Good Food & Nutrition

Peak Moment 191: What we eat is destroying both our bodies and the planet, according to author Lierre Keith, a recovering twenty-year vegan. While she passionately opposes factory farming of animals, she maintains that humans require nutrient-dense animal foods for good health. A grain-based diet is the basis for degenerative diseases we take for granted (diabetes, cancer, heart disease) - diseases of civilization. Annual grain production is destroying topsoil and creating deserts on a planetary scale. Lierre urges the restoration of perennial polycultures for longterm sustainability.

From Observing History in this wiki:

TL: I hear a lot of talk about sustainable agriculture. In your view, is there any kind of agriculture that is sustainable?

LK: No, and I'm going to quote both Toby Hemenway, the permaculture guy, and Richard Manning, who is a wonderful scholar of prairies. Both use the same sentence, which is: Sustainable agriculture is an oxymoron.

TL: So then we would be going back to a hunting/gathering system for food?

LK: You could have hunter/gatherer, you can have horticulturism, you could have pastoralism. In some way those are all variations on a theme. It's based on perennial polycultures. But the moment that you clear away those biotic communities, you destroy those perennial plants. Then, you are talking about agriculture, and that is inherently destructive.

DJ: The important thing to remember through all of this is that the land is primary. Indigenous people in California and certainly elsewhere have changed their landscape, but they did so with the recognition that they're going to be in that place for the next 500 years. If you are planning on living in place for the next 500 years, you're going to make radical land-use decisions. I can't imagine anyone who would plan on living in place for 500 years who would allow mountaintop removal or agriculture, for that matter, or who would allow rivers to be poisoned or dammed. We have to recognize that life is based on the land and that one can't allow the land to be destroyed, because if the land is destroyed, then you're destroyed.

How Grassfed Beef Will Save the World

It is predicted that by 2020, the leading cause of death in the US will be from depression.

A huge amount of people lead miserable lives in the opulent west ... and here we consider that it might all principally be related to modern diet, and how we're being told precisely the opposite of what is healthy for us.

The surprisingly dramatic role of nutrition in mental health

Julia Rucklidge in TEDxChristchurch

Primal Body, Primal Mind

A book by Nora Gedgaudas (website: http://www.primalbody-primalmind.com), goes 'beyond the paleo diet' & explains in detail the practical biochemistry behind what works especially in terms of mental health. A neurofeedback specialist, she realized from her decades of practice that diet was critical in getting her patients well: emotionally & mentally, as well as physically healthy.

From the book "Primal Body, Primal Mind":

"Far & away, the people with the most damaged & intractably disregulated brains & nervous systems I have seen or dealt with in my practice have all been vegans, with strict vegetarians a close second - hands down. I have numerous colleagues who have made the same independent observation. Anyone overly enchanted with the supposed findings of the book The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell, a vegetarian seeking too prove the superior healthfulness of a vegetarian diet - should read the exhaustively researched and objective analysis of those findings by researcher Denise Minger" (article here in her blog)

See more Gedgaudas videos in YouTube

From the book "Primal Body, Primal Mind":

"Simply put, stress & trauma (whether physical, emotional, or biochemical) basically shove us off whatever cliff we happen to be standing next to. Wherever our vulnerability lies, in both our inherent makeup & our current state of health, that is the direction we go. The brain's timing mechanisms & phase relationships can become functionally deranged & help kindle certain tendencies at these points of vulnerability. Some people, when shoved, fall into a perpetual state of anxiety, others into depression, bipolar disorders, migraines, seizures, addiction or some other condition. It's a long list. We are all individuals, and no two people respond exactly the same to any stressor or trauma.

We see the world around us through the lens of our hormones, neurotransmitters, and, to the degree that we are dependent on it our blood sugar. Unhealthy hormonal patterns generate unhealthy arousal patterns and, consequently, unhealthy emotional & behavioral tendencies."

"Everything you have ever experienced, felt or conducted in life is due to brain function. The ability to enjoy, perceive, sense, and experience life is dictated by the firing rate and health of your brain. It is impossible for a person to become healthy mentally or physiologically without a healthy brain." D. Kharrazian, DHSC, DC, MS, Course 'Neurotransmitters & the brain'

Dental Health & Diet

Weston Andrew Valleau Price (September 6, 1870 – January 23, 1948) was a prominent dentist known primarily for his theories on the relationship between nutrition, dental health, and physical health.

He founded the Research Institute of the National Dental Association, which later became the Research Section of the American Dental Association, and served as its chair from 1914-1928.