Have you ever heard of the Standard American Diet (SAD)?
- 63% of America’s calories come from refined and processed foods (e.g. soft drinks, packaged snacks like potato chips, packaged desserts, etc.)
- 25% of America’s calories come from animal-based foods
- 12% of America’s calories come from plant-based foods
Unfortunately, half of the plant-based calories (6%) come from French fries. That means only 6% of America’s calories are coming from health-promoting fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. [Source: https://www.forksoverknives.com/wellness/standard-american-diet-sadder-than-we-thought/]
The vast majority of Americans are pressured by a combination of the economic need to work such long hours that having time to cook their own meals at home seems like a luxury and the commercial/social push that necessitates “eating out” as one of the only remaining options of being social with other human beings in a public place. The loss of “Third Spaces” is another rabbit hole I don’t want to get into here, but it affects us all. Have you noticed that it’s hard to find anyplace to socialize with friends outside of a restaurant?
Basically, people are working two (or more) jobs just to survive and more often reach for pre-packaged foods that heat up quickly or can be eaten straight away rather than spending more of their remaining energy on cooking a healthy meal, if they even know how to cook one. And pre-packaged foods necessitate the use of preservatives to keep them fresh, whether that means increasing its consumers’ risk of cancer or not.
Interestingly, studies have shown that unhealthy diets affect the brain as well as the body. Diets high in saturated fats and refined carbohydrates are associated with greater incidences of depression, depressive symptoms, and anxiety. [https://www.uab.edu/inquiro/issues/past-issues/volume-9/the-effects-of-an-american-diet-on-health]
Even many of the ingredients we use to make our own food have become compromised in the last 70 or so years of human population expansion. Many popular bagged chips (a common snack food) share the same ingredient: processed corn. Corn itself has a lower fiber content than almost any other vegetable. In fact, its best use is that of a carbohydrate or quick-burning energy source for your body. And in fact, even your beloved sweet corn does not digest well.
In the 1950s, agricultural scientists experimented with breeding a new hybrid wheat plant that would be resistant to adverse environmental conditions such as drought or fungal infections. They succeeded in creating a new wheat variety with a yield per acre ten times greater than the wheat our ancestors had been growing for millenia. This innovation has certainly increased the available food supply across the globe, but genetically modifying a crop faster than normal evolution has come at a dizzying price.
“A loaf of bread, biscuit, or pancake of today is different than its counterpart of a thousand years ago, different even than what our grandmothers made. They might look the same, even taste much the same, but there are biochemical differences. Small changes in wheat protein structure can spell the difference between a devastating immune response to heat protein [Celiac] versus no response at all.” [Wheat Belly by William Davis, MD]
I love the phrase food critic Michael Pollan says all the time: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” That phrase doesn’t mean you have to go vegan or vegetarian; it simply means that more of your daily fare should be from the plant kingdom than the animal kingdom in order to maintain a healthy weight and balanced intake of nutrients.
In fact, the loss of nutrients such as magnesium and potassium in our diets is one of the key factors that lead me to continue seeking out new plants to forage for in the wild. Our modern agriculture systems rely on a continuous cycle of planting, fertilizing, tilling, and planting again in such a way that even mitigating it with practices like crop rotation and composting is not enough to add nutrients back to the soil in the quantities which they are removed by growing the plants we need to eat. Wild food is more nutritious than cultivated food by far, a theory that I have personally proven time and again by healing various ailments my body suffered from simply by ingesting a larger quantity of foraged greens.
I usually suggest to people that they “eat the rainbow.” We have been brought up for generations to think that dinner or breakfast needs to have 3 things: meat, carbohydrate, and vegetable. But what if we get over the “one pot meal” stigma and get used to having multiples of those food groups all in one place?
Is it really such a new idea to eat your meal from a bowl rather than a plate? A single skillet meal can contain healthy fats, a myriad of vegetables, and a meat source and as such deliver a much higher nutritional punch with much lower effort than it takes to make your separate meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and steamed peas.
Plus you get the option to add all sorts of foods you won’t notice, like diced mushrooms, wild plants such as dandelion greens or red clover blossoms, and whatever herbs you have on hand. The flavors end up meshing together and providing your body with a nutritional punch that can result in the best sleep you’ve had in your life, since your cells are finally being fed properly for once.
I’ll make another post soon about HOW to find the healthier food choices, but I will encourage you in the meantime to check out your nearest farmer’s market. Just Google “farmer’s market” plus your zip code and see what comes up. Even if you only make it there once or twice this summer, at least you’re starting out on the path toward changing your diet for the better.
If you’d like some guidance on how to make your own healthy meals at home, whether you’re cooking food that you foraged in your backyard or whatever interesting new vegetables you found at the farmer’s market, take a look at my online class Wildcrafted Eats. I’ll even give you 20% Off for trying it (use the coupon code EATRIGHT20 at checkout).
Please note that a couple of the links above are affiliate links for which I will receive a small commission. Most, however, are links to outside resources to back up my research here so you can learn more on your own. If you have any questions, feel free to Contact Me.