Standard American Diet

As I have been online more recently, I have been reading more and more about food and different things in the Standard American diet that are supposed to be problems.  And, I’ve been doing more research on different aspects of foods and diets.  Some things seem clear.  Vegetables are good for you.  Fiber is good for you.  Too much of almost anything else is not good for you.

Macaroni and Cheese Crackers:American junk food

 

by greencolander on Flickr

But, from what I can tell I may have cut the wrong things from my husband’s diet.  Let me explain.  When I was in nursing school I was taught that diet, mainly saturated fats are bad for your heart.  And my husband’s grandparents had heart disease and high cholesterol.  What is frustrating to me now, is that this is a theory.  And it has been debated since its creation.  I never heard this until recently.  And I didn’t hear it through the medical community.  I found it through a blog.  

Luckily, I never bought into the whole margarine thing.  The whole idea of blowing hydrogen atoms into liquid oil to make it solid at room temperature just sounded like a problem.  In general, my theory is that God created us to digest our food, and if we do too much to modify our food it might become more difficult for the body to digest and eliminate the things we eat.  That is also why I like to understand the ingredient list on the foods I buy.

But, fat is generally what makes food taste good.  And if you eliminate all or most of the food, then you add sugar to make it taste good.  So, for years, I had fat free milk in my coffee with lots of sugar.  Come to find out that with a little cream, I don’t need any sugar at all.  And I now believe this is much healthier than fat free milk with sugar.  Putting the fat back in our diet is easy.  Getting rid of the sugar is much harder. 

So, between now and New Year’s, I am going to look at each of the following parts of our diet.  I think I will tell you what I can find in research, what traditional diets have done, and what my gut is telling me.  I obviously have no idea whether my gut is right or not.  But, since my gut did a better job with butter vs margarine 20 years ago, I think I’ll pay attention to it.  Topics you can expect to see are full fats (like cream, butter, whole milk, lard, tallow), fiber, probiotics, grains, anti-oxidants, and sweeteners.

In past years I have done an elimination diet in January.  I haven’t decided if I will do that this year.  It would have to be relatively mild because I will still be breastfeeding.