I had shared with you that there’s not a lot of difference between paleo and meat-eating and being vegan if you follow the diet strictly in the way it’s meant and the way it’s taught, and that is to avoid processed foods.

I’m going to go through a little list of processed foods that we’re consuming at an abundant and at an enormous, and at an alarming rate, that is not doing our bodies very much good because the incidence of heart disease continues to rise. The incidence of cancer continues to rise and diabetes may be at the root of cancer, heart disease, even Alzheimer’s is attributable to the characteristics that are derived from being a Type 2 diabetic, which we used to call early-onset diabetes, and now it’s just diabetes Type 2. And it’s in children, it’s in adults and it is really amazing, a powerful disease that is at the root of a lot of our chronic illnesses.

Those things are, number one, there’s a lot of poison in the world. I think we agree. There’s a lot of poisonous things in the atmosphere, in the water, in our minds. There’s poison all around, including in our food and the industrialized food, the industrialized mechanisms by which we were able to accomplish a food supply that feeds the world, was through industrialization. And for that we are thankful. There’s nothing like having a full stomach and feeling content,  my stomach is full, my heart is content, right? That’s the old saying.

The way they engineered and accomplished this was through mechanized industrialization in creating industrial oils that are basically Omega-6‘s that are really highly toxic to humans. There’s a war against trans fats and that’s agreed 100%, there’s no divergence of opinions about trans fats. Those are man-made fats that are interlocked so tightly, once you get them in your body, really, really hard to get rid of them. Trans fats are a no-no. The other type of fat that’s regularly spoken against, is saturated fat, which is the thing that comes from meat.

The fat that’s solid at room temperature, we used to use lard in the old days for cooking. So the saturated fats, now there is a divergence of opinion, and it’s coming back into vogue with the Paleo diet, with the Keto diet consuming of a little more meat with the fat, the protein, and the fat and lowering of carbs. So the low carb, because what happened, what happened in the 1970s and 1980s, cardiovascular disease was really on the rise. And there was just this mythical belief in cholesterol being the fall guy, sort of like blaming firemen for the fire because every time there’s a fire, there are firemen, so it must be their fault. Well, every time there’s a heart attack, there’s cholesterol present, but the cholesterol is actually there for a very important reason. The cholesterol is trying to keep you alive. 

The cholesterol is trying to save you from leakages, from the arteries that would kill you if they proceeded. So the cholesterol is actually trying to stop an inflammation cycle, but the combination of cholesterol and inflammation can lead to a long-term blockage that can cause cardiovascular consequences. Trans fats, no, all the other fats, the Omega-6 fats, the industrial seed oils, really, really cut back on those. And just to understand that anything that is processed, anything that has a wrapper on it, anything that has a two-year shelf life, generally speaking, those processed foods may not be the very best things for you to be eating, and certainly it should not be 80 or 90% of your diet, okay? We use some processed foods, and when we cook, we’re actually processing food, and for good reason, okay? We can process food to safely eat it and to take out toxins that could be harmful to us, and that’s why we have to cook food.

We have to cook meat and we even have to cook a lot of the plants that we eat because plants have a defense system.

They don’t have claws was like a tiger and they don’t have teeth like a bear, but those plants also want to survive. And they create toxins in order to keep predators away from themselves. We are predators that eat plants and some of those plants can be quite toxic to us if they’re not prepared properly.

If you would think about it as a U-shaped curve, but an upside-down U, okay?

We got a U going like this, and over here, we could label this end of the spectrum being deficiency, and the other end of the inverted U would be toxicity, with the peak efficiency being somewhere in the middle at the top of the U, or the bottom of the inverted U. Basically deficiency, peak efficiency or toxicity.

Anything, too much of anything, can be toxic, even water. Yes, water can kill you. And so let’s just keep things in moderation. And if you can eliminate 80 or 90% of processed foods that are store-bought, that are fast food generated and replace those foodstuffs with home-cooked meals prepared with a local variety of vegetables and products that are grown locally and raised locally. For example, grass-fed beef is much better than the regular beef, so you get the ground beef for $1.99 a pound, that beef is industrially raised. What does that mean? That means for any particular reason or purpose, that cattle will be fattened, the last three to six months of their life, there’ll be fed grain. Some cattle are fed grain, their whole lives. They are not pasture-raised. A cow in a pasture eating grass is the way it’s supposed to be.

Adding that grain the last three or six months of their life makes them fatter. It also creates disease. So even part of the health regimen that the government provides is to eat a lot of grains. They recommend whole grains, but in fact, those grains also have a certain amount of toxicity to them, especially in spiking blood sugar and causing adverse reactions in the way of allergies that can be promoting asthma, hay fever, acne, eczema, so many different things come from grains. And if you are looking to avoid a weakened and low immune system, if you cut out milk, you cut out wheat. I mean, cut out dairy products for the most part, that lactic acid, the lactose, the sugar in milk, you cut out wheat and the celiac disease and the wheat sensitivity, then you’ve got a good chance of eliminating and tamping down a lot of those allergic reactions.

Pay attention to what you’re eating, what are you putting in your mouth? And in the next video, we will talk about how to eat.