If you would please take some time out to watch this video.
It does my heart good to know that there are people with as much influence as Jamie Oliver carrying the torch on the same crusade. I watched this video on Saturday and was very moved by it.
I'm sure most of you know who Jamie Oliver is. He has made food his life's passion and has made a very good life out of it. I have always said that food is the most powerful of medicines and the ost powerful of drugs. What you eat directly affects how you feel and perform. Not only in sport and competition but in life.
When I first got into health and fitness, I was 14 years old. I got a book called "Getting Stronger" By bodybuilder Bill pearl. I got it because there was a section on training for wrestling and I was looking for anything I could find to be a better competitor. I had no Idea that that book would set off a chain reaction of events that would decide the direction and focus of what will surely be the rest of my life.
I spent the next 13 years trying to learn everything I could about bodybuilding. Not paying much attention at all to the importance of nutrition. Even working as a personal trainer I knew nutrition was important, but I didn't give it anywhere near the consideration I should have. I figured that if I could see my abs I was doing good enough. We all have situations in our lives where we say "If I could go back to then, knowing what I know now". Well that is mine.
Sometime between the ages of 26 and 27, so, two to three years ago I figured that if I spent the last thirteen years of my life obsessing about lifting weights (and most of that time was wasted lifting the wrong kind weights) it's about time I really take a look at my nutrition. So I picked up some books like "The Zone Diet" by Dr. Barry Sears, and "The Paleo Diet" By Dr. Lauren Cordain and found a new area to obsess about. Once again my life took a drastic turn and I have mad some shocking discoveries along the way.
Something that I hope you are starting to pick up on as you follow my blog, is that a side benefit of learning how to eat, is that that it becomes glaring obvious how not to eat. Now my wife Megan and I are both guilty of looking into people's shopping carts in the grocery stores, and if you follow the caveman2.0 lifestyle at all, I know you do too and evaluate people's food choices. It is, in and of itself, a bit of food snobbery. What immediately jumps out at me is the processed artificial food that people choose to feed themselves is also the food they feed out children. This has resulted in a generation of children who not only look like the obese parents who feed them but share the same health problems as their overweight and obese parents.
I am quoting Jamie directly from this video when I state that "for the first time in history, we have produced a generation of offspring that will have a shorter lifespan than their parents" Please take a minute to contemplate the significance to that statement.....
The very thought of that last statement makes my chest tighten up and I begin to feel a slight panic for the future of our race. It's not even 100% the fault of the parents. How many times have I seen people struggling to loose weight. The poor misguided people turn to vegetarianism and wonder why their health deteriorates. We have been told to avoid dietary fat so we choose low fat options, eating food than can no longer keep us full but is also loaded with sugar and we are told that it is healthy.
People now live in a constant state of protein deficiency coupled with perpetual hyperinsulinism. We are told that we have to eat at least five meals a day to "stoke the furnace" so we choose high carb, low fat food and perpetuate the cycle wondering why we keep getting fatter. I know so many people hat claim that if they don't eat every 3 hours they get light headed and nauseated. They don't realize that it's because they are making their blood sugar run crazy and they have no idea how to control it.
It doesn't help that advertising companies intentionally lie to us and mislead us to think that their unhealthy products are the next big think in healthy eating. I have seen with my own two eyes the "Mars Slim" commercial. Who doesn't recognize that the word "slim" has been attached to a candy bar and then a fancy jingle sung by slim people is completely intended to mislead us into thinking that you can eat this chocolate bar and loose weight. BUT IT'S A CANDY BAR FOR GOD'S SAKE!
Where I am going with all this is that people need to be educated about what they're eating and we have been inundated with false information that is completely misleading us into following a destructive path.
We are what we eat. There are few statements that are as true as this one. It is our responsibility to educate ourselves how to take care of not only ourselves, but our children, and our children's children.
Watch the above video and you will be absolutely shocked when you get to the part where Jamie takes a selection of fruits and vegetables into an elementary school and not one of the children are able to identify a single one of the products he puts before them. I can't imagine a six year old not being able to identify a tomato. But it happens and you will see it.
I can't tell you how important it is that we have people like Jamie, with a vast amount of resources and influence spreading essentially the same message as the likes of Mark Sisson, Mike O'Donnel and myself. The world needs to make a drastic change if we are to ensure the health of our generations to follow. We have gotten to the point that what we eat is not food at all anymore and that absolutely has to change.
Please, watch the video and spread the message.
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