Real Food by Nina Planck

Hi friends. Sorry it's been a few days. I've been too busy reading, cooking, and eating to write about what I'm reading, cooking and eating. :) Also, my photographer has paying gigs that take precedence over my little blog. Psh!


I'll get to what I've been eating in my next post, but first I wanted to talk about the book I just finished reading. It is called Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck. This book was recommended to me by my friend Morgan and luckily I found it at the library the other day (I love the library so much).

Real Food is about eating traditional foods. The foods that humans have been eating since always. The foods that we ate before the industrialization of foods changed everything. I absolutely love this book. It reconfirms everything I've always instinctively felt was the "right" way to eat, backed up by why it's the right way.

She shows why low-carb and low-fat and low-sodium and low-cholesterol and other deprivatory (is that a word?) diets are actually bad for us. Butter and lard are better than margarine. Whole raw milk is better than industrialized milk that is full of hormones and dead white blood cells, missing valuable nutrients. Pastured beef, chicken skin, chocolate, and eggs all have an important role to play in our health. And of course, most of all, lots and lots of veggies and fruit. Put most simply, eat whatever you want, as long as it's not industrialized. Planck shows that the cause of modern health problems are due to high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils and other non-traditional, "fake" foods.

As with most every aspect of life (ie childbirth, breastfeeding, most health problems, child-raising, home and body products), I believe that the more natural and "old-fashioned", the better. So this book made perfect sense to me and really reinforced what I felt deep down is the best way to eat. And after being stuck in a "diet" mind-set for the past 8-9 years, it was very freeing. It's a relief to break out of that and concentrate on health and whole foods, rather than on fat grams and calories and carbs. I'm confident that by combining eating real foods with an active life-style, I can still lose the bit of weight that I'd like to lose and not hurt my body in the process. I won't be winning any hot body contests, but I'd much rather win the long, healthy life contest anyway. :)

If you're interested in how all the vitamins and fats and cholesterol and proteins and acids all work together for our bodies' benefit in traditional foods (and how they DON'T work in industrialized/processed foods), please read this book!