MY GRANDPARENTS LIVED LONG WITHOUT A HEALTHY DIET BUT LIVED TO BE 100. WHY SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT MY DIET?
As I have chronologically aged (and matured mentally) I have had the good fortune of coming in contact with people from all walks of life. The thing that I can tell you for sure is that humans are in love with searching for facts or evidence to justify their wrong doings. Maybe wrong doings is a harsh term so we can substitute that phrase with shortcomings. It’s natural to look for an excuse when you know that you could be doing something much better than what you’re doing. Having a healthy diet is no exception!
One of the most peculiar health anomalies that I’ve ever seen is that of people who are able to eat what they want without impunity. One of the biggest gripes I’ve heard against following a healthy diet is, “My grandparents didn’t have a healthy diet but lived to be 100 years old. Why should I worry about my diet?” I didn’t have a valid answer for them at that time because I did not personally know their grandparents. More importantly I knew that we were all biologically built differently. Sometimes we look for the one piece of information that we need to run with and we go full speed only to find out that the road ahead goes off of a cliff with a 4,000 foot drop.
So we’re back to the issue of grandparents not having a healthy diet but living a long time. I decided to examine some basic factors to arrive at my conclusions. What I found was that relying on your grandparents genetic capacity of long life was just as doltish as thinking that you’ll contract diabetes because your grandparents battled diabetes. Isn’t it ironic how no one wants grandma’s cancer but they sure will take grand dad’s 95 year life span? Here are the basic common sense conclusions that corroborate my beliefs on why you shouldn’t follow your grandparents non healthy diet.
#1 You’re Grandparents Never Had To Worry About GMOs. This is a big deal! Just about everything you consume has a great chance of being genetically modified. But your grandparents ate everything from their garden!! I would venture to say that more than 90% of this generation knows nothing about agriculture and growing their own food. Grand dad grew all of his turnip, mustard and collard greens. You on the other hand have to go to your local store to consume foods that have been tampered with to no end. Their primary method of survival was their crops or their farms. Families were too large to (5 to 10 children families) shop at the store for things that could be grown at home.
#2 The Meat They Ate Was Fresh From the Slaughterhouse. I had the chance to witness this for myself while living in Greenwood, Mississippi with my grandparents. My grandfather worked as a butcher at the slaughter house and often brought home thick sliced bacon, hamburger meat, prime rib and pork chops that were prepared that day. Today we rely on the meat from the store that sits for hours and days before we purchase this meat. Most of it is cured or prepared with nitrates or nitrites which are cancer causing agents. So not only are you doing the body great harm from excessive meat eating but the meat you’re consuming is not close to it’s freshest possible state.
#3 They Fried In Shortening or Lard. Don’t frown your face up at these two modalities used to fry. The average family today uses Canola, Sunflower, Soybean or Vegetable oil for all of their cooking uses. Of course there are a few who use Olive Oil but we know that most melanoid people in urban America cannot afford to pay $8 per bottle for a handful of Olive Oil. These oils that are used today are hydrogenated oils and are culprits in much of the heart disease, cancer and diabetes that is taking place today. You may frown at lard but lard provided an adequate level of good fats and is not as detrimental to your health as these modern day oils.
#4 They Worked All Day In The Sun. You and I both know that if we had to work 10 hours each day in the sun we wouldn’t make it to the first pay check. Many of the jobs that were issued 60 to 70 years ago were manual labor jobs! My grandfather was a share cropper then graduated to pouring concrete and working at a slaughter house. When my grandmother wasn’t taking care of her 6 children she worked cleaning houses to put extra money in her pocket. The lifestyles were very different from now to then. Another noteworthy fact is that the sun converts cholesterol from the body into usable Vitamin D. What does this mean? This means that your grandparents didn’t need as much of a healthy diet as you do because working in the sun helped convert their “high cholesterol” into usable Vitamin D.
Today we live in the information technology age. This means that everyone’s job is going to be in front of a computer or be very sedentary in nature. If you’re consuming all of these fried pork chops, corn bread, greens and chitterlings, when will you burn this off? You’re probably working an 8 to 10 hour shift. You know that you’re usually dead tired when you get home from work! So you’re more at risk today than they were 30 years ago!
#5 Their Soil Produced More Nutrients. I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it a million more. The oranges we’re eating today are severely less nutritional than an orange that was eaten by our ancestors. The soil has been tampered with and robbed of it’s nutrients and in essence that takes away from our nutrition. Your grandmother never ate a seedless grape when she was growing up. The idea of consuming a seedless watermelon in those days was simply not in the discussion.
#6 Lights Were Out At 10 pm. My grandfather goes to bed at 9 o’clock post meridiem every night. On the contrary he wakes at 4:30 ante meridiem. Today many of us couldn’t fathom having to go to bed before 12 pm. The past generations were not people who slept in because their lives depended upon them being up early to till the land. The result was a generation of well rested people. We barely sleep. Sleep is when the body makes it’s repairs and the regenerative cells (hair, skin and nails) are being put back together.
As you can see we’re comparing two different eras and pedigree of people. The set of worries that one faced back then as a black person were not the same as we face now. Opportunities were less so everything had to be done efficiently with a high level of seriousness. This in turn created resourceful people who we now call our ancestors. There is always more than meets the eye when it comes to healthy diets and life longevity. It’s always best to look under the hood of any situation when you want to know the true reasons for something.
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