It depends on where you got your education. Let’s hope it wasn’t from Bloomberg.
According to a recent “analysis” of USDA data by Bloomberg Businessweek, the two most significant factors in an individual’s diet are his or her income and level of education. Specifically, the analysis says, the more education people have and the more money they earn, the “smarter” the choices they make at the supermarket.
Gross generalizations like this run rampant in the Bloomberg article, including the notion that healthier diets are vastly more expensive. This is not true: eating a Mediterranean-style diet rich in fruits and vegetables costs just $1.50 more a day. Also, a far more important factor than how much money they spend is whether or not individuals live in a “food desert”—a neighborhood devoid of stores and markets that provide access to fresh, whole foods.
Bloomberg’s “expert analysis” truly unravels with a closer look at what foods they deem to be “healthy” and “unhealthy”: skim milk and wheat products are good, while animal fats, high-protein beans, and whole milk are bad! Wrong, wrong, wrong. In fact, a recent study has shown that children who drink whole milk are slimmer than kids who drink skim! One theory for this is that “full fat foods” promote satiety. Additionally, full-fat diary can reduce your risk of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.
Perhaps most egregiously, Bloomberg fails to address the benefits of organic milk over conventional milk. We’ve discussed the benefits of organic foods in previous articles, but new findings from Dr. Charles Benbrook (you may remember him as the lead researcher on our study of glyphosate-resistant superweeds) found that organic milk contains more heart-healthy fatty acids than conventional milk. This is crucial to maintaining a proper balance of omega 3 and omega 6 fats.
Of course, the healthiest milk is both organic and raw, but—thanks to the FDA and USDA bias against small, local, and organic famers—it’s increasingly hard to find.
Contrary to Bloomberg’s “wisdom,” it’s impossible to overstate the importance of consuming whole, unprocessed foods to promote health. In particular, this means animal fats and full fat dairy. These foods contain cholesterol and saturated fat, which are in fact critical nutrients despite being demonized by mainstream “experts”: cholesterol helps build new muscle and protects against heart attack and cancer, while saturated fats enhance the immune system and plays many other important functions.
Unfortunately, it’s not just the mainstream media that touts the “low-fat” myth: America’s school lunch program not only mandates low and nonfat milk, but limits fat levels. It’s not hard to connect the dots between what we’re feeding our kids and American students lagging in international math, science, and testing scores.
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Recently in nutritionfacts.org Dr Greger discussed studies that showed even with organic milk there were significant amounts of sex hormones which are naturally present in all dairy. Are we sure there is more nutritional advantage to recommending dairy over rice, soy, almond milks?
Homemade nut milk from properly soaked and/or sprouted nuts and seeds is the way to go. Almost all the store bought non-milk milks have carrageenan in them anyways, and they have low quality vitamins added, these both come with their own health problems. It’s dead food in my opinion. Raw dairy milk is so delicious though! Raw milk still has health benefits right?
Here’s my friend Michelle’s recipe
4-5 cups water
1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds (no shell)- soaked at least 4 hours
1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds – soaked with the pumpkin seeds
1-3 dates – soaked – just to blend them easily
Pinch of unrefined salt
optional: dash of cinnamon
Rinse seeds and blend everything together, blend in vitamix REALLY well!
In real llife adding $100 a month to the cost of feeding each person in the family may be impossible. In a life of fixed income, mostly fixed expenditures, the only place for me to squeeze money is that money allotted to food purchases. I am also 76, not well, wiped out from dealing with my health issues and my fibro, there is no way I can cook everything from scratch. I too shop at Trader Joe’s and at Sprouts, a natural foods supermarket. But natural is what the store, or the food supplier, decide and there are no guidelines. Nevertheless, when organic is on sale, for those items that do not have a peel, like apples and zucchini, I try to buy them. I no longer buy just any fish, it has to be wild caught. I am throttling back on red meats, going more to chicken, and buying dark chicken either organically from Trader Joe;s or natural from Sprouts. But I still use canned soups, not all of them organic, mostly to use in the slow cooker. I buy ready made salads from Trader Joe’s, no information as to origin on the label. And, since I have celiac, ready made crackers from both stores. I eat yogurt, do not make my own. And if there are sources of raw milk in my community, I am both unaware of them, wonder if I could afford them. The only milk I use is half and half in my coffee, I stopped drinking milk years ago when I first discovered Dr. Weil. I meditate, I do energy healing upon myself and my cats. My husband no longer allows me to do this for him. The point being that altho I am “educated”, I am also in a tight financial situation, since 2008, like so many others. I cannot afford the healthier foods that are available (tho it is better in summer when the farmers’ market is open), nor can many other people, in spite of knowledge. Additionally food prep has to be limited to what I can do and I am no longer able to bake, make a lot of soup from scratch, nor eat a very raw diet (neither one of us has their own teeth). Most women who work may be able to afford organic foods; however, they are very pressed for time and depend on processed foods in feeding themselves and their families. Healthy living/eating is a wonderful ideal; but not practical in today’s world.
Read up on Dr. Weston A. Price and westonaprice.org. Raw, organic DAIRY milk (as well as raw, organic grass fed, wild and free range proteins) along with good animal fats (tallow, lard, chicken fat) and virgin coconut oil as well as non glutenous grains, fruits and veg has helped many, many people live better with ADHD, autism, and many, many auto-immune diseases.
Funny, I really believed we didn’t have choices…poor or otherwise.
I thought the food industry (GMA), our government, fast food chains, and companies like Monsanto and Dow were the reason we eat badly.
Education…so if we go to college, but eat at burger king, we are smart? duh? go figure?
If we only get a high school education, and eat a peanut butter sandwich, we are not smart?
Bloomberg, where did you get your education…school of snobbery!
I agree with this for the most part. However, I have a friend who went through many, many health challenges herself and her four children. Although, she has a devoted family she was never able to go to school with help from her parents. Two years ago she finally had saved enough money to do this herself. Through it all, and even on foodstamps, she has fed herself and her kids a healthy diet. This is always loaded with organic and free-range, wild, or grass fed proteins, gluten-free (for those who needed it) carbs, wonderfully saturated fats and fruits/veg and a diet strongly endorsed by Dr. Weston A. Price and westonaprice.org.
She shops at Whole Foods when she can, at Trader Joes, a supermarket with organic options, and at farmers markets or straight off the farm. She’ll buy in bulk and cook large portions that can then be saved for other meals. She is a fantastic cook and her dad has an organic garden which he shares with his kids.
So although I often agree with the title of this article, the fact is it’s desire and need that makes my friend feed her family the way I described in my previous comment. She also has figured out what works with the help of westonaprice.org and lots of research! I agree with her and them and feed my family in a similar way.
Unfortunately, Bloomberg Business Week (and its former owner,) as well as the government need to pay more attention to what works even if it’s not regarded as worthy by the AMA.
It’s getting so hard to go food shopping, when one must consider that meats and dairy need to be not only organic, but “grass-fed:” as well. Then there’s the need to avoid certain oils (palm, canola, soybean), which promote inflammation but which are almost omnipresent in packaged goods. (So now I have to bake all my crackers, bread, and cookies?) As for eggs, organic is expensive, but truly “cage free” is stratospheric in price. And fish: that’s a whole other kettle of, with most of it uninspected and coming from other countries where (as in China) the populations are so pressed economically they’ll do anything to increase production for export. (At the moment, all I find acceptable are wild caught Alaska salmon or tinned sardines or tuna, the latter also from the North Pacific and very expensive.) It’s so discouraging that here in the U.S. we have so many foods, and in such abundance, but they are too toxic, or contaminated, or engineered and can’t be eaten with confidence in their wholesomeness. I can’t even buy a salsa from my large supermarket (and it’s very “high end”) because, of course, the tomatoes are probably GMO! Who will finally derail Monsanto and its cohorts, so that we can again eat without fear?!
An article a year or two ago stated that homogenization breaks milk fat into such tiny particles that they not only stay in suspension, giving 4% milk the false appearance of actual whole milk (18-24% butterfat), but that these fat particles, being so very tiny, pass through the gut wall, undigested (still tiny fat particles), directly into the bloodstream…where they float around until nabbed to form part of plaque…or else lodge in soft tissues anywhere in the body that the bloodstream goes. So I buy only fat-free store milk, when I buy store milk at all. Otherwise, I buy raw organic grass-fed whole milk and cream from health food stores who buy only from local dairies.
One nice thing about the whole cream…By the 2nd or 3rd day it sets up so thick it won’t pour…I spoon it out like mayonnaise. In fact, with proper seasonings, it makes a good mayonnaise for salads and sandwiches.
PS…I just read an article that says the Food Pyramid is what has caused the explosion of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes in developed countries that follow “official” dietary advice.
Another article says the body’s immune system does not recognize processed, heated, or frozen foods as food, and unleashes cytokines and NK cells in response, causing inflammation and autoimmune disorders.
The advice was to fill 50% to 80% of each plate of food with raw foods to avoid this reaction in future.
It didn’t address if this would fix having eaten cooked, frozen, or processed foods one’s whole life.
The ANH-USA Epigenetics article of Jan 28 2014 says we are what our grandparents ate…
Bloomberg news is implying that good nutrition is only a privilege of those that are economically above the rest of us, but the lack of education is on their part. Except for the U.S., people all over the world will choose a good diet over anything else, and the common person knows more about food than the more ‘educated’ one here in America. Go to Turkey, Mexico, Vietnam, Italy, Greece, Spain, Morocco, etc. and you’ll see this incredible array of fresh foods and people visiting the street markets every single day to buy their fresh produce, meats, eggs, cheeses, milk, fish, etc.. 99% of those foods are produced locally, and are GMO free, since many ofthose countries have rejected the genetically altered agriculture. Not many of those shoppers hold a degree of any kind, but they certainly know how to feed their families a good, balanced diet, they have been doing that for centuries. Now, of course, incidence of obesity also exists in some of those countries, such as China, where McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King and many other fast food restaurants chains have found their way into the culture. But that, Mr. Bloomberg, IS THE AMERICAN contribution to them.