 |
Real Food, Naturally: It's the Sugar, Stupid!
by Glen Boudreaux, Jolie Vue Farms
For years, nay decades, we have been bombarded by the assertion that fat makes us fat, fat blocks our arteries, fat kills us. It seemed to make sense, didn't it. Sort of a fat-in, fat-out theory. Simple to understand. But like all matters hypothesized about how our complex physiology functions, "simple" is almost always a simplistic answer that goes not nearly far enough in addressing our complex digestive tracks. In fact, the theory that fat makes us fat is probably all wrong.
We are invested in the idea of fat being a bad thing. Nutritionists have made a living and died writing books about the horrors of fat. The government darn near took it off the food list. We have been so busy demonizing fat that we have ignored a much more likely culprit - sugar. And I'm not just talking about refined sugar - sugar is all around us, probably the most prominent component of our everyday modern diet. It is found in all baked products, be it bread, cake, or pie, in potatoes, corn, rice, pasta, fruits and fruit juices, and almost all processed food invented by the food factories of "Food, Incorporated". For certain forms of sugar, such as high fructose corn syrup, an unnatural product if ever there was one, are not only flavor enhancers but stabilizers as well. The perfect component for Food, Inc. And we all know what happens to sugars that are not immediately burned off by exercise, right? You got it - our pancreas converts it to fat and stores it. So in a sense, fat is the problem. But it is the fat that comes not from red meat, chicken, or fish, but from sugar.
If you are a statistician, try drawing a corollary graph between our intake of our fats from animals, obesity and diabetes. Can't make one. But do the same thing comparing our increased sugar intake and these diseases and the lines will run parallel, both going straight up.
There is a grain of truth to the deleterious effect of animal fat that does fit the graph, however. We now feed our animals with heavy doses of corn, be it beef, chicken or pork. Corn is full of sugar, so guess what? It makes our animals fatten up faster. (Getting the connection here? Feed 'em sugar and they get fat). It also changes all of their good fat to bad fat, driving out the Omega 3s, and the good cholesterol, leaving the Omega 6's and the LDL's. So why do they do it? Economic efficiency. It takes no more than 13 months of age to raise a beef calf to maturity weights when they spend the last 6 months on corn in the feedlot. At Jolie Vue Farms, where we raise grass-fed beef, it takes our cattle 24 months to reach the same weight on a grass diet. Wondering why grass-fed meats are more expensive - now you know. The corn-fed rancher sends two calves to the processor in the same time it takes us to grow one. They get the same money in half the time. And you pay for it in poor health from poor fats. Once again, sugar is the culprit.
So here's my diet proposal for good health: avoid the sugars, eat the fat and protein from humanely-raised grass-fed animals, and concentrate on the non-sugary vegetables from your local farmer.
It's all for sale at your Houston Farmers Market.
Glen Boudreaux, Jolie Vue Farms
|
