My diet is going to be a huge DIY experiment, I plan on taking elements of as many diets as I need to, in order to figure out what works best for me. So to do that, I am doing a lot of research. I want to make sure all of my readers are able to go along this journey with me, so I want to go over all my research here on the site.
A couple of people have recommended the documentary Forks Over Knives to me, and I figured now was the time to watch it. This is one of those really interesting documentaries about the history of how we eat as Americans. It looks at the time before processed food, to the beginning of fast food and processed foods, and where we are today.
They go over how eating so much animal protein and processed food has shown a huge increase in cancer occurrences. Basically what they figured out was that the "western" diet is not working, there are more cancer deaths and more heart disease then there are for those people who live in more rural areas of in countries that are less processed food centric. There was this really interesting study in Hawaii and how the people who had immigrated there stayed on their diets of rice and vegetables, and their children started migrated to the processed food culture and ended up getting fatter and sicker.
I really liked how they showed the relationship the human body has with the kind of food we eat. Doctors actually classifying the processed foods we eat a low grade addiction. That's because when you removed the fiber and nutrients from food and replace it with sugar, fat, and salt it activates the pleasure centers of the brain much like drugs do. I really like how they talk about the stomach receptors. 500 calories of plant based food triggers the stomach to tell the brain that you are full, because the stretch receptors and density receptors are both convinced your stomach is full. If you look at eating processed food 500 calories only fills the stomach to "full" status at 1/3 to 1/2 of the size of your stomach, so you have to eat 1 to 2 times more food to reach full. And 500 calories of oil based food barely registers in the stomach. How crazy is that?
So what I really took away from this movie is that a whole food plant based diet is really the way to go. They show an entire firehouse in Austin, Texas who switched their diets to whole food diets, and they thrived on it. I think that's really cool.
So what I take away from the movie is two fold, 1) I really want to get a physical including blood tests so I can see where I really stand and 2) I really need to incorporate more plants in my diet. I am a person who does not tolerate dairy or meat well, I don't digest it well, it makes me feel run down and sleepy, and in general the way it's cooked (the amount of fat and grease) sometimes make me physically ill. But I love meat, I've eaten large quantities of meat my whole life, I know every time I eat it that it is going to make me feel bad, but I do it anyway. I have to find a way to cut back.
If you have time and Netflix you should totally check out the documentary, it's one of the few food documentaries that didn't gross me out and make me say wow the whole time.
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