Beware Of Who You Listen To

 USDA Food Guide Pyramid

In 1992 the United States Department of Agriculture published dietary guidelines in the shape of a pyramid to represent daily serving recommendations. The higher up the pyramid a food group sat the less a person should consume. Well last week I was going through a big huge box of a nightmare of medical bills and records searching for a needle in a haystack and I came across a glossy full color brochure of this pyramid circa year 2000. I was shocked to see a recommended 6-11 servings a day of bread/rice/pasta/cereal. Are you kidding me? I didn't know a person could eat that much in a day and have room for anything else. But what really got my goat was seeing a small order of french fries listed as two servings of vegetables! And we wonder where heart disease came from...

They changed this pyramid drastically in 2005 after America reached epic levels of obesity. Perhaps pasta with a bagel and Honey Nut Cheerios is not a nutritious breakfast after all? I am glad to see current recommendations, the pyramid shown above, are becoming hip to the concept of natural eating. When I got sick it didn't take long for me to realize not every ailment in life came with a pill, procedure or medical cure to fix it. I immediately looked at what I fueled my body with, seeking out an honest to goodness education in clean nutrition and holistic principals. But the more I discovered the less sense how I was taught to eat made. Hell, how I was taught to live made. Things like margarine and diet soda quickly became nothing more than poison to me, things I wanted to avoid at all cost. High fructose corn syrup, oh no we ain't friends no mo'! Years later I have made this my lifestyle. I eat as clean as I can and shun chemicals both in and on my body. It didn't cure my Fibro but is a big component of keeping it managed. On the occasions I decide to go off the reservation boy do I sure pay with an ugly reminder of what a processed diet does to me.  

This experience taught me a huge lesson in life, not to take anything at face value. No longer do I live and die by the doctrine of  massive, interest-driven agencies telling me what to believe as absolute truth. Perhaps this huge misdirection in dietary guidelines is what gave me the courage to buck modern medicine when it failed to offer a treatment or cure for symptoms so severe they disabled me. They told me to live with it. I couldn't and embarked on yet another journey of self-discovery in learning how to get a grip on my life and therefore my illness. Getting sick taught me many things I didn't know before. It will teach the next person completely different things, concepts and realities closely vetted to who they are as a person. We are all not the same but the spirit of survival is inherent to all animals, the human no exception. I refused to be a victim and figured out how to make life liveable again. On my own terms, using knowledge I sought out that made sense to me.

Thanks for joining,
Leah