consumed in appropriate amounts plus the right types, quantities and quality of plant foods and fats will provide a solid foundation of health.
Likewise, avoiding foods that are not compatible to good health is equally important, and perhaps more so! The real problem is that what is most toxic to the body may be the opposite of what most people now believe and even promote! Hint: it's not the sugar!
What I've learned after decades of dietary experiments
Trigger warning: my discoveries fly in the face of many common nutritional beliefs! What I’ve discovered is from direct experience! Your results may vary!
I share this to help others break free from the nutritional boxes we all got stuck in.
I want you to have good health, age well, stay out of hospitals, have a healthy relationship with food, and bear much fruit!
Spare your time, money and resources, and learn from our trial and error!
- While eating an all raw diet sounds like it would be healthy ~ with all those intact enzymes allegedly helping improve digestion and absorption of more nutrients ~ I’ve yet to hear about any population sustaining a raw diet long term. It’s neither more appealing ~ to me and most people ~ to eat all raw all the time, nor necessarily healthier. Many foods are better digested when cooked, with a greater net nutrient absorption. All raw may be trendy in some vegan and primal circles, but it’s not necessarily superior ~ despite what promoters of these diets claim. Traditional diets do contain some raw or fermented foods, but rarely all raw. Have at it if you crave it, skip it if not.
- All foods can be nutritional, neutral or toxic, depending on the dose, although some foods we all commonly accept as natural and necessary may NOT be as healthy as we have been led to believe! (Read on and I'll disclose what in particular I am referring to.)
- ‘Carbohydrates’ ~ in and of themselves ~ are NOT the enemy. Glucose is NOT the enemy. Fructose is NOT the enemy. However processed foods containing refined flours, sweeteners, salt, artificial and natural flavors, unhealthy fats/oils, dyes and preservatives are nutritionally inferior foods that are often found WITH carbohydrates, and likely the real health robbers when consumed regularly. (A big reveal still to come.)
- Traditional fats may be better than commercial plant oils, but that doesn't mean you can eat fat with impunity, and without negative consequences.
- Excess dietary fat stores as...ready for this...fat, especially in conjunction with excess total energy consumption. (Calories.) Sorry, but total calories does matter!
- Red meat offers many health benefits. That doesn’t mean you should eat only ribeyes every day.
- Animal foods in combination with plant foods provides nutritional balance. Your diet doesn’t need to be only one or the other ~ all meat or all plants. Perhaps it's not the meat or the plants, but what you put on them that is the real cause of your digestive woes and other health imbalances.
- You can lose weight following pretty much any diet, especially as total calories consumed tends to be much less when first trying a different diet. I experienced this with vegan, carnivore, ketogenic, low-carb and high-carb diets. I experienced a rebound with each of them as well. These diets restrict major food groups. If you were to have tracked meals, before and after a dietary change, you may find that you've consumed fewer total calories, at least initially. Over time, you may acclimate and incrementally increase the total calories consumed, whether you are aware of doing so or not. The type of diet isn’t the magic. However, studies have linked salt consumption to increased appetite and total caloric consumption. I've linked a few of these below. Since most don’t want to take the time to track meals and macros, they prefer to find a way to eat that allows them ~ allegedly ~ to eat to satisfaction without going into excess. I've found that plan to be flawed. Track to know for sure what you are eating!
- Bacon might taste good, but it is not a health food.
- Pork, shellfish and other scavenger animals, birds and fish are unclean animals. They are more likely to cause health problems associated with contamination and parasites. They are the clean up crew, whether of the land or the seas. Think of your air conditioning filter. All the nasty stuff you want out of your environment are in their bellies and tissues!
- It’s ok to add a little sweetness to your life. Completely avoiding all sugars, and especially all fruit, honey, syrup, and most carbohydrates/plant foods tends to lead to increased irritability, poor quality sleep, and low moods and energy. Now that’s a sad diet!
- Stress, poor sleep, anger, habitual negative and worrisome thoughts may be negatively impacting your health more than what you eat.
- Living disharmonious to God’s laws is likely the greatest culprit of poor health that the majority of health gurus neglect to consider because you know, trust the science.
So now for the major reveal.
Don recently reordered a book he once had, Salt and The Seven Deadly Ills, by Karel Sporek, a chemist who discusses how salt, and more specifically sodium in conjunction with chloride found in salt (salt is ~ 40% sodium + 60% chloride) may be the real culprit undermining everyone's health ~ especially coupled with a deficiency of potassium!
Try your own salt-free, Meats & Sweets dietary experiment along with us:
- Your tastes will change, and acclimate to no added salt in the diet.
- You may find that in time, several nagging issues that never resolved no matter how 'healthy' your diet may start to resolve.
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Apples, cranberries and chopped dates baked in a little apple juice, topped with a salt-free oat crisp topping with a little whole grain flour, cinnamon and maple syrup |
Professors, Dr. Heikki Karppanen of the University of Helsinki and Dr. Eero Mervaala of the University of Kuopio report that an average 30-35 % reduction in salt intake during 30 years in Finland was associated with a dramatic 75 % to 80 % decrease in both stroke and coronary heart disease mortality in the population under 65 years. During the same period the life expectancy of both male and female Finns increased by 6 to 7 years.
Here's a few studies linking excess salt consumption to obesity, hypertension, and calcium loss. You may also want to read through the Safety Data Sheet for Sodium Chloride!
- High salt intake causes leptin resistance and obesity in mice by stimulating endogenous fructose production and metabolism. - PNAS, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences
- High salt intake: independent risk factor for obesity? - PubMed
- Salt Intake is Strongly Associated with Obesity - Science Daily
- Sodium Intake and Hypertension - NCBI
- Excess Sodium is Leading Dietary Cause of Heart Related Deaths - American College of Cardiology
- Diets high in salt could deplete calcium in the body - Science Daily
- Materials Safety Data Sheet for Sodium Chloride