Breakfast of Chumps

I think I've mentioned before how it appears to me that all our problems and crises can in some way be traced back to our dysfunctional relationship with food. Food (and drink, of course) has always been the axis around which human societies and cultures have been constructed, and it's no different for us today. If we take a clear, unflinching look at our exceedingly bizarre contemporary connections to food, we'll see in microcosm how very far we have fallen as a species--and how very unsustainable and unstable modern "civilization" truly is.

Indeed, if you ever find yourself questioning how American society can be so very blessed and yet so very messed-up, you probably need gaze no further than into your bowl of Wheaties...

"Another unpublished experiment was carried out in the 1960s. Researchers at Ann Arbor University were given 18 laboratory rats. They were divided into three groups: one group received corn flakes and water; a second group was given the cardboard box that the corn flakes came in and water; the control group received rat chow and water. The rats in the control group remained in good health throughout the experiment. The rats eating the box became lethargic and eventually died of malnutrition. But the rats receiving the corn flakes and water died before the rats that were eating the box! (The last corn flake rat died the day the first box rat died.) But before death, the corn flake rats developed schizophrenic behavior, threw fits, bit each other and finally went into convulsions. The startling conclusion of this study is that there was more nourishment in the box than there was in the corn flakes.
This experiment was actually designed as a joke, but the results were far from funny. The results were never published and similar studies have not been conducted."


If it's true that all our cultural flaws stem from our relationship with food, then it follows that all our hopes for a cultural "revolution" must begin there as well. And as the definition of the word revolution means to return, or to come around again, it stands to reason that if we hold any hope for the continuation of healthy human societies we should begin this revolution at our very own dining tables (if we still have one, that is, in this microwaveable, fast food-on-the-go modern lifestyle).

The above passage was taken from a paper by Sally Fallon entitled "Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry". Fallon serves as President of a non-profit educational organization out of Washington, D.C. called the Weston A. Price Foundation. The Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) has been leading just such a cultural call-to-arms in recent years, giving rise to a fast-growing movement of people who are striving to return to the traditional foods and food preparation techniques which human societies have trusted and validated over thousands of years, and which had been almost completely swept away in only the last century.

WAPF is pursuing this battle along two fronts.

On one side they're waging a tireless campaign to awaken people to the dangerous realities of the processed food industry. In this light WAPF works to expose the often "secret" or concealed processes and standards of this industry to public scrutiny, and to help explain the hidden health dangers these practices pose. In addition, WAPF tries to shed light on a body of suspicious, fallacious or even non-existant "research" which this industry has promoted over the decades--much of which has even come to be viewed as "irrefutable" dogma. All told, a very disturbing picture develops of an intentional and systematic campaign of deception which has unfolded over many decades; a collusionary agenda of food corporations, government agencies, and medical and health organizations to pass-off very low cost "fabricated nutrition" for the sake of easy profits.

More importantly however is that WAPF also strives, both through education and legislation, to help individuals to re-establish a more intimate and healthy relationship with what we eat.

The WAPF "manifesto", as it were, is contained in a book entitled Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats. Despite the subtitle, "Nourishing Traditions" is actually a fairly classic and informative cookbook, outlining many of the time-tested food "processing" principles and techniques that have been used by human beings for thousands of years to uncover and enhance the latent nutritional value in the foods we eat. In this light it's often compared to the "Slow Food" movement which has been developing along parallel lines throughout Europe, although to my mind Nourishing Traditions and WAPF provides a far more extensive basis in Nutritional Science to support these practices.

In just the handful of years since WAPF was established it has seen countless chapters spring up throughout all 50 States, and more than a dozen countries worldwide besides. WAPF takes as its namesake Dr. Weston A. Price, a medical dentist during the early 20th Century who had made extensive travels throughout the globe to visit indigenous people. On these journeys he continually docuмented the superior health and bone structure of these widely disbursed tribes and cultures, which when compared to the rapidly declining health and nutrition he was witnessing in the "civilized" (read industrialized) world, was already revealing to him that there were fundamental flaws in modern culture.

The last thing I'll add is simply a couple of wisps of timeless wisdom that happened to come into my mind right now:

"Know thyself". And, "You are what you eat".

And seeing as how we've been talking about the need we have to forge new relationships with our food, it perhaps wouldn't be unwise to marry these two dictums as well.

"Know what you eat."


Comments

When it comes to food, you're not likely to find more dedicated consumers in modern society than my wife and I. There's a book's worth of information that I could share in terms of our journey to our current diet, but I will try and distill it here, and explain some major challenges.

First off, getting pristine food in this country is nearly impossible. It comes from only a handful of people, and these farmers/ranchers are a dying breed. Forget about organic, biodynamic, raw foods, etc. Those terms are close to meaningless in the real world. While they help differentiate levels of "badness" they in no way indicate food that is truly healthy.

Healthy food comes from growing and cultivation practices that bypass shortcuts -- ANY shortcuts. You have to really think about that for a moment to really understand it. Anything that comes in contact with the food must have a completely pristine chain of origin, otherwise it is contaminated, and no better than any other chemically-tainted food. For example, using "organic fertilizer" does no good, if the source of the fertilizer was contaminated. In the case of chicken manure, what were those chickens fed? What water source were they exposed to? What genetic make-up are those chickens? So what fertilizer was used on the food that the chickens ate? And so on... The depth and complexity of this chemical, nutrient and genetic web is absolutely astonishing! Anyone who has become familiar with peak oil can relate. You have this moment where you realize "oh my god, it's everywhere!" and there is no way to avoid it. The difference with food, is that pristine food is rarer than oil, gold, diamonds or maybe even hen's teeth, because the system required to produce it is so rare. In my case there are only 3 or 4 things I eat that I don't know the person who grew it on a first name basis. Someday that person will be me and my wife.

Now, a major reason why I wanted to comment here was to expose the weakness behind all of these awareness efforts -- that is for food, oil, whatever. And that is the fact that there is no way to have everyone eat well. There simply isn't a way to mass produce good food. The two concepts are mutually exclusive. For oil, imagine if everyone knew about PO... there'd never be enough solar panels, turbines, land or anything else. As much as I wish everyone could know what life is like without bad food, I hope it never happens.

One more thing, and this is another thing no one tells you about... as you cut these things out of your diet, and become more pure, your sensitivity goes WAY up. You'll discover that you are no longer ABLE to eat the way you did before. While you may feel 100 times better overall, when you get "bad food" you're going to feel 1000 times worse.

I just need to write a book and give it to a few people who are serious about it. Luckily bad food is so addictive that no one I tell this to is brave enough to change their diet/eating practices.