A new food movement has been gaining ground recently. It’s been in existence for several decades but in recent times with the wake-up calls of news reports concerning GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) and mercury found in HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) it has gained more proponents. It is the traditional food movement.
Originally spurred on by Weston Price, the basis of the movement is to eat food, as Michael Pollan puts it, REAL food, food that your great great grandmother would recognize and could prepare easily. It turns much of common nutritional beliefs on their heads, advocating animal and dairy based fats over vegetable fats, encouraging red meat consumption but also vegetables. Generally speaking instead of ready made foods, it encourages cooking from scratch.
It is a wide and varied philosophy including such blogs as How to Cook Like your Grandmother. Some of the premises of traditional foods are similar to the so called Ethical Omnivores in the sense that animals raised in biologically and ecologically sound ways are both cruelty free, environmentally sound and traditional in essence.
The end point is to eat food that contains a good mix of meat and vegetables and has no ingredients that you cannot readily identify. This is good idea for the health benefits, alone. It has been shown in studies that humans can thrive on such varied diets as vegan, vegetarian and almost completely carnivorous: the important feature is to eat true foods not random chemicals as are currently widely featured in many of the supermarket’s products.
As a side note on a food related subject it is possible to be a healthy vegan/vegetarian without soy as a major protein source. Protein is available in a wide range of legumes, fruits and vegetables in sufficient quantities. Soy is not only unnecessary but using it as a major protein source could have adverse hormonal effects because of the vast quantity of soy found in everyday products. It is now used in hotdogs, chicken fingers, some frozen pizzas and soy oil is found as commonly as canola or other vegetable oil in many products. Soy like HFCS is not harmful in and of itself, the major concern is the insane quantity available in foods you would not consider containing it. Yet another reason to make your own if you can. Soy contains natural estrogen-like plant hormones which may have effects on growing humans. HFCS has been shown to have mercury containmentation from its production phase. Both of these are not concerns until one is subjected to large amounts. Unfortunately, the modern typical North American is exposed to these products in some quantity in almost every “food” they consume.
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