ARTICLE 1

Recent Western Dietary Changes
by Dr. Douglas Graham
<foodnsport@aol.com>

Up until relatively recently, people ate the SWD (standard western diet) without questioning it very much at all. If they did question it, they typically transitioned towards a healthier version of the SWD, increasing their intake of fruits, vegetables, and vegetarian fare.

Times were good and people were healthy–at least that was the impression we had. After all, cancer only happened to old people, not that many people had heart disease or diabetes, and trimness was a fact of life.

It is not like that any more. There are entire cancer hospitals for children these days. Almost two out of every five Americans suffers with diabetes or pre-diabetes symptoms. Ninety -even percent of Americans suffer heart disease and two-thirds of them will die from it. More Americans are overweight than those who are not. Morbid obesity is rapidly moving up in the ranks of “cause of death” statistics.

The door to dietary change truly opened fully because of several events. First, labor saving devices came into their own. Cars, elevators, moving walkways, rolling luggage, electric and battery operated hand tools, automatic dish and clothes washers and dryers, and vacuum cleaners became the rule rather than the exception. The sedentary lifestyle had taken over, as our natural tendency to be utilitarian began to cripple us. We quickly became a “push button” nation.

Second-generation labor saving (labor savers for our labor savers) became accepted as the norm. Sit-down power lawnmowers, remote controls for the television and all our electronic entertainment (why go to all the risk and bother of having a life of your own when you can experience life painlessly through television sit-coms and soaps?), power steering/brakes/windows/mirrors for our cars, fast food and prepackaged foods literally sealed the door shut on the possibility of a return to healthier and fitter days. We became a nation of infirm spectators.

Drive-through fast food joints, pharmacies, and liquor stores became further signs of the times as people chose ease over effort. The American waistline started to grow in direct proportion to the amount of fuel wasted in autos. Although gaining two pounds a year will virtually guarantee that you will never get wrinkles, there is not much else about this type of weight gain to recommend. Some adults found themselves gaining close to a pound a week for a year or two, nonstop. Something had to be done. The solution was not obvious because people are such intense creatures of habit. We are almost locked in to doing things the way we have done them in the past.

Rather than try something completely different, such as switching from cooking to not cooking, or from complicated recipes to simple whole foods, we tried making lower-fat versions of our high fat treats, with limited success. Although some people were willing to try the new “healthy” styles of eating, mostly people demanded “the real thing,” choosing taste over waist.

Jack LaLanne, Vic Tanney, and several others opened the first chains of fitness clubs. The thinking was that people could exercise off all the extra calories they were consuming. There were people who paid to join, but it was usually health conscious individuals and not the ones that needed to lose the weight. A very small percentage of the people who joined the fitness centers actually made much use of them.

Fast food became accessible to the masses, and in many cases even became preferable. Exploitation of cheap land and cheaper labor in Central America coupled with exceptionally favorable subsidization laws in the US combined to make fast food some of the least expensive meals in America. (In the free market place, with no government intervention or subsidies, it is said that a 1&Mac218;4 pound hamburger would cost at least $25.)

Not many people had the savvy to ask nutritional questions back then, nor were they suspicious enough to think that these foods might be health destroyers. No one suspected the fact that fast food chemists were adding excitotoxins such as glutamates to their products; brain destroying yet addictive food additives that stimulate the “feel-good” centers of the brain. No one could see into the not so distant future well enough to predict that fast food would literally take over the nation.
Fast food is readily available everywhere now, from our hospitals and schools to our roadsides and shopping malls. Americans became the fattest people on Earth. Their mindset was ready, willing and looking for solutions to their health and overweight problems. Critical mass had been reached. By the end of the 20th century, Americans were ready to make changes in their diets.

Diet fads have always existed, coming and going throughout history as signs of the times. They had always been a bit offbeat, however, and sometimes recognizably kooky. Until recently, however, no one had ever thought of making them appear respectable.

Nowadays, Madison Avenue marketing skills play the biggest role in the creation of the latest food fads. The program itself is secondary to the marketing. As quickly as the fast food franchises sprung up, so did the weight loss franchises. The dietary revolution had begun in earnest. “Limited success” would be the best that anyone could say for the millions who have spent billions seeking trimness through the various weight loss organizations. The diet industry is now averaging profits in excess of $40 billion per year in the United States alone. The pockets of those selling the programs got fat, but for the most part, the attendees only had their wallets trimmed. People kept looking for solutions as their health and weight problems became more urgent.

There is an old cliché, “If what you are doing is not working, try something else.” It was time to make the dreaded switch from SWD to vegetarian. People found that it wasn’t so bad being a vegetarian, but that overall it didn’t solve their health issues as they had hoped.

After hovering and learning about vegetarianism for a period of 1 to 10 years, many folks moved on to vegan. The vegan regimen seemed to work a bit better, healthwise, but the overweight issues continued. Change, however, was getting easier to accept. The idea of dietary experiment had become more acceptable and less frightening.

Again, after being vegan for anywhere from 1 to 10 years, many people have eventually started moving in the direction of a raw food diet. It seemed the only thing left.

Dietary changes don’t always come easily

“What do you eat? Where do you get your protein? Don’t you get tired of the lack of variety?” These are the three common questions that vegetarians are asked by their “Standard Westernized diet” friends. Eventually, the vegetarians learn good answers, such as:

“I eat what I like.”
“Where do cows get their protein?”
“I am learning about so many new foods now.”

People don’t generally accept changes easily though, so the same three questions are asked when we go vegan. This time, our vegetarian friends ask us the questions. We learn appropriate responses, such as:

“I still eat the same because there are vegan versions of everything I ate as a vegetarian”
“No way, because there is tons of protein in plants,”
“There is far more variety in the plant kingdom than in the animal kingdom.”

Go raw, and the same questions come up again, this time from our vegan buddies. New answers are required, and we learn them:

“I eat mostly the same, I just don’t cook any more.”
“Did you know that raw proteins are way more accessible to the body than cooked proteins?”
“Half the fun of this diet is learning about all the exotic tropical fruits, and different ones seem to come into season almost every week of the year. I can hardly wait for mango season!”

Why do they ask us these questions? The answer is simple: your friends don’t want to give up their old dietary habits and so they are trying to prove you wrong. They must support their dietary program because if you are right about your program it means that they are wrong about theirs.

Do you know anyone who intentionally wants to be wrong? It would mean losing face, big time, to admit that you were wrong about your diet for years and decades on end, meal after meal.

Is it any wonder that raw fooders resist switching from the high-fat diet they are following to a low-fat raw version? Is it any wonder that they ask the same questions of those of us who have made the switch? Do you have any doubt that the foot dragging is caused by deeply-rooted old habits, rather than a newfound thirst for health?

If you wish to be a force for good regarding someone else’s diet, it takes a supremely gentle, loving, and disarming approach. Your very existence is a threat to their reality.