sutton067

We're living in an incredible age of discovery about health, diet and fitness. As a civilization, we know far more about which foods promote health, and which contribute to disease, than we did ten years ago, or even five. Thanks to the news media and the Internet, the facts resulting from these discoveries are boiled down into laymen's terms, and disseminated broadly at little cost. Taken together, and broadly speaking, these discoveries tell us that some of our most recent food innovations -- trans fats, artificial colors, preservatives, canning, chemical additives, drugs and hormones for domesticated animals, pesticides and others -- collectively and over time make us fat, weak and sick. Science tells us clearly that foods untouched by these "advancements" -- raw, whole, fresh fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds and legumes and the avoidance of domesticated animals -- make us healthy and strong. Given all we know, or should know, why are so many people afflicte...

Professor Dean Ornish and a team of scientists at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, found that simply switching from processed foods to more whole, fresh foods, and doing more excercise and less sitting around, increased blood levels of an enzyme called telomerase by 29% . According to the Wikipedia entry on telomerase, the enzyme " allows for replacement of short bits of DNA known as a telomere, which are otherwise lost when a cell divides via mitosis.... A variety of premature aging syndromes are associated with short telomeres." Besides slowing the aging process, Telomerase also help fight cancer and other diseases. As always, the science is presented as if eating real food acts like a drug that slows aging. The reality is that processed and industrialized foods artificially shorten life.

Mounting evidence suggests that Alzheimer's is a "lifestyle disease" caused by "convention" food: " Researchers from the University of Florence, who assessed 12 studies involving more than 1.5 million participants, have found there was a 13 per cent reduction in the occurrence of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's in those who stuck to a strict Mediterranean diet ." The "Meditteranean Diet" is similiar to, but vastly inferior to, the Spartan Diet . The Meditteranean diet can include white sugar, adulterated grains, conventionally-produced produce and other foods known to cause havoc on the human body. As I reported in early August , Monks on Greece's Mount Athos, who eat a diet somewhere between the Mediterranean Diet and the Spartan Diet, never get Alzheimer's.

A movement of small-scale grain farming, stone-milled and locally sold, is growing around the world. Some of these farmers are growing older varieties of wheat native to their areas. Some of these agricultural visionaries see the high price of oil as an opportunity. The industrially farmed, factory milled grains available worldwide have to be transported using gasoline, the difference between locally grown and remotely grown grains has shrunk. This is good news for those of us on the Spartan Diet, because it's becoming easier to find locally grown healthy grains, or breads made from local grains, which are much more likely to be "wilder" from a Spartan Diet perspective. Industrial grains aim (as all industrial foods do) for maximum shelf life. Producers achieve this by blending grains for gluten consistency and removing most of the nutritional parts. The grain flower most people eat every day has been stripped of nearly all its nutritional value (including most of the bra...