healthy foods everybody can agree on!

^^^  irony.  ;-)

Ah, what a dietary history I've had during most of my adult life!  Low-cal, mostly, then a short flirtation with low-cal-low-carb, then the low-fat days came upon us, then I tried vegetarian for awhile (though I never could give up fish & shellfish), then back to conventional low-fat, then finally low-carb, and here I happily stick.  I've fallen off the wagon from time to time with each and every single regimen, but only now is the old "i need to get back on my proper diet" statement joyful and relieved.

A couple of years ago (before I started using my ipad to write posts, and had trouble with the "label" utility), I mentioned that low-cal-low-carb program:  it was a book my grandmother had called "Eat and Reduce" by an MD in post WWI practice.  My grandmother had a very similar build to mine -- willowy in her teens, but as Life attacked, she lost and gave up on the Battle of the Bulge which I am still valiantly fighting.  (more irony -- she had a tough life, and hadn't the leisure I have to pursue success ... not to mention the internet.)  ENNNNYHOW,  E&R was an approximate 600-cal-per-day program with a little fruit, moderate lean meats, and LOTS of vegetables.  When i tried following it, there were irritating aspects -- to begin with, buying and preparing all those vegetables, but mainly filling my belly with them and yet not being actually SATISFIED with the food.  As we say in this discipline, you CAN'T devise a low-carb diet with low fat and expect success!

Throughout every diet i ever tried, it was non-negociable -- you eat lots of veggies cuz they're rich in vitaminsandminerals, they're chock-full of FIBER and they're GOOOOD for you!  You MUST eat vegetables.  EVERYBODY agrees:  we can't possibly all be wrong!

Wrong.

The lovely thing about science is that it delights in casting doubt on things EVERYBODY agrees is true.  My stubborn, independent soul enjoys that.

The less-than-lovely thing about human beings as "experts" is that most of us get to a point of learning and understanding a subject, and conclude we know "enough," and then we say stoopid shit and hold stoopid beliefs ... like "vegetables are HEALTHY -- everybody must eat them!"  Vegetables are, in fact, problematic.  Some people are better off minimizing them.

I've eaten a lot of them recently, mostly "innocent" vegetables in "innocent" ways ... just more than usual amounts for me.  The associated bloat has been most uncomfortable!  I wake up waterlogged, with a bulging midsection which diminishes with coffee and fasting.  If this stuff is so damned good for me, why does it make me feel so crummy?

A website (which unfortunately didn't allow me to leave a comment) i was reading about intestinal bloat spoke of things we, individually, may not digest well.  It ignorantly stated that if your wind is particularly rank and skunky, the problem is with meat and eggs, because of all the sulphur they contain!  No, the problem is all the healthycruciferousveggiesuperfoods and healthymicrobiomefeedingsolublefibers that the nutrition world loves so much!  Those suckers are NOT the benign heroes that they might seem to be on paper -- they're out to get you, if you have the temerity to sink your teeth into their tissues and set free the chemical bomb they established for their own protection.

As we see over and over in nutrition study, all those "beneficial" chemicals in petri-dish/isolation may do one thing, but put them all together in a living human body and you'll see an entirely different picture.  Feeding your gut microbiome to make THEM happy is, to me, kinda like paying a blackmailer -- at the end of it all, you end up drained of your resources (health), and what have they given you in return?  Temporary respite (allowing you to eat foods you didn't need in the first place, but which you desired) ... that's all.

The "starch people" have been trying to convince us that it's in our best interests to cultivate the ability to ... eat more starch.  WHY?  Because misery loves company?  Because they have been so brainwashed by Conventional Wisdom that they STILL believe in healthyfruitsandvegetables?  Because they can't resist starches themselves, and want to bolster their own self-respect by making a virtue of "necessity"?

I feel good on minimal vegetable intake.  I'm obviously well-adapted to it, because a cup of mushrooms or squash, a half-cup of nightshades or cooked brassicas, a quarter-cup even of beans, corn, and pseudograins don't get me down.  A lot of the latter two categories DEFINITELY gets me down, even in combination.  I have healthy gut-bugs ... but they STILL don't like lots of vegetables.

Personal experience shows that conventional wisdom is wrong again.  We don't NEEEED vegetables, we desire vegetables.  We desire fruits and starches and dairy and alcohol and caffeine.  Some of us, whose ancestors ate these things for more thousands of years, tolerate them better.  Some of us, who were born with or have developed issues with them, need to use them with discretion.