For God's Sake, Don't Eat Steak...But Who Really Has a Stake in Low-Carb Diets?
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
Those on carnivore diets can often attest to the benefits but the Bigs don’t like it
Better writers than I am publish material that speaks to the lies we are told. This morning as I get ready to head out for a convention for eight days,
did just that: published a piece that eviscerates the anti-low carb pushback of disinformation about the value of low-carb and carnivore diets.I’ve been seeing more and more articles from otherwise respected outlets and science journals barking about questionable evidence that low-carb works. And of course, outlets like Time, which published this piece of nonsense.
Well, as soon as you walk back to who paid for that piece, where the funding originates, it doesn’t take long before you find the Usual Suspects: the Bigs: Big food, Big pharma, Big anyone with a big stake in our being ill. Forever.
This is a horrible thing to state out loud but I’ve said it before, and keep getting validated: a vast percentage of the economy banks on our failures: failure to be healthy, lose weight, be satisfied with less, etcetera. When we fail we seek answers, fake answers abound, and there is massive profit in said fake answers, especially around self-care.
General Mills would love to convince you that their shit cereals are oh-so-healthy. But I digress. More on that in a moment.
My friend
writes regularly about this. I recently re-posted an article he wrote about how the word “cure” no longer shows up in the discussions about disease.I cannot begin to emphasize the power of this kind of word propaganda. By removing even the possibility of recovery to a full and happy life, we are being taught to expect to be sick forever. Oh well, that’s just life.
BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT.
Here are two of his recent pieces which are relevant to this discussion:
Jim provides some terrific book resources, many of which I’ve read and some of which I’ve referred to him. They tend to speak with one voice on the topic, and as a result they are vilified by the Bigs.
The fact that we’re seeing all kinds of pushback by people like General Mills against the low-carb is, (see, I promised ) to my mind, proof-positive that a nerve got triggered, and that the people pushing back are right.
Most of the metabolic illnesses which plague us can indeed be cured by diet alone- most anyway- but that does not serve the Bigs and their bulging bank accounts.
As an animal lover I am just as horrified as everyone else about the way animals are treated for us to eat. I grew up on a farm. We killed animals for our food, but they were loved and treated humanely. None of this is easy.
That said, for my part anyway and I can only speak for myself, there are issues with overly-strict vegan and vegetarian diets which can cause all kinds of harm to a body that Nature designed to ingest protein-especially meat proteins.
To that, please see this from my favorite online expert
:
While I realize I will horrify animal rights folks, and those who truly abhor the idea of eating something with a face, Nature and evolution have set us up to do far better with fats and meat than with carbs. Our bodies are already extremely efficient at turning everything we eat into fuel.
When we overload ourselves with fake fuel (ultra-processed foods) the body goes into overdrive. Hence, all the metabolic illnesses.
Food is a drug. Please, please, let’s be very, very clear. The father of medicine, Hippocrates, taught us to let food be our medicine. Every decent shaman knows that certain foods hurt certain people, certain foods can help and many of them cure.
That said there are plenty of people who thrive on vegan and vegetarian diets; which speaks to how their bodies respond to that food. One of my closest friends is a lifetime veg, she is one of the most glowingly healthy people I know. But it doesn’t work for everyone. That is the whole point here.
Let me please share something both funny and very personal about food, and how it’s both dangerous and medicinal.
There are two big fat prime ribs sitting in my freezer. One for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas. I am not supposed to eat them. I’ll get back to that in a moment.
Because of the unique problems with my particular body, my urologist handed me three food lists (stuff I can’t eat). One for kidney stones, one to reduce uric acid and another to reduce irritation in the bladder.
By the time I got done going through all the lists, all of which overlapped, I was allowed, well, a lettuce leaf once in a while. While I jest, it’s actually not far from that. To get my body truly well, I’ve got to restrict all kinds of foods.
I giggled the whole way through as I took a ruler and a pen and struck out all the stuff I can’t have. On each page there might have been one item left. The prime rib didn’t make the cut.
That’s because foods are chemicals, chemicals cause all kinds of reactions in the body. After abusing my body for forty years with eating disorders, this is what I inherited: kidney stones, bladder issues, uric acid problems, all of that even though I have been “eating healthy” now for decades.
Eating healthy and exercising allowed me to drop some 85 lbs and keep it off now for 36 years. But it’s not that simple.
“Eating healthy” means vastly different things to different people precisely because of how unique our bodies are, what we’ve done to them over time, what we’ve fed them or how we’ve starved them (my hand is way up) and all the other insults this poor vessel of ours has endured.
Including all that stuff we didn’t sign up for: microplastics, pollutants, lead in our water and all the rest, thank you Bigs.
Most of the super-healthy foods I’d been eating, many of the fruits and vegetables, the seafood (even salmon!) were off the menu. All dairy products - I am allowed one cup of tea a day with cream- are verboten.
No more coffee, unless decaffeinated or the kind with acid removed.
And I live in Starbucks country, right?
Imagine trying to eat out. Imagine trying to give someone responsible for your meals on a rafting trip guidance. Basically these days I say give me peanut butter (the good kind, not Skippy) and an apple.
WAIT. My doctor said that apples are a problem, too. So much for an apple a day. Wait, I can’t have peanuts either. Oh well.
The most recent book I read which underscores the value of the low-carb diet is Lies I Taught in Medical School, by Dr. Robert Lufkin and Dr. Jason Fung, whose work on obesity you might know. Jim the Geek recommends similar books and they all come down to the same thing: that low-carb diets can potentially cure us.
And, there are those of us who, however we got here, have bodies which are having a hella hard time working with even the most healthy of foodstuffs, like almonds and spinach, two of the healthiest foods on the planet.
If you’re an oxalate stone former, you likely can’t ever have those again. So much for those fat bags of Blue Diamond Smokehouse Almonds I used to inhale (along with all that salt).
The list of what I can eat is tiny. That’s all right. At least I can eat, and this is temporary. Like many conditions, I got my body here, this was my journey. The journey isn’t over and there are plenty of turns and twists ahead.
You got your body where you are, and it’s often temporary. So often where you and I are right now can indeed be cured by changing our diets.
What that looks like for you is unique to you.
If you and I respect the fact that all substances we put into our mouths are drugs, all of them, including chewing gum and chew tobacco and Tic Tacs and everything, then perhaps we can better understand why certain diets are doomed from the start.
That’s why you and I need competent, trained help to figure out the magnificent and unique body that WE have, and come up with what works for us right now to be our best selves.
It can be and has been for many of us hard damned work, incredibly frustrating, and a real challenge if we’ve abused our bodies for the sake of meeting an impossible dietary standard. Bet you can relate, male or female or gender fluid. So many of us are affected by those unfair standards.
That compulsion only serves the Bigs who feed off our desires, our fears, our insecurities, and above all, our collective ignorance. So…..
Fight. Back. Read. Research. Challenge. Talk to your doctors.
Walk out of any doctor’s office which is plastered with RX brochures and running ads on the damned wall.
In fact, don’t walk. RUN.
Fight back. Much of what we eat today- 60% of the American diet - is trash, ultra-processed foods that are killing us fast and aging us overnight.
Fight back. We get ONE body. ONE life. That body is worth fighting for. YOU are worth fighting for.
Here’s why this is deeply personal: this year after battling with the VA (which prefers to pill you to death rather than help you get well, despite all the window dressing), I am seeing a kidney doctor, an endocrinologist and a urologist.
Working with each, beginning last April, I’ve watched my lab numbers improve steadily. The important markers are finally well within the ranges they need to be. ALL DIET. I’ve researched their recommendations, put them in place, and we’ve watched my labs get better and better.
I can feel the difference, too.
No meds, no magic potion, no magic supplements. All the changes were dietary. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about this.
Finally…
Yes I AM going to eat those prime ribs. Once I give the last bone to my baby girl Mika, I will go right back to the short list-the REALLY short list- of what I can have. Even my doctors know that once in a blue moon won’t kill me.
But a steady diet of poison will.
Fight back. So that you and I can play. You are worth it.
Thank you as always for reading. First and foremost thank you to all the other writers whose good work I tag so that more of us can see material which helps us make informed decisions. I hope this was valuable to you. If so please consider
If you know someone struggling with food issues, and most of us do, please also consider
Above all, love yourself enough to put good things into your belly. Your body will thank you for life. Took me long enough to learn that lesson.
I can testify that low-carb works. One year ago I was diagnosed with diabetes, my blood sugar was three times the maximum normal. It was a shock, because I considered myself eating quite healthy (except overdoing chocolate at times of stress and tiredness, which were unfortunately happening more and more frequently). It was a total shock and I got really scared. So, with the support of my doctor, I immediately started low-carb diet (max 130 g that mostly came from veggies, oat, quinoa…) and low glycemic index based diet. In 3 months I was able to get off all the medication and the diabetes has been in full remission. To keep it that way this is how I need to eat. And I really take it drastically, because this is how it works for me. I have to look at it as an addiction. I haven’t had any sugar or processed carbs since. The challenge is, of course, to keep the cooking varied and interesting, especially because I have to cook for a family. So I had to find things that everyone would eat and that I could make relatively quickly, even when busy or tired. I had to change my views about the food and now find it crucial to living a healthy life. There are a lot of books written in Germany by doctors that talk about beating diabetes type 2 with low-carb diet and oat based meals, those help a lot to get great ideas what to cook, but I am not sure if any have been translated into English. There are similar books in English, but I found those recipes having too much bacon and cheddar cheese 😊 It really requires a complete change of mindset and acceptance that no, we can’t have everything in life. And it’s not the end of the world. I’d rather give up on sugar and carbs than on a leg, eyes and eventually my life. This is what I remind myself of when I see someone eating a pizza and I longingly remember the taste of it, for a second 😊 Diabetes has become an epidemic, thank you for writing about this!
Y’all all might be surprised if you lived overseas and ate food not produced in the US how much you’d lose weight and could eat again. Living close to real sources matters. Having seeds and soil not contaminated, matters.