Butter, YUM!

I believe in eating everything that grows in or on this earth in moderation. I believe that anything we adulterate is bad. Webster defines adulterate as, "to make impure by mixing in a foreign or inferior substance." Butter...good, trans-fat margarine...bad. Water...good, sodas...bad. Homemade chocolate chip cookies...good, snack cakes made with chemical preservatives...bad. Oatmeal...good; highly processed, artificially flavored and colored cereal...bad. Seems simple, right? What we do in this country though is pick everything apart, and make fat of any kind bad, or make sugar the culprit, or a lack of Omega 3s, or obsess over protein. We need it all...the fat, the carbs, the protein, the vitamins and minerals and one is not any more important than the other. If you find this hard to believe because you are overweight, and you need to find fault with something, here it is...calories and/or lack of activity. It is that simple.

Maybe you are cursing me right now, but let me give you the good news...you don't have to give up anything with the exception of food that is not really food. We were never meant to eat chemicals, but we do in our sodas, our fast food, our preserved processed foods that will never die. That is not food!

In our house, we eat butter, sugar, salt, oil, dairy, red meat, chicken, beans, flour, grains, pasta, fruit, nuts, and lots of vegetables. We eat dessert, too--cakes, pies, and cookies, but we make them ourselves, and on occasion. We don't deprive ourselves of anything except "chemicals". We don't miss a meal either. We may spend more than most on food, but we spend hardly anything on the doctor.

I try to maintain the mentality of what my ancestors might have eaten. My grandmothers are 100 and 90 years old, and they never worried about getting enough of this vitamin or that nutrient because they ate from the land. They had gardens; they canned for the winters; they killed their own beef and shared it with their neighbors, and when their neighbors killed their cow or pig, they shared too. But they also worked...hard. They got plenty of carbohydrates from their grains, and fresh fruits and vegetables, and plenty of protein and fat from their animals. It was a balanced diet, from the land.

Have you ever heard of perimeter grocery shopping? That is where you buy most of your grocery store items from the perimeter of the store. Meats, fish, produce, and dairy are usually all along the outside walls of the grocery store because they are fresh; they will rot which means they are alive. They were meant to keep us alive.

Enough of my tangent...I hope I have convinced you to eat fresh, whole foods (not specific nutrients), and to eat a variety of everything--not to deify any one food or nutrient or demonize any other. All foods are good--as long as they are really food.