Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and The... (9 page)

  
Flax Seed Oil
contains 9 percent saturated fatty acids, 18 percent oleic acid, 16 percent omega-6 and 57 percent omega-3. With its extremely high omega-3 content, flax seed oil provides a remedy for the omega-6/omega-3 imbalance so prevalent in America today. Not surprisingly, Scandinavian folk lore values flax seed oil as a health food. New extraction and bottling methods have minimized rancidity problems. It should always be kept refrigerated, never heated, and consumed in
small
amounts in salad dressings and spreads.

  
Tropical Oils
are more saturated than other vegetable oils. Palm oil is about 50 percent saturated, with 41 percent oleic acid and about 9 percent linoleic acid. Coconut oil is 92 percent saturated with over two-thirds of the saturated fat as medium-chain fatty acids (often called medium-chain triglycerides). Of particular interest is lauric acid, found in large quantities in both coconut oil and in mother's milk. This fatty acid has strong antifungal and antimicrobial properties. Coconut oil protects tropical populations from bacteria and fungus so prevalent in their food supply; as third-world nations in tropical areas have switched to polyunsaturated vegetable oils, the incidence of intestinal disorders and immune deficiency diseases has increased. Because coconut oil contains lauric acid, it is often used in baby formulas. Palm kernel oil, used primarily in candy coatings, also contains high levels of lauric acid. These oils are stable and can be kept at room temperature for many months without becoming rancid. Highly saturated tropical oils do not contribute to heart disease but have nourished healthy populations for millennia.
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It is a shame we do not use these oils for cooking and baking—the bad rap they have received is the result of intense lobbying by the domestic vegetable oil industry.
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Red palm oil has a strong taste that most will find disagreeable—although it is used extensively throughout Africa—but clarified palm oil, which is tasteless and white in color, was formerly used as shortening and in the production of commercial French fries, while coconut oil was used in cookies, crackers and pastries. The saturated fat scare has forced manufacturers to abandon these safe and healthy oils in favor of hydrogenated soybean, corn, canola and cottonseed oils.

In summary, our choice of fats and oils is one of extreme importance. Most people, especially infants and growing children, benefit from
more
fat in the diet rather than less. But the fats we eat must be chosen with care. Avoid all processed foods containing newfangled hydrogenated fats and polyunsaturated oils. Instead, use traditional vegetable oils like extra virgin olive oil and small amounts of unrefined flax seed oil. Acquaint yourself with the merits of coconut oil for baking and with animal fats for occasional frying. Eat egg yolks and other animal fats with the proteins to which they are attached. And, finally, use as much good quality butter as you like, with the happy assurance that it is a wholesome—indeed, an essential—food for you and your whole family.

Organic butter, extra virgin olive oil, and expeller-expressed flax oil in opaque containers are available in health food stores and gourmet markets. Edible coconut oil can be found in Indian and Caribbean markets. (See
Sources
for good quality fats and oils by mail order.)

CARBOHYDRATES

All green plants produce carbohydrates—starch and sugar—in their leaves through the action of sunlight, carbon dioxide and water. Sugar comes in many forms. Sucrose, or common table sugar, is a disaccharide which breaks down during digestion into the simple sugars glucose and fructose. Glucose is the primary sugar in the blood; fructose is the primary sugar in fruit and high fructose corn syrup. Other common disaccharides are maltose (malt sugar) and lactose (milk sugar). Chemical terms ending in-
ose
indicate a sugar.

Complex sugars are longer-chain sugars composed of fructose and other simple sugars. Relatively short complex sugars called stachynose and raffinose occur in beans and other legumes; longer ones occur in certain plant foods like the Jerusalem artichoke and seaweed. Unlike herbivorous animals, humans lack digestive enzymes needed to break down these sugars into their simple components. However, some individuals have certain beneficial flora in the large intestine that break down complex sugars with innocuous carbon dioxide as a by-product; other people have flora in the large bowel that produce embarrassing methane as a by-product. Cooking also breaks down these complex sugars to a certain extent.

In contrast, most humans are able to digest starch, a polysaccharide composed exclusively of glucose molecules. During the process of cooking, chewing and especially through prolonged enzymatic action during digestion, the starches are broken into separate glucose molecules. Glucose enters the bloodstream via the small intestine where it supplies energy wherever the body needs it—for accomplishing cellular processes, for thinking or for moving an arm or a leg. As the body uses glucose for all its processes, it can be said that sugar is essential to life. But the body does not need to ingest sugar, or even large quantities of carbohydrates, to produce it. Certain isolated traditional groups, such as the Eskimos, the pre-Columbian plains Indians and the medieval inhabitants of Greenland, subsisted on diets composed almost entirely of animal products—protein and fats. Examination of the skulls of these groups shows a virtual absence of tooth decay, indicative of a high general level of health on a diet almost completely devoid of carbohydrate foods.

Only during the last century has man's diet included a high percentage of
refined
carbohydrates. Our ancestors ate fruits and grains in their whole, unrefined state. In nature, sugars and carbohydrates—the energy providers—are linked together with vitamins, minerals, enzymes, protein, fat and fiber—the bodybuilding and digestion-regulating components of the diet. In whole form, sugars and starches support life, but refined carbohydrates are inimical to life because they are devoid of bodybuilding elements. Digestion of refined carbohydrates calls on the body's own store of vitamins, minerals and enzymes for proper metabolization. When B vitamins are absent, for example, the breakdown of carbohydrates cannot take place, yet most B vitamins are removed during the refining process.

The refining process strips grains, vegetables and fruits of both their vitamin and mineral components. Refined carbohydrates have been called "empty" calories. "Negative" calories is a more appropriate term because consumption of refined calories depletes the body's precious reserves. Consumption of sugar and white flour may be likened to drawing on a savings account. If continued withdrawals are made faster than new funds are put in, the account will eventually become depleted. Some people may go longer than others without overt suffering, but eventually all will feel the effects of this inexorable law. If you were fortunate enough to be born with an excellent constitution, you may be able to eat unlimited quantities of sugar with relative impunity, but your children's or your grandchildren's inheritance will be one of impoverished reserves.

The all-important level of glucose in the blood is regulated by a finely tuned mechanism involving insulin secretions from the pancreas and hormones from several glands, including the adrenal glands and the thyroid. When sugars and starches are eaten in their natural, unrefined form, as part of a meal containing nourishing fats and protein, they are digested slowly and enter the bloodstream at a moderate rate over a period of several hours. If the body goes for a long time without food, this mechanism will call upon reserves stored in the liver. When properly working, this marvelous blood sugar regulation process provides our cells with a steady, even supply of glucose. The body is kept on an even keel, so to speak, both physically and emotionally.

But when we consume
refined
sugars and starches, particularly alone, without fats or protein, they enter the blood stream in a rush, causing a sudden increase in blood sugar. The body's regulation mechanism kicks into high gear, flooding the bloodstream with insulin and other hormones to bring blood sugar levels down to acceptable levels. Repeated onslaughts of sugar will eventually disrupt this finely tuned process, causing some elements to remain in a constant state of activity and others to become worn out and inadequate to do the job. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that a diet high in refined carbohydrates will also be deficient in vitamins, minerals and enzymes, those bodybuilding elements that keep the glands and organs in good repair. When the endocrine system thus becomes disturbed, numerous other pathological conditions soon manifest—degenerative disease, allergies, obesity, alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, learning disabilities and behavioral problems.

Disrupted regulation results in blood sugar that habitually remains either higher or lower than the narrow range under which the body is designed to function. A person with abnormally high blood sugar is a diabetic; a person whose blood sugar regularly drops below normal is hypoglycemic. These two diseases are really two sides of the same coin and both stem from the same cause—excess consumption of refined carbohydrates. The diabetic lives in danger of blindness, gangrene in the limbs, heart disease and diabetic coma. Insulin injections can protect the diabetic from sudden death by coma but, unless the diet improves, cannot halt the progressive deterioration of the cornea, the tissues and the circulatory system. Low blood sugar opens a veritable Pandora's box of symptoms ranging from seizures, depression and unfounded phobias to allergies, headaches and chronic fatigue.

Hypoglycemics are often advised to eat something sweet when they feel the symptoms of low blood sugar, for sugar rushes into the bloodstream and gives a temporary lift. This policy is misguided for several reasons. First, as the calories are empty, the bodybuilding reserves are further depleted. Second, the roller-coaster cycle of high blood sugar, sent too low by a faulty regulating mechanism, is further perpetuated. And finally, the brief period of high blood sugar sets in motion a harmful process called glycation, the bonding of amino acids to sugar molecules when blood-sugar levels are too high. These abnormal proteins are then incorporated into the tissues and can do enormous damage, especially to the long-lived proteins in the lens of the eye and the myelin sheath around the nerves.
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The collagen of skin, tendons and membranes is also damaged by these glycated proteins. This process takes place in everyone who eats sugar, not just in diabetics.

Strict abstinence from refined sugar and very limited use of refined flour is good advice for everyone. We must remember that these skeletonized products were virtually unknown in the human diet before 1600 and never used in great quantities before the 20th century. Our physical nature is such that we need foods that are whole, not refined and denatured, to grow, prosper and reproduce. As the consumption of sugar has increased, so have all the "civilized" diseases. In 1821, the average sugar intake in America was 10 pounds per person per year; today it is 170 pounds per person, representing over one-fourth the average caloric intake. Another large portion of total calories comes from white flour and refined vegetable oils.
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This means that less than half the diet must provide all the nutrients to a body that is under constant stress from its intake of sugar, white flour and rancid and hydrogenated vegetable oils. Herein lies the root cause of the vast increase in degenerative diseases that plague modern America.

Until recently, the Diet Dictocrats denied the role of sugar as a cause of disease. Few establishment spokesmen will admit that sugar consumption has anything to do with heart disease, and some have adopted the breathtaking stance that sugar does not cause diabetes. The food industry is not embarassed to jusfity its use of sugar. "If we didn't prefer foods with added sugar, it would not be added," says Dr. Frederick Stare, former chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University's School of Public Health. "Remember, eating is one of the real pleasures of life. . .for most people, sugar helps other things taste better. . .. Sugar calories are not different from other calories, from calories obtained from protein, starch, fat or alcohol." Harvard's Department of Nutrition receives the bulk of its funding from the food industry, and nothing contributes to the profits of the big processing conglomerates so much as sugar—cheap, easily produced and stored, of infinite shelf life, its sweetness a convenient mask for the flavorless, overprocessed concoctions to which it is added. Sugar is the food processors' best preservative because it blocks various forms of spoilage bacteria by tying up the water in which they grow.