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Thursday, September 1, 2011

Deep Nutrition- Part 3

I have read so many different books and articles on traditional nutrition that I have come to distrust the medical community as a whole.  I am not proud of this, and my husband thinks I am a loon for my viewpoints. However, after working for a major pharmaceutical company and doing nutritional research for years, I cannot take any other stance on the matter. I believe most mainstream medical professionals are driven by profit because they have to be! Insurance companies, lawsuits, and drug-happy patients are all working against their presumably original desire to simply heal people.  And this is not a hard and fast rule that applies to all doctors, I just think it is a general rule that has contributed to the sickening of the American people. 

So let me share with you one medical professional's views on the subject:

"Doctors get their information from researchers. Researchers can only do research when they can get grant funding.  These days, grants come from industry or special interest groups, and tend to support either the use of expensive medications and technology, or a demand for more medical coverage for one of many speical interest groups.  I didn't know research had to fall into one of these two categories to be funded until Luke and I took a plane trip to California to meet with researchers at UCLA and UCSF.  There, I met with over a dozen doctors and PhDs to bring up the possibility that there might be an obvious, though currently overlooked, relationship between modern food and disease.

The trip was a real eye-opener.  These researchers held fast to the idea that their primary directive was improving human health.  But it soon became clear that their more immediate goal, by virtue of the realities of economics, was the acquisition of grant funds, necessitating never-ending compromises between the exigencies of financing and the integrity of the science.  I learned from an epidemiologist that various agricultural interests funded most of his research in nutrition, and out of financial necessity, he was directed toward the promotion of the largest crops: fruits.  As an epidemiologist, he was unaware that excess fruit consumption leads to health problems due to the high sugar-to-nutrient ratio in fruit.  And he was surprised when a collegue pointed out that she'd found, after advising her patients to eat the recommended three to six servings of fruit a day, that doing so raised their triglycerides to unhealthy levels.

Hoping to drive home the point that our bodies demand more nutrition than we can get from fruit, vegetables, grains, and low-fat meat, and hoping to stir up interest in doing more research on nutrition and optimal fetal and facial development, I described the research of a pertinent study.  It showed that one in three pregnant women consuming what mainstream research suggests would be a healthy diet nevertheless gave birth to babies with dangerously low levels of vitamin A in their blood.  Vitamin A deficiency is associated with eye, skeleton, and organ defects.

The epidemiologist was fascinated but admitted that his reliance on funding from fruit growers bound him to continue producing more and more research just like he'd already produced-showing fruits are "good for us".  I learned that neither he nor anyone else at UCLA would likely be able to pursue this new nutritional issue or anything similar because there was no giant industry to support it." 

I personally think fruit is healthy- the spectrum of fruit does carry a wide variety of bioavailable nutrients.  However, the best way to assimilate these nutrients is to eat the fruit cooked with a bit of butter.  Or a lot of butter. The butterfat has a component referred to as "Activator X" (Google this term with the name Weston A. Price to find out more) that allows your body to use more of the vitamins in fruits and vegetables.  Have you ever baked an apple with raisins, cinnamon, and butter? Good heavens!

Have you heard this school of thought before? What do you think?







9 comments:

Farm Girl said...

I am open to all kinds of ideas the butter one I had not heard before.
I am currently on my third day of no wheat. I am using a bit of brown rice though. I have spent the summer getting sicker and sicker. Finally on Monday, I decided no wheat, My sneezing stopped, my eyes stopped running I could take deep breaths again and I could walk my laps again and do all of my housework. The depression is gone too.
I know that using food to heal is way safer than medication. I do think the medical community is more concerned about the bottom dollar than the health of the patient.
I am now in the process of getting off coffee and caffeine.
I think there is so much we can just do to heal our bodies if we just pay attention to the symptoms. Not to mention know where to look.
I am enjoying your posts on nutrition very much.

Jennifer said...

Farm Girl!
I didn't know you were feeling poorly. I am so sorry. But glad to hear things are looking up. I will be praying God will restore your health, however He chooses to do it! So many people count on you ;)

Kessie said...

Right now I'm in the process of figuring out if my son has a wheat allergy. (I'm pretty sure he does, I'm still in the process of giving certain foods and withholding others to make sure it's actually wheat.) The trouble is, his only symptom is a cough, so it's taken me a while to isolate the cause.

The trouble is, reading about what doctors do for small children with coughs, is either to give them cough syrup, or decide that it's asthma. I'm developing a distrust similar to yours.

Although the idea of eating cooked fruit with butter is AWESOME. Cobblers for the win!

Meg said...

Ben and I talk about this ALL the time. We're so into food over drugs/doctors (although sometimes he thinks I'm a little cooky). I've cut out just about all junk food, and use butter, lard, olive oil, etc. No shortening or processed anything (well, aside from refined sugar). Really purged the house of soy products. And you know what? We haven't been sick in over a year. This is especially weird for Ben, since he was ALWAYS sick. He's convinced it's from my trying to cut out all the crap.

I've had a serious mistrust for doctors my entire life. My mother practically worships them, but hey, they never seem to make her better. Go figure. She's always on a medication for something. I was shuffled in and out of doctors my entire young childhood and I HATE doctors. (It's the only part I hate about being pregnant! :) )

Brandy Vencel said...

Jen, I'm curious. When you cook fruit with butter, how much butter do you actually use, say, per cup of fruit? My kids would love it if I did this more often...

Kara Haushalter said...

I have heard that butter (as well as olive oil, etc) is way better then "fake" fats....our bodies know how to process them!
Wheat causes a slew of problems and having Celiacs, I am hearing that more people struggle with it or other intolerences...honestly, I have a hunch that it has more to do with our grains and other foods being SO processed and refined.
As for fruits being bad, I don't buy that...anything in excess is not good. but natural sugars are WAY better than fake sugar but they must all be eaten with a balanced diet of proteins and starches. I believe a balanced diet of foods that still look like their natural state is key.

All that said, I have a 8 yr old with asthma & I would never try to treat him with food first. His meds have saved his life. We choose to live where the air is HORRIBLE!!! Our pediatrition is amazing but also conservative. I seek out doctors for myself that I agree with, ones that don't pressure me to do anything I don't agree with. I try to be as healthy as I can be but trust that God gave the smarts to some people and that they can be very helpful.

Anne said...

Love that you're doing these posts =)

Jennifer said...

Brandy, all of the Weston A price literature says "a generous amount". I use butter very liberally, as long as it is of the highest quality I can financially manage. Kerrygold is great and Lassens has a pastured seasonal organic butter right now that is amazingly deep yellow in color and hih in CLA and Activator X. That said, I would use A tablespoon per cup. It may seem like a lot, but not all of it is actually consumed. And you just eat less when it is that satiating.

Kara, thanks for weighing in! We don't have to deal with asthma, praise God, but i would not try to "cure" a life-threatening illness with my dimwitted self. I like to research, but I'm no expert. I like the notion of preventing degenerative disease with nutrition. I miss you!

Kessie, sorry about Alex! Have you ever been to "the witch doctor"?.. She is actually this amazing naturopath, and loves the Lord to boot! Email me if you want about her. We have had allergies cleared, and Brandy has had some near-miraculous experiences with her!

Meg, I one of the things I love about your blog are you nutritious and yummy recipes! I get lots of inspiration from your kitchen, sister!

Brandy Vencel said...

Jennifer, 2 out of 4 Vencel children would like to thank you for their morning snack. Warm fruit with butter and cinnamon. YUM!

Of course, I'm not mentioning any names, but 2 out of 4 of them also wish you'd kept your mouth shut. :)

I'm just saying. ;)

Kessie, Another wonderful solution to allergies is the GAPS diet. It is a shorter-term dietary protocol (maybe a year to three years) that most find eliminates the alleriges altogether and then allows you to not be picky about food anymore. Google it and you'll find there is a wealth of information about it. :)

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