Originally Posted by
Durden7
First, you need to look at how humans evolved. #$#% sapiens have been around for 200,000 years. Until recently - about 10,000 years ago - we did not domesticate animals or farm. That means that we have been eating grains for at most, 10,000 years. For the other 190,000 years, we were eating vegetables, fruits, meat, and nuts. Our diet was fairly low in carbohydrates, but it was fairly high in fats as well. That shows an interesting aspect of our anatomy. Why would we have a pancreas that secretes insulin if we were meant to eat a diet of mostly carbohydrates? There is no biological difference between sugar and complex carbohydrates when they come out from the GI tract because all of them are broken down into sugars. Sure, you may not get the same insulin spike if you ate 1000 calories of glucose compared to if you ate 1000 calories of complex carbs. But the same amount of insulin will be secreted.
There are a few elements in grains which make it hard for the body to assimilate/digest. An example is gluten.
In an evolutionary viewpoint, grains were extremely hard to gather and eat. And even if man could gather them, he could not eat them raw. Man cannot eat grains raw, but we can eat almost everything else raw(vegetables, fruits, meat, etc.). Also, grains are not a very nutrient-rich source of food. Grains have very few vitamins and minerals. Look at a grain's nutrition information, you'll see the vitamin and mineral concentration of it. Compare it to any other piece of natural food. Vegetables, fruits, meats, raw dairy, eggs, and nuts all provide more nutrition than grains. If man had to eat so much just to receive nutrition, he would have become extinct a long while back.
http://altmed.creighton.edu/Paleodiet/Paleodiet.html
http://www.marksdailyappl...hy-grains-are-unhealthy/
Now I'm not saying that you should never eat grains, nor am I saying that you should always eat grains. But eating them everyday and at almost every meal is far from ideal. The only real way to see how you react to grains is to see how feel when you don't have grains and then compare. Do it for a week and then come back on grains for a week and then compare. It's not a very hard thing to do and it will help you get more in tune with your body and how it reacts to the foods that you eat.
You don't have to listen to any dietary advice from anyone, but I do recommend that you test how you personally react to different foods that you eat. That means eliminating them and then reintroducing them to see their effect on you.
Excellent post. I appreciate it.
Its still just hard for me to to think that a food item that has been around for centuries is unhealthy in any way. Its been the staple piece of the human diet for a long time, and its never caused problems. Take the way our society was 100 years ago (Or even 50 years). Grains were around, bread, rolls and everything else were the basis of what humans ate. Yet the obesity rate was much lower. There were also fewer processed foods and unhealthy options.
Is it really the grains or is it a combination of other factors? As a society were so much more sedentary than in decades past so is it the grains that is part of the obesity epidemic or is it the lack of movement? Theres more options/processed foods in our culture now so is it feasible that the human body has adapted to these changes and now functions in a different way than it used to? (Ive got no scientific evidence of this at all, just something ive wondered.) Would our bodies be better at using grains if it wasnt being forced to handle man-made substances?
Im just wondering if grains is being used as a scape-goat for a multitude of other problems that Americans/humans have when it comes to nutrition.
Good points. I definitely agree with you when you say that processed foods are making us more unhealthy. But I don't think that it's necessarily the only factor. Exercise and whatever else you eat can and will change your health. It's to a different degree with different people and that's why I said that people should experiment. The one thing that I can't stand is when people don't know what they're talking about and push things at you. For example, some people say that you HAVE to eat grains. He has never gone without grains and therefore doesn't know how it is to be without them. He may feel better with grains and I may feel worse, but you would never know unless you try it.
Good points wawa. That's what I was getting at. Many people go their whole lifetime without ever learning what's truly good for them and their body. I've learned that I do worse when I eat a lot of grains.