Are you a person who believes low-fat foods are healthier than those with fat in them? Have you ever starved yourself or limited your calories thinking that if you did this, you would lose weight? It has become a common misconception that if people eat low calorie and fat-free foods they should be able to lose weight because they are eating less fat.

Although in theory, this sounds like a logical conclusion, nothing could be further from the truth! With that idea in mind, have you ever wondered whether the food in your kitchen that reflects those ideas is healthy to eat? It can be confusing to try and sift through all the information available on food and nutrition. So much is available. How do you know what to believe? Don’t worry, I’ll answer this question later on in this post.

Right now, let’s go over some of the most common myths about nutrition as well as detailed explanations as to why those are untrue.

Here’s a short quiz you can take to determine how nutritionally aware you are about the foods in your kitchen:

• Do you eat low-fat or non-fat foods?

• Do you count calories?

• Do you believe “lean meats” are healthy to eat?

• Do you believe red meat is not healthy to eat?

• Do you believe saturated fats and cholesterol are bad for your heart?

• Do you eat soy products because you’ve been told they are health foods?

• Do you maintain a vegan diet?

• Do you eat boxed cereals because the labels read “low-fat”, or “high-fiber”, “all-natural” or “no sugar added”?

• Do you believe eggs and butter are bad for your health?

• Do you choose vegetable oils because you have been told they are healthy to consume (canola, cottonseed, corn, and safflower oils)?

• Do you take synthetic vitamin/mineral/dietary supplements to “fill in the gaps”?

• Do you pay no attention to organic, sustainable, antibiotic/hormone/spray/pesticide-free meats and produce because conventional is “cheaper” and “it doesn’t really make a difference”?

• Do you buy processed foods such as enriched breads, crackers, cereals, bagels, English Muffins, pretzels, rice cakes, tortillas, croissants because you believe they are low-fat and healthy?

• Do you eat highly-processed lunch meats, sausages, hot dogs and other similar items?

• Do you eat products containing hydrolyzed proteins or protein powder?

• Do you buy “food” and “protein” bars and powdered drink products because you believe they are an acceptable substitute for a real, balanced meal?

• Do you believe that raw milk is unsafe to drink, and pasteurized is superior?

• Do you buy factory-produced eggs and industrially-produced meat?

• Believe salt is bad for your health?

If you answered no to most of these, hopefully you are on the right track!

If you answer yes to more than 2 of these questions, it might be time to re-evaluate what you are keeping in your cupboards and refrigerator.

Here are some things you may not know about the food you eat:

• Fats and cholesterol are healthy and necessary for your health. All humans need real, unadulterated fats in their diets. Fats contain some of the most necessary nutrients and enzymes for us to maintain all types of bodily functions – even more than many vegetables, believe it or not!

• Butter is good for you! A slice of real butter is delicious, filling, and provides Vitamins A & D, and K, and also Omega 3 essential fatty acids – especially butter from healthy cows on pasture.

• The kind of meat you eat is important – learn the differences between conventional and sustainable-raised, grass-fed meats. Conventional meat is really the culprit of many of our health problems.  Animals in conventional environments are usually fed grain, soy. These animals are not made to eat these substances – but should be eating grass instead. As a result, animals become ill and often develop the pathogenic variety of E. coli and other diseases, are administered antibiotics to keep them from getting sick, are given growth hormones to make sure they grow fast enough to turn a profit quicker. The balance of Omega 6s to Omega 3s in conventional meat is grossly out of balance, and eating this kind of meat causes degenerative disease over time.

• As a rule, supplements don’t replace healthy eating – but sometimes we need them, and if you are going to take them, good quality is critical!

• Remember when grandma used to give you cod liver oil?  Cod liver oil with butter oil is really good for you, and is an important source of Vitamins A , B, C, & D. Cod liver oil with butter oil contains the important Vitamin K that is so lacking in much of our diets. Fermented cod liver oil is the best type of this oil to consume.  Here is a great resource of information on the importance of cod liver oil in our diets.

• Sprouted, soaked, and fermented grains, nuts, and seeds are more digestible to the human body. Have you ever stopped to wonder why there are so many grain and food allergies, and why obesity, heart disease, and other illnesses are so prevalent? In modern times, the grains most of us consume are processed and extruded. Extrusion involves grains being forced through a very small hole in a machine and subjected to extremely high temperatures, which damages the grain. For thousands and thousands of years, our ancestors prepared grains by soaking and sprouting to increase the digestibility of these foods.  When eaten in moderation and properly prepared, grains, nuts and seeds can be a part of a truly healthy diet.

• Eating healthy doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg – here are some tips for prioritizing and being creative with your budget.

• Cheap food is not really cheap – cheap foods are full of chemicals and toxins, and are not really food – so you can eat it all day and not be full.  We are seeing more and more of these foods on recall lists every day. Eating these kinds of foods will actually result in a net deficiency of nutrients stored in your body. In the end, you will spend more money for less food, and then you will pay in health costs later.

• The Food Pyramid (designed by the USDA) actually tells us to eat the wrong foods!

• The most unhealthy oils to consume are those that are the cheapest (such as canola, cottonseed, and soybean) – and you will find these everywhere you look : in grocery stores, restaurants, and in processed foods everywhere.

• The healthiest oils are virgin and extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, and palm oils from a sustainable-source.

• Soy is not a health food unless it is in fermented form. Ninety percent or more of soy sold on the market is highly-processed, industrial waste – and beyond that can cause severe disruptions in the body in the reproductive, digestive, endocrine, nervous, and cardiovascular systems. Soy milk, cheese, fake meats, most tofu and soy sauces, soy “mayonnaise”, and soy filler ingredients you will find on the market are not good for your health, despite the claims made by food companies on labels. Natto, tempeh, and miso that are naturally fermented are good choices for health.

• Table salt is an industrial waste product – the heating process during refinement takes temperatures upward toward 1200 degrees in processing, which destroys the majority of naturally-occurring elements. Mostly comprised of sodium chloride and no more than one or two other elements, table salt is toxic to our bodies. Unrefined sea salt has a balance of trace minerals our bodies need, which we currently don’t get from many of the foods we eat. Because conventional farming methods destroy our soil and mineral levels, the earth becomes depleted of many important nutrients that would otherwise greatly improve the nutritional content of foods that are grown (produce, grains, legumes, etc.) and raised to graze (animals for meat and meat products). The best choice is a good quality unrefined sea salt.

Overwhelmed? Confused? You are not alone!

Modern food processing methods remove nutrients from foods and denature them so that our bodies cannot recognize those substances. Modern food processing uses heat, pressure, and industrially-produced oils and fats to make foods more convenient and easier to package and sell. If your digestive system cannot absorb something, it will have a difficult time delivering something nutritious that will actually do your body benefit. What’s more, these foods can actually increase the toxin load and deplete existing nutrients, which cause long-term health problems.

Remember at the beginning of this post – I asked a very important question - how do you know what to believe?

When you aren’t sure, a good rule of thumb to follow is that if your grandmother doesn’t know what it is, you probably shouldn’t be eating it!  People have eaten real, traditional foods for thousands of years and survived very well.

It’s only been in the last 160 years or so that human beings have developed processing and automation to mass produce packaged foods. And yet since that time, disease rates and illnesses have changed considerably. For example, our records in the study of heart disease show that death from heart problems was a rare occurrence in pre-industrial societies.

Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution (19th century), the incidence of heart disease began to increase sharply, and since then more people have died from heart-related disease.  If you are a person that needs statistical data to be convinced, just take a look at this graph of statistics on heart disease from Google showing heart disease rates since the 1860s to now. It’s quite startling to see the change in this disease since that time on this graph.

If you are new to real and traditional foods, here are some great starter articles that can help you understand all the different types of foods, what to buy and what to avoid:

How well do you know your food? Find out!

Find out what’s in my kitchen:

My kitchen staples – how I keep my family healthy

What’s in the food you are eating?

Fortified and processed foods: are label claims about nutrition true?

Organic is only part of the story

Reading labels in the store – don’t be fooled by marketing lingo!

Does the Food Food Pyramid give good recommendations?

This post is part of Food Renegade’s Fight Back Fridays Carnival. Please visit Kristen’s site and read all the other great real food posts linked there.

This picture was sent to me from Mary in St. Louis, MO. She took the photo at Schnucks in Kirkwood, MO.

All I can say is YUCK!

Mary writes:

Just found their website, http://www.safeeggs.com

Their tagline: “Natures perfect food made perfectly safe.”

What are they going to pasteurize next? Lettuce? I’d like to see them try that.

What do you guys think of pasteurized eggs? Do I even need to ask?

This is an amazing thing, clabbering milk. I always love these ‘recipes’ for things that if you just leave something on the counter and leave it for a few days, voila! You have something else. And for the first time in my life, I understand why they would name a baking powder brand after this wonderful stuff, as it has the ability to make bread rise!

For this ‘recipe’ you will need farm fresh (raw) milk, NOT pasteurized milk. Pasteurized and homogenized milk does not sour properly, but putrifies or rots due to the lack of beneficial bacteria that fresh raw milk has. I find it interesting that raw milk has gotten such a bad rap but even when it’s past the drinking stage, it’s still a usable product, with even more nutrition than before.

How to Make Clabbered Milk

Ingredients:

Farm fresh raw milk (unpasteurized), about a week or two old is best.

Process:

Leave your milk on the counter in a jar (sealed) for 2-3 days in a warm spot until solids appear. Shake it to see if it’s turned thick. It should not yet be separated.

If the milk is still mostly white when shaken, and has turned thick, it is done clabbering. Store your clabbered milk in the refrigerator. If you leave the milk on the counter longer, it will separate turn into curds and whey. If this happens, drain off they whey and cream cheese and use in your favorite recipes.

Use your clabbered milk in place of yogurt or buttermilk in any recipe, such as soaked pancakes, banana bread, or lemon muffins.

Photo courtesy of kevindooley on Flickr

Raw milk yogurt is a sort of holy grail for traditional foods enthusiasts, coupling the enzymatic and probiotic components of both fresh milk and fermentation in one glorious, creamy, lovely food.  Served over baked oatmeal or soaked oatmeal porridge, on its own or as a basis for savory dipping sauces, a good yogurt can find its way to nearly every meal if you let it.

Raw milk yogurt, thanks to the effects of food enzymes, has a tendency to be a touch runnier than the stuff you find in grocery stores or what you might make in your own kitchen from boiled or pasteurized milk.  For this reason some of the very best raw yogurt is prepared using a combination of fresh cream and fresh milk rather than milk exclusively.  If you follow the fermentation process with straining, as you would for labneh, the resulting product would be even thicker and creamier and you could, in turn, use the accompanying whey in properly preparing grains and flours through soaking or even as an addition to your morning smoothie.

In preparing a classic, or thermophilic, yogurt at home with raw milk, you do need to heat the milk slightly and culture it in a warmed environment.  We heat the milk only to 110° Fahrenheit (about 43° Celsius) which keeps food enzymes and naturally occurring beneficial bacteria intact and thriving. Other cultured dairy foods ferment at room temperature and can also be made with raw milk.  I also recommend culturing with Bulgarian or Greek starters which are available online (see sources) and which produce a rich, tangy and super creamy product.

Raw Milk Yogurt Tutorial(...)
Click here to read the rest of How to Make Raw Milk Yogurt (639 words)

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