Making healthy food choices in our modern food system is today’s equivalent to foraging. Foraging is the skill of identifying edible weeds and plants in nature. People with this skill gained more nutrients. People who lacked this skill had less.
Similarly, the modern food system provides a bounty of health for people who can navigate it. Most lack this skill, based on statistics. Arguments could be made for cost and the luxury of time to learn the skill. I don’t disagree, but the point remains.
I’m still learning my way, too. But I’ve found this list of books to be particularly helpful:
- Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It. This book introduces the concept of insulin, which is critical to understanding why we get fat. It also explains why foods are not created equal.
- Salt, Sugar, Fat. Provides an overview of food marketing, and how consumers should orient themselves accordingly.
- Food Rules: A Doctor’s Guide to Healthy Eating. This is a simple book of food rules. Among other things, it explains why probiotics and broths are important and provides easy-to-understand foundations of a healthy diet.
- Natural Born Heroes: Mastering the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance. Not so much of a health book, but more of a book about a healthy society. The Cretans were physically and mentally fit, enabling them to demonstrate one of history’s greatest acts of resistance.
- Get Serious. The best overview of all these topics I’ve read, and I’m glad I read it after the others. It ties everything together, including fitness.
Basement Whatever 