Food is sustenance for our bodies. We eat in order to stay alive. At least, we think that is true. We believe that if we don't eat, we won't be alive for long. I suggest that the above is only partly true. Certainly we must eat a little food to provide fuel for the body, but with emphasis on the word "little." It is probably more true that we are killing our bodies with food. As I enter that stage of life called "old age," my body is becoming more sensitive to food. I've been forced to modify my daily diet or else suffer the consequences of indigestion and lack-of-sleep. My digestive system has become a stern and uncompromising teacher. Here is some of what I have learned the hard-way, as a reluctant and rebellious student.

Eating foods of conflicting food types causes incomplete digestion and long sleepless nights. There are three types of food: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. PROTEIN is the building material for cells and is present in all foods to some extent, more in meat than in plants. FAT is the fuel which the body burns for heat and energy, and is essential for the nervous system. It is present in most meats and in nearly all vegetables. CARBOHYDRATES are the starches and sugars, present in all plants but not in meat at all. Proteins are not a problem for the body which takes what it needs and excretes the rest. Unless you eat no meats at all, you need not be concerned with proteins in your diet. Fats are of two types, meat fat and vegetable oil. Both of these burn well and provide fuel for energy. If you eat more fat during the day than the body can burn, the excess will not get stored in tissue or artery walls UNLESS you eat carbohydrates during the same period of time. Here is what happens.

Our digestive systems are identical to that of carnivores, those animals which live off meat alone, like wolves. The all-meat diet proposed by Vilhjalmur Stefanson, the Norwegian explorer of early 20th Century, is natural to the body and never causes indigestion or obesity or heart disease or any other physiological problem. The problem occurs when carbohydrates are eaten during the same meal. This is because carbohydrates (starches and sugars - namely plants) also serve the body as a fuel. While meat fats burn slowly and provide a long lasting fuel, carbohydrates burn very quickly as a short-term fuel. Without getting into the complex process of starch to sugar conversion and metabolism of sugars, we need keep in mind merely that carbohydrates serve as a quick-fuel that the body will utilize first, causing the longer-term fuel of fats to be stored. It has been proven that the body will NOT store any fats unless carbohydrates have been eaten at the same meal as a substitute fuel. It is probably true that ALL health problems in our modern world are due to improper mixing of food types.

Incomplete digestion results from improper mixing of food types. Different gastric juices are produced by your organs and put into your stomach depending on the type food you eat. The digestion of carbohydrates is a different process from that of meat fats. Carbohydrates need some chewing in the mouth where saliva is necessary to begin the digestive process. Meats need no saliva and are better swallowed with least possible chewing, just like your dog does. If you eat both meat fats and carbohydrates at the same meal, different gastric juices are mixed together, diluting each other, resulting in incomplete digestion. Unless your food is properly digested, it quickly begins to rot in its warm wet environment inside you. When that food rots (putrefies) it produces poisons and gases. The poisons get absorbed into your blood stream and sent to your cells as food while the gases are expelled as flatulence. Burping and farting indicate food rotting in your stomach or digestive tract. After years of such abuse to your stomach, intestines, and colon, you shouldn't be surprised at a diagnosis of cancer. Our bodies were not designed to suffer continuous toxic substances over a duration of years. Eventually we poison ourselves to the degree that the poisoned cells and tissues begin to die or mutate or become unable to fight off diseases.

Back in the 1930s, during dietary research at several universities in the United States, the conclusion was indisputable that improper mixing of food types results in many physical ailments. Then the politicians of Washington got involved. Our nation was looking at the possibility of war (WWII) and scientists were seeking a high energy diet for military troops. The arguments came to be called the "pemmican wars." The U.S. Government won the battle as politicians decided the best diet is something from every one of the food industries at every meal. After all, the government had to promote ALL the food industries. Thereafter, dieticians and nutritionists and school teachers have taught us to mix every type of food at every meal. Obesity, and other problems, began to plague our people. Medical scientists then sought to treat symptoms with pharmaceuticals rather than correct the problem of poor diet, which would have been politically unacceptable. Small town doctors, who during prior history could handle the occasional cuts and breaks of our bodies, could no longer keep up with the increasing flow of patients who suffered from countless complex ailments. Doctors congregated in large hospitals and began to specialize. Health problems got out of control, and have reached such epidemic levels in our society today that medical insurance is costly to every paycheck. Much of our society lives, or tries to, around medical specialists and treatments. Obesity now plagues more than fifty percent of our people. Cancer and arthritis and heart-disease are as common to our lives as the abundance of supermarkets and kinds of food. The days of simple diets and basic health are history. Our bodies are all saturated with toxins and we are trying to treat the symptoms rather than the problem as we suffer through ailing lives. Well, so much for the political solution to your health!

Meals! It is my radical notion that our concept of "meal" should be modified. Most of us are not farmers who eat a high fat breakfast and then work it all off during a hard day in the fields. Nearly every one of us overeats. We eat three meals each day because our ancestors taught their successive offspring to do that. Your health problems began when you were a baby being fed a mixture of foods which couldn't properly digest. Your body never had a chance to know the feeling of truly good health. Sure, as a child, you felt like you could eat anything at any time, and you exercised that freedom. And your body, so wonderfully designed to do miraculous things, did come through for you as it handled the abuses you dumped into it. You felt good and normal during your childhood. What you never did get to experience was the truly great health that would have been yours if you had not been abusing your system from the start, and getting accustomed to a lesser level of well-being, that you accepted as normal.

Meals! What if you did away with that concept, waiting until you feel hungry before you eat anything? And then, when you eat something, limit it to a small amount of ONE TYPE food only, never mixing fats with carbohydrates. The result would be that you would first notice an absence of flatulence. But, you would also have to deal with some bad addictions which you haven't realized. If you eat a meal of meat only, perhaps a nice steak with some fat, your body, which is accustomed to the quick "fix" of a carbohydrate hit, will holler loud! You will desperately crave something sweet or starchy to satisfy the terrible craving. For a few days, you would have to deny the body the "fix" it craves to satisfy its addiction. But that will only last for a few days or so, and then the body will settle into a comfortable state of well-being. You will notice a pleasant absence of discomforts you have been suffering and trying to ignore. You will notice a need for fewer hours of sleep. The aches and pains of your muscles will not be so prominent. You will start to feel so good that you are confident that all is well, and you no longer need to discipline your diet. So, you again try a mixed diet meal, and you will get your first lesson as the discomforts return. Well, you have then begun a long path of correcting old behavioral habits that will exercise your will-power sometimes. Your new regimen will conflict with society when you have meals at homes of friends or at restaurants where the mixed-diet habits still reign supreme. One problem you might address is the lack of intestinal flora which resulted from antibiotics and preservatives that killed all the beneficial micro-organisms which perform essential functions in your digestive process. Those can be regained by taking some probiotics.

Meals! Let there be no such thing. Eat a small amount of ONE type food when you feel hungry, and thrill to a new feeling of vibrant health and well-being. As your stomach shrinks in size, you will be satisfied with smaller amounts of food. Learn to enjoy the healthy feeling of a slight hunger. The body is getting rid of stored toxins and its fats. It's a whole new way of life. Next, you must deal with the psychological problem of actually being willing to have good health. You might think it nonsense that you subconsciously want ill-health, but in the end you are what you believe you are, and you alone are responsible for that. If you are obese, you have learned to live with it and find it normal. To become thin and healthy would be so drastic that your subconscious will rebel and you will find all kinds of reasons to return to your norm. You are consciously wanting a new physical body, which grants a new life, but some part of your mind found satisfaction in the unhealthy condition you lived with all your life. Basically, you have to understand that you will be a different person when you have great health, and you have to identify with that new person and be comfortable with it. You can do that if you understand that your own subconscious mind is working contrary to your conscious desires. So, visualize your new self, and find that it is the real you, and become content and happy with that new person. Then, when the subconscious cravings occur that tempt you to violate your program, you will be aware of the sinister danger and will be able to push those cravings aside because you know they are destructive.

Result: you limit your refrigerator contents to some healthy foods, with no junk foods. Leave the processed indigestible foods on the grocery shelves. Your daily activities are not designed around "meals." Food is no longer the central value of your life. When you truly feel hungry, you eat one type of food only, perhaps fruits, or perhaps cook some meat, or perhaps a vegetable salad, or perhaps bread (which was the staple of most diets for many thousands of years), or perhaps a meal of sweets and desserts. But, you don't mix the different types. Since carbohydrates digest quickly, three hours is usually enough time to wait before you take a different type food. Since meats digest slowly, four to six hours is the minimum. A whole day is really recommended after a meat meal, before eating carbohydrates. The end result is that you alone are responsible for your state of health. You must abandon completely the mindless and destructive habit of eating three (or two or one) meals every day. Fasting for a day or more, now and then, grants marvelous benefits. You have overeaten your own path to ill health, and it is up to you alone to take responsibility for the correction. The alternative is to let your old behavioral addictions control your life and kill you earlier than necessary, usually after suffering several years of misery. You will be amazed at how powerfully your subconscious mind wants to do exactly that to you. But, you are the master of your own life, and you can knock the politicians and pharmaceuticals aside and then enjoy the mastery and fulfillment of that person which God designed you to be.

by Roger Hathaway, November, 2002

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