RJM62
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2007
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- 13,157
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- Upstate New York
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Geek on the Hill
I've maintained for a while now that processed foods are the real evil.
In more recent months, I've also become persuaded that maybe at least some of the seemingly impossible number of people who claim to be gluten intolerant without the benefit of an actual diagnosis are in fact experiencing physiological problems rather than exhibiting attention-seeking behavior. (I still believe there's a lot of the latter going on, as well, but not as much as I used to believe.)
The reason for my shift is that at some point it dawned on me that the horrible dietary habits of most Americans, specifically with regard to processed foods, could in fact be damaging intestinal flora to the point that they have problems digesting what would otherwise be reasonably healthy foods like grains.
I mean, seriously, look at the labels of processed foods. It almost seems like there's a conspiracy afoot to kill us all, and the only question is whether it's going to be the salt or the sugar that does it. And then there are the chemical preservatives and the almost complete lack of fiber in most of these foods. I can understand how intestinal flora may be fighting a losing battle against the constant onslaught of **** that most people eat these days.
I also think that millions of years of human history have resulted in our bodies being ideally adapted to eating food in its natural form, and that food that's been processed in such a way as to remove some things that should be there, add some that shouldn't, and structurally or chemically change some things through the processing, throws the body off-balance. Evolution (or adaptation, if you prefer) has resulted in the body's digestive and metabolic processes "expecting" various foods to have certain characteristics; and when those foods are modified from the body's expectations, things go awry.
That's also why I'm on the fence about GMOs. The government and the food industry like to claim that they're nutritionally identical to heirloom or ancient varieties of the same foods. But I have my doubts. I simply don't believe that we understand the body's expectations well enough to say that with certainty. I don't believe that all GMOs are necessarily "bad," but neither am I convinced that all GMOs are necessarily recognized, digested, and metabolized by the body as they should be.
I'm also not a believer in artificial sweeteners and believe that some of them, especially sucralose ("Splenda") are downright poisonous. Sucralose is an organochlorine chemical, which puts it in the same chemical class as a whole slew of now-outlawed or tightly-restricted insecticides (chlordane, aldrin, dieldrin, heptachlor, methoxychlor, and DDT, just to name a few off the top of my head). In fact, to my knowledge, sucralose is the only organochlorine compound that wasn't specifically invented as an insecticide. I predict that at some future time, science is going to reveal that sucralose is one of the most toxic chemicals ever to be approved as a food additive. I personally won't touch the stuff.
But I digress. My point is that the typical American diet must be hell on the digestive system, including the flora that normally are able to digest foods like grains. So it may very well be that young people, in particular, really do have a problem with gluten, despite any inherent physiological predisposition to gluten intolerance. They've just been beating the hell out of their digestive systems for so long that they're no longer able to digest what would otherwise be a perfectly healthy natural food.
If I am correct, then it's pretty ironic. Just out of curiosity, I often read the labels of foods marketed as "gluten-free," and most of them are just as bad (and sometimes worse) the rest of the processed garbage that Americans force down their throats on a daily basis. They lack the gluten, so the person eating these foods doesn't feel sick after eating them. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the gluten is the problem so much as the damage they've caused to their digestive systems that makes them unable to digest the gluten.
I think that most of these folks (except those who have actually been properly tested and diagnosed) would do themselves a favor by swearing off all processed foods for a couple of months, as well as avoiding gluten during that time; and then gradually reintroducing gluten to see how it affects them. I suspect that many of them would find that they can digest gluten just fine once they stop assaulting their bodies with processed, borderline-toxic garbage three times a day.
Rich
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