Nutrition and Physical Regeneration

photo credit: laura padgett

In a piece over at Matt Stone's blog, a reader mentioned that while he was in Poland that some of the followers of Jan Kwasniewski's Optimal Diet were having problems "because the nutrient content of meat is not what it used to be."

Oh and there's another thing I wanted to share with you… When I was in Poland last time I visited some dietitians who work under Jan Kwasniewski's guidelines… and it wasn't too nice. They were elderly but all very obese and unhealthy looking and they told me his diet can a bit dangerous to follow, that some people they know got atherosclerosis after some years of eating this way, even though it's supposed to cure it. And that you need to take plenty of vitamin supplements with it even more so than with other diets "because the nutrient content of meat is not what it used to be". They also said they recommend eating more carbs than Jan K. says (as far as I could understand because their English wasn't great). It was a bit disturbing to be honest, I mean they really sounded so negative about the diet… even though it did cure one woman I met of rheumatoid arthritis, to be fair!

Matt also mentioned in response to one of his commenters that he thinks that people get into the nutritional holes they do because the food is lacking in quality from the outset. In this particular post (he also says it directly elsewhere) he does so by way of quoting Sir Robert McCarrison as to one way (but certainly not the only way) poor food quality can harm someone:

…in the absence of vitamins or in their inadequate supply, neither proteins nor fats nor carbohydrates nor [minerals] are properly utilized; some are largely wasted, while others yield products harmful to the organism.

Now McCarrison is not talking about supplements, but food itself. And the entire post from which I am quoting is in the context of fingering poor basal metabolism as being at the foundation of many health issues, which is a largely unrecognized problem among the modern health gurus of today. If you want to review Matt's solution to the issue you can read the rest of the post (or rather series of posts) titled Low Carb Rehab and The Carb Wars over at his corner in cyberspace.

Here at Nutrition and Physical Regeneration I want to tackle what I believe to be the root of the problem. Why isn't meat what it used to be? Why is the nutritional value of many if not most foods so low today? How can one fix their metabolism or tailor a diet that is specifically designed for their particular metabolism and not just based on overall generalities like "eat what we evolved on" or "eat what your ancestors ate" or the more specific but still too generic "metabolic typing"?

In the fifth edition of Dr. Weston Price's monumental work, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration chapter 20 is titled, Food is Fabricated Soil Fertility. The implication of that title should be obvious. Food will never be more nutritious than the fertility of the soil from which it is fabricated. For those of us who eat animal products it should be obvious that the meat of the animal will not be of optimal nutritional value if the food of the animal is grown on poor soil.

How then do we solve the problem? Most of us aren't farmers and gardeners and even if we were it doesn't mean we would grow all our own food. So what is the solution?

The excerpt below from Rex Harrill is the beginning of a possible answer (and no, organic food is not the answer although it can be helpful). It puts the power of change where it ought to be, at the point of sale, with the consumer as the ultimate arbiter of what shows up in the marketplace. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you take it upon yourself to exercise your dollar power, so good food is not "extra credit" as Matt Stone mentions in another post, but is rather easily and readily available wherever food is sold.

Michael
______

You cannot buy—nor grow—good food until you can first identify good food…

Can you believe that you can take pretty much identical-looking hay from neighboring fields, feed 50 pounds a day from one field to a cow and have her drop in milk production and get sick, and feed half as much from the other field and have the cow rise in production and be healthy? What is the difference between the two samples of hay? QUALITY!
—Dr. Harold Willis "How To Grow Great Alfalfa"

Anyone who can’t make a connection between the above quote and the importance of only putting high-quality fruits and vegetables into their body is reading the wrong book.

ARE THESE VEGGIES JUNK, SO-SO, OR SUPER??
THAT TRULY IS THE QUESTION

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN NUTRITION

"Perhaps you should eat more fresh fruits and vegetables," said the doctor…

…and the dentist…

…and the osteopath…

…and the chiropractor…

…and the surgeon…

…and the nutritionist…

…and the herbalist…

…and the acupuncturist…

…and the ophthalmologist…

…and whoever…

"But they don't taste good," say the children…

…and your spouse…

…and your friends…

…and YOU!

Well, that's because the food isn't that good. Everyone is certainly telling you the truth. So, what could the answer be?

This book is meant to help you see right through the ocean of misinformation put out by food manufacturers and the sellers of debased agriculture. Another purpose is to empower you with the ability to make wise choices about the very substances of life.

Food—real food—is grown on rich and fertile soil. Removing crop after crop, year after year, rapidly depletes the soil. Simplistic replacement of the NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium) does NOT replenish the soil and only leads to the sad insipid excuses so commonly stacked high on supermarket shelves. On the other hand, balancing the soil—fully mineralizing it to an ideal state—allows the production of fruits and vegetables of superb flavor and taste—fit for royalty: YOUR family.

There are farmers out there who know how to do the job right. Demanding the very best helps them. A refractometer can help lead you to the topnotch growers already doing the job. On the other hand, countless consumers armed with a measuring tool and saying, "I don't want your sad fare" will wake up the supermarkets. The produce managers will then wake up that majority of farmers who are still sleeping.

Quality: this, indeed, is the needed revolution in Agriculture.

Read the rest of the article here

Discuss this post in the forum