Friday, December 19, 2008

Native American Eating

Throughout my time dieting, I've learned a lot of things about how my body responds to certain food. Processed sugar? Bad. Bread? Bad. I started doing a little research a while back, and realized that my dad might have given me more than just good hair. I might have inherited my mom's tiny bone structure, but my dad gave me his digestive system. I blame this system for my inability to be thin while eating pasta, but, after reading a bit about Native Americans and the diet that they ate, I can understand why.

I found an awesome page called Guts and Grease that explains what the Native Americans ate, and how we've screwed them over by making Western foods more available than the type of food they were used to. An interesting fact:

They are 2.6 times more likely to have diabetes than non-Hispanic whites of similar age. ((From Native American Diabetes by David Mendosa))

So knowing this, look at what type of food we can get for cheap. Bread, milk, things Natives weren't really used to, but most people would consider healthy. An awesome quote from Guts and Grease:

Modern food writers who assure us we can enjoy the superb health of the American Indian by eating low fat foods and canned fruits have done the public a great disservice. The basis of the Indian diet was guts and grease, not waffles and skimmed milk.

I agree completely. So while I look weird when I eat my beans and meat with fat and such, don't think that it's some hokey weird-ass diet. I'm going back to my roots, and not surprisingly, I'm losing fat doing it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think that cutting down on, or cutting out, precessed food is always healthy. Always important to eat food, not stuff.