The Standard American Diet (SAD)

If the inflammatory "pseudo-foods" below look scrumptious to you, then food engineering worked! These are specifically designed to entice your natural cravings but eating them contributes to ill health.

The US is one of the wealthiest countries in the world – yet one of the unhealthiest. Our gastrointestinal system operates like a spluttering gas engine. We can’t sleep but we can’t feel energized when we’re awake. Neither our hearts nor our heads last as long as they should.

Unlike a machine, the human body can renew and regenerate itself, if it has what it needs. The body produces new cells every day for every organ and gland. Healing of injuries, both minor and severe, is routine. Why then is health so elusive?

The modern hunt: WE are the real prey.

The quest for optimal health has historically demanded a combination of art and instinct, whether the skill of the hunter or the wisdom of the cook. However, today all we need is a driver’s license to get to the grocery store! But this convenience comes with a price: the loss of fundamental skills to nourish ourselves. The devastating result of adopting conveniences without preserving nourishing traditions can be seen in our deteriorating health statistics.

Because this health decline has happened over a span of time involving several generations, people have gradually come to accept marginal health as the norm. Much of our modern living tends to desensitize people into a lethargic state; indeed, fatigue has gotten so common that it even has its own disease devoted to it: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome!

Why are we prepared to accept the fact that a relatively young individual will suffer from frequent headaches and digestive disturbances, continual nervous tension, insomnia, obesity, allergies, asthma, learning disabilities, a persistent cough, a mouthful of decaying teeth and respiratory ailments every winter? We expect our physiques to acquire a flabby belly shortly after the onset of adulthood (even by teen years!). We find nothing extraordinary in the fact that so many people are incapable of running more than a few yards without suffering loss of breath or walking a few miles without suffering exhaustion.

We rationalize disease and keep moving… but tiredly.

"I saw it on TV; it must be true!"

Most people do not recognize that this is what we have become as a result of greed-generated catchy slogans and deceptive marketing that cover up nutritional inadequacies with flavorful toxins. Many people falsely believe that if something is advertised, it is gospel; and if something tastes good, that equates to good for us. Nothing could be more false. Advertisers simply create fads and trends to generate sales with no glimmer of truth. And the result...

You keep eating a certain way, even though you look and feel worse.
You keep eating a certain way because it's advertised and talked about, even though you look and feel worse.
You know all the ‘scientific reasons’ for eating a certain way, even though you look and feel worse.

Unhappily, anxiety-ridden Americans, obediently following the warning voices of televised drug commercials and newspaper ads, consider health something that must be purchased in a bottle at the drug store. However, you cannot shampoo health into your hair, brush health into your teeth, gargle health into your breath, smear health into your skin, or pound health into your muscles... and taking a pill certainly will not magically create health.

Tarzan didn't eat like this!

No human society in history has consumed a diet remotely resembling what the USDA suggests as optimal. Food eaten today is about as far removed from the natural diet of man as man is from his primitive jungle. Western diets incorporate many poor quality pseudo-foods that are dismantled and put back together, then ‘enriched’ or ‘fortified’ with select manufactured vitamins that our bodies don’t even recognize. Overall nutritional value is lost, disrupting all bodily functions.

Health simply cannot be optimized by eating processed food and focusing on a few select individual ingredients (fiber, vitamin C, calcium, gluten-free, etc). Rather, the focus should be on consuming whole foods where all nutrients are naturally present. People forget, or never knew, that health can be found only by obeying the clear-cut laws of nature.

Come on... Do you really believe sweetened chemicals and artificial fat is healthy food?

Poor health is a result of nutritional problems and will never respond to stuffing oneself with medicine. We are a culture that has lost instinct and knowledge of what constitutes healthful food. Even so, it should be obvious that...

Factory-farmed meat laden with chemicals, hormones, antibiotics and pesticides, further insulted by irradiation to extend shelf life, is not quality food.
Lifeless, over-processed, insecticide-sprayed food is not nourishing.
Sugar-coated, processed, chemical-rich food sold in packages and boxes with an infinite shelf life offers no vital building blocks to nourish our bodies.
Genetically engineered chemical-drenched produce grown in mineral depleted soil does not promote optimal health or longevity.

Improper foods cause disease; proper foods cure disease.

It's that simple.

The truth is that pain, misery and illness result from our own dietary mistakes (even though the temptation was created by deceptive marketing). Suffering manifests when our bodies fill with toxic wastes caused by a diet of poorly selected food filled with artificial flavorings, preservatives, synthetics, over-processed ingredients. Even if you selected wholesome, natural foods, they were likely improperly prepared, boiled or microwaved to death, or fried in toxic oil, then covered with harmful condiments.

If you created your condition, you have the power to change it.

It's vitally important that a stressed and diseased body gets a period of rest. That's what a detox/elimination diet is designed to do and The Paleovation Workbook is a great place to start! Toxic foods must be eliminated in order to truly heal. One of our most valuable assets is our body’s capacity to repair itself.

“Thy food shall be thy remedy.”

— Hippocrates