Day 19: Food Matters

   Just the other day I finished the book “Food Matters”, by Mark Bittman, that my boss had recommended to me after hearing about my 101 day vegan challenge. I was shocked to find out that the average American eats almost twice the amount of meat than the world average as well as ten times as much as people in developing countries. Because of this the United States is actually second to last in longevity among other industrial nations. We even eat too much protein compared to our own government’s standards, and for those of you that have watched “Food Inc.” our government standards aren’t that great.

     This book is great for people who want to make a change in their diet, but might not want to make the drastic change of becoming vegan or even vegetarian for that matter. In this book the author talks about how he changed his lifestyle so that he was pretty much vegan before dinner, and then went back to his normal lifestyle in the evening. It seems to have worked for him, but everyone has their own methods. Even just cutting down your meat consumption to one meal per day makes a big difference.

    The book also went into great depth talking about the hazards of eating too much fructose corn syrup. Fructose corn syrup will dramatically make you gain weight if you’re not careful. One of the things that stuck out to me the most was the fact that if you eat too much fructose corn syrup your liver will become better at making fat in your body. Also the more fructose corn syrup you eat the hungrier you feel. Along with making you fat too much fructose corn syrup and glucose in the diet may disable the body’s ability to regulate testosterone and estrogen levels resulting in increased acne, infertility, ovarian cysts, cardiovascular disease, and uterine cancer.

     Our whole nation is heavily reliant on meat, dairy and sugar to get them through the day which is why we are ranked the second lowest in longevity among other industrial countries. As a whole we get a whole 7% of our calorie intake from soda alone. It is sad how far technologically we have come, and yet we have somehow devolved when it comes to our food. Yes, there are more scientifically engineered food, but that isn’t necessarily a good thing. Make sure to look at the labels of what you are buying. If it has more than 5 or 6 ingredients ask yourself if this is something you really need to be putting into your body.