Can We be Healthy 100% of the time?
Eating 100% "healthy" is impossible to do. No matter how motivated an individual or well intentioned they are, eventually we cave. The size of the cave is the difference between having a body like Kevin James and having a body like Megan Fox.
Our current food system is set up to encourage the consumption of highly processed foods. These foods contain fattening amounts of refined flour and sugar. However, highly processed foods have two good things going for them. One, because they are laced with refined sweeteners and artificial flavors, they taste delicious. Two, they consist of ingredients that are subsidised by the United States government. So they are cheap.
Personally, I can swear off most candies (except for Sour Patch Kids and M & Ms), most chips (except for tortilla chips) and almost all soda (expect when mixing drinks 
). The point is, even some of the strongest willed people that I know, including myself, can not withstand the temptations that sugary, cheap foods present for us.
Not to mention the favorite part of every meal: desert. Is their a person on planet earth that would turn down a piece of their grandmothers homemade apple pie? If we all liked apples then I can guarantee not a person would have the will power to turn that temptation down. Unless apple pie were somehow deemed the food of the devil. Then I guess some super radical religious folk could muster the courage.
Crappy food is all around us. From cheap candy to cheap and tasty fast food. How are we supposed to eat healthy if these demon foods are all around us? The answer is we can't. At least not 100% of the time.
When people try to eat 100% healthy two things happen. Either they become very angry and hostile or they eventually freak out and eat gallons of Ben and Jerry's ice cream in one sitting. Trust me, I've done it.
Let's stop beating ourselves up over every minor breakdowns in our healthy eating walls. We can finally stop being obsessed with every little morsel of food we put into our mouths. Because lets face it, if we were to swear off all the sugary snacks, all fast food products, alcohol and caffeine we would be living a rather square existence.
In response to this kind of lifestyle, I created a model that we can base our food choices on. I call it Our Food Orbit.
This model resembles that of our solar system. The planets resemble food choices which revolve around the sun, which represents you.
Planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars revolve around the Sun much more often than other planets. Whole foods like nuts (except cashews and peanuts in excess), all kinds of meats (preferably raised sustainably and organic), fresh, dark, leafy vegetables, dark fruits such as berries, local and fresh eggs represent these planets.
Planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune only revolve around the sun once in a great while (compared to Earth's orbit). Foods like corn, potatoes, chips, wheat products, hamburger helper, Mac and Cheese, Pizza, spaghetti. Pretty much all foods that are found on typical American dinner plates. These foods should never be staples in anybodies diet.
Fast food, candy, ice cream, alcohol and all other nutritional contraband are represented by the at-one-point-in-time-planet Pluto. No explanation is necessary as to why these foods are Plutos.
The Law of 85%
Because following a diet 100% is impossible, we must enact the Law of 85% to go with our Food Orbit.
The Law of 85% states that of all the food we eat, 85% of it should be natural, whole and nutritious food. 12% of the remaining 15% should be made of foods that resemble Saturn and Jupiter. The last 3-5% of our diets can be Plutoesque type foods.
This Law of 85% should be used with caution. Do let the foods that make up the 15% ever creep into your daily food schedule. If you do then you will get fat.
I use the 85% rule because I hate living my life with what I like to call the 100% mentality. The 100% mentality puts enormous amounts of stress on the individual who is trying to be 100% healthy. I can honestly say that I was in the 100% mentality group for a few months when I ate a strict vegan diet. It sucked. I would never recommend becoming completely alien to our current food system. It will only add stress, worry and a loss in self worth when you fail.
I understand that I have thrown a lot of laws and rules at you already. Ones that I in fact made up on my own. This is why I want to apologize for spitting yet another rule into your retinas.
The One Day Rule
This rule has made me a sane individual. The One Day Rule simply sets aside one day during the week when you can eat what ever the hell you want. It is simple and awesome.
If I did not follow the One Day Rule I know that I would eventually binge on Oreos and McDonalds Strawberry milkshakes until I barfed and then ate it again off the floor because it would still be delicious.
Seriously, one day a week eat what ever your little heart desires. This provides a day of the week to look forward to. Because lets face it, when we change the way we eat there is very little that we can actually look forward to eating.
The only disclaimer I have for the One Day Rule is this: It can only last for one day. If you let it go longer than one day, then a snowball affect will occur and it will be easier and easier for you to let your guard down during the week. And you will then get fat.
My day changes from either Friday or Saturday. This allows me to go to a bar or club and drink guilt free alcohol and eat late night pizza 
.
May the planets align and bring you all good health
- Ryan
What I eat and Why
I have been asked on multiple occasions what I eat. To be honest, what I eat has changed so dramatically in the last year that I try to avoid the conversation all together.
Although I am no longer a vegan, the experience forced me learn much about our current food system. I therefore refuse to eat any meat or animal product (other than cheese, sometimes) from a grocery store.
Modern animal food production is truly appalling and is a result of American's demand for cheap food. The process by which a chicken nugget is made and how animals are raised and slaughtered is enough to make any human sick to their stomach.
Enough animal rights talk as that is not the topic of this article. Here are the foods that I eat and drink regularly, where they come from and why I eat them. For I believe that where our food comes from is as important as what we eat (more on this later).
- Eggs from a farmer 2 miles away from my home
- Beef Steaks, ground hamburger and roasts from local farmers
- Raw Almonds from either Trader Joes or Pick n Save
-Raw Sunflower Seeds from Pick n Save
- 100% Natural Peanut Butter from Trader Joes
- Bacon from my good friend's family farm. Approx 20 miles from my house
-100% organic virgin Coconut and Olive Oil
- Fair Trade and Organic Coffee
- Fair Trade and Organic Yerpa Mate Tea, Black Tea and Green Tea
- If vegetables and fruits are season I eat massive amounts of them as well. I love all fruits and veggies, the only vegetable and fruit that I do not like are radishes, celery and peaches. Ehhhh. Even though I have never had a true peach from a tree, they have always been the fake grocery store kind.
I refuse to eat fruits and veggies from the grocery store. Which means that I do not eat any fresh produce unless it is in season. The produce we buy at the grocery store is laced with tons of pesticides and fertilizers and travels half way across the globe to your diner table.
- Miller Lite and other local beer. I love beer, so I try to buy beers that are brewed in Wisconsin as to cut down on the shipping mileage. This is tough, because my favorite beer is Blue Moon and it is made in Colorado. So sometimes I splurge
- Other than some random dinning out at restaurants, Jager-Bombs at bars and M & Ms I pretty much stick to these food stuffs.
Why do I eat these foods?
All of these foods are whole foods. No added preservatives, chemicals, or ingredients that I can not even pronounce are found in these foods. This is not by mistake.
I steer clear of all processed foods as much as possible as they closely resemble that of cardboard and newspaper. This is bad news for me because one of my favorite foods used to be tortilla chips and salsa. I have since forsaken my indulgence in this past time.
Also, the majority of the foods that I eat are low-carb. I am on a low carb kick right now so I eat a lot of almonds and a lot of eggs fried in coconut oil.
Am I going to have a heart attack?
Well I sure hope not. Although it is entirely possible. I honestly believe that the way I am eating is completely healthy. Fat and cholesterol have been deemed as the so called causes of heart disease and diabetes. When looking at the facts this is simply not true. Basic bio-chemistry of the human body tells us that dietary fats and cholesterol are not directly converted to fat and cholesterol in our bodies.
If you were to observe the increase in sugar consumption of our citizens and the increase in diabetes and weight gain, you would see a direct parallel between the two. Why? Sugar in the form of fructose and some glucose is processed by our livers. When we can not use these substances as energy they are released as fats, in the form of triglycerides in the blood, and LDL cholesterol as well. Two of the main indicators of heart disease in humans.
It is not the fat that is killing us, it is the sugar. Plus when sugar is digested the hormone insulin is needed to digest it. The pancreas releases this hormone and when it is forced to release more than it is capable, the disease called diabetes takes place.
Why do I care about where food comes from?
Believe it or not, many people used to care about where their food came from. I am not alone in wanting to understand the origin of my food.
Because honestly how many of us know where our food comes from? Sure you buy food from the grocery store, but where do they get it from? The answers to the questions vary depending on the food item in question.
Lets look at it this way. The outside aisles of a grocery store contain the majority of whole foods. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, meats, cheese and dairy. These products come from a wide array of states and even countries. The middle aisles are less complicated as the majority of these foods come from a corn field in Iowa.
Look at the ingredients of any processed food (any food that is sealed in a bag or other devise) and I can almost guarantee you that some form of corn product is in the top 3 ingredients. Those corn products are refined and processed in a factory, sealed and shipped to you for your guilty enjoyment.
Why don't I drink Milk?
This topic is truly for another article all together (which I have already written here). We don't need to drink milk, in short: Drinking the lactic fluid of another species is truly disgusting (humans are the only mammals on the planet that would even think of doing this). Calcium is a mineral found in soil and is present in large quantities in meat, and vegetables. The benefits of calcium are vastly over exaggerated to get you to buy more of it. Much like the propaganda surrounding vitamin C in oranges. Oranges are a middle of the road food when it comes to vitamin C levels. Broccoli and other dark green vegetables contain way more vitamin C than our circular orange friends.
Coffee
I understand that I may be sounding a little hypocritical by denouncing the consumption of fruits and veggies out of season, yet I drink coffee that is grown half way around the world.
In my defense, I refuse to buy coffee that is not Fair Trade certified and organic. This provides that the farmers who grow this coffee are paid a fair wage for their services and that no harmful chemicals were used in its growing.
Yes it costs more money, but the trade off is well worth it.
What are Raw Almonds and Sunflower Seeds?
The majority of the nuts that we eat are roasted and salted. Raw nuts are simply nuts that have not been cooked or salted. They are a less crunchy, but the trade off with nutritional content is well worth it. See when a a food that is grown from a plant is picked, it is at its highest level of nutritional content. Cooking produce kills much of the live nutrients that are found in these products. Eating nuts raw way the most nutritious way to enjoy these tasty morsels as it is in its most raw state when consumed.
Every time we spend any amount of money at the grocery store or farmers market we are saying that we agree with the way a certain product was grown, raised, harvested and distributed. Want to buy $1 a pound ground beef? Then you are supporting the use of Confined Animal Feeding Operations, the use of hormones and steroids in your meat and the distribution of meat raised in Colorado and Nebraska that makes it on your plate.
Final Thoughts
This may sound a bit corny, but you are what you eat. Next time you sit down to eat ask yourself what you believe in and what values you hold dear. If you have empathy towards other humans and animals then why are you eating fast food?
If you eat fast food and other easy to make cardboard cut outs that we call chips and frozen pizza, do not wonder why your belly is huge and you have acne on your face.
In my experience with other people, you can tell a lot about a person by what they eat. And I mean a lot. How they view food is almost identical to how they view and interact with other humans.
Ryan
The Case Against Grocery Store meat
In this article grocery store meat will be the topic of discussion.
Where does our meat come from?
Well it sure as shit does not come from the grocery store.
Because we demand cheap food (Americans now spend around 10% of our income on food. The lowest in the entire world) our government and what many would call farmers have happily obliged to our demands.
In come the Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO). What are these? Well the title says it all. An agricultural operation where animals such as cows, chickens, pigs and turkeys are grown in very small, confined areas. If you drive by a "farm" that has long. ginormous buildings that secrete the smell of blissful feces, then you know what I am talking about.
What is the problem with CAFOs?
From an economic prospective, they make complete sense. Viewing living animals like products on a production line, we produce as much meat as is humanly possible at the cheapest cost.
From every other aspect of life, from animal rights, quality of meat, environmental health and even human health, these operations are evidence of humanities continuing neglect for any realm of life other than its own.
Within CAFOs animals are kept in very small cages or in small areas with countless other animals. Chickens must stand on wire cages their entire life, pigs are unable to turn around, and cows are either stuck in a cage, or in a pen with unhealthy amounts of cattle around them. These confined quarters make disease outbreaks occur as often as a new AIDS patients in Africa.
To combat this problem, rather than give animals the space to move and act like the animals that they are, we dump massive loads of antibiotics into their feed to ward of disease outbreaks.
Do not live under the delusion that these do not affect the meat, for everything that we eat as well as what animals eat is stored in our bodies as either fat or muscle.
Because we view animals as products to be raised and sold, we attempt to fatten animals as fast as humanly possible. In the case of chickens, they often gain enough weight that their legs break under the weight of their bodies.
Feeding animals steroids and growth hormones is common practice in the meat industry. Again these substances find their way into the meat that we buy at the grocery store or in a restaurant.
The animals in these operations poop, a lot (an average cow will poop out 50 lbs of feces per day). The waste is often held in retention ponds or holding tanks. Most of this waste is used as fertilizer in farm fields, but many times these crap pools leak raw sewage into the ground, contaminating the ground water. Residence that live in these areas must also put up with the constant smell of raw feces.
E Coli
Because animals live in their own feces, when it comes time for slaughter, brown fecal matter cakes the coats of the animals being killed. Raw crap is a happy breading ground for some of the most harmful bacteria known to man. This crap all to often finds its way into the meat while it is being butchered.
Countless E Coli outbreaks have occurred across our nation in the last couple of years. From meat to tomatoes to onions to spinach, we live in a constant fear of consuming this deadly bacteria. Unknown to most, is that the fresh fruits and vegetables do not magically get contaminated with E Coli. No, the farmers that grow these crops often use the manure from CAFOs as fertilizer. If E-Coli is present in the manure then it will inevitably make its way onto our fresh produce.
E Coli Continued
Cattle in particular are the most susceptible to E Coli. And it is all traced back to the food that they consume.
CAFOs are made possible by our countries over production of corn, soy and wheat. All grains, and all the most unnatural products that could possibly be feed to cattle.
Cattle have 4 stomachs. Through evolution they have created this intricate system of digestion by grazing on open prairies. They are made to eat grass.
When fed grains, two things happen. One they get fat, very quickly. And two, grain increases the amount of E Coli found in cattles stomachs. This is then crapped out and finds its way into our food.
Travel Time
Your 1 lbs of ground beef from the store was not raised, slaughtered and packaged in the store that you bought it from. More than likely your beef was grown in the Colorado or Nebraska, shipped to North Carolina to be slaughtered. Shipped to a packing plant and then to your local grocers refrigerator. On average, a pound of meat has traveled over 1500 miles to get to your plate.
Compare that to your local farmer who raises his cattle and then has it slaughtered down the road at a local processing plant. The total mileage may reach 50 miles.
Change is on the Horizon
Meat is very costly. Not just to our pocket books, but to our environment. We now raise so many cattle in CAFOs that the methane released from their farts and poop piles is actually having an affect on our global climate (methane is a 100X stronger Greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide).
It takes a lot of energy to grow a cow (or any other live animal), deal with the many inevitable problems that come along with it (poop, disease, death) and then slaughter, package and ship the meat. Not to mention that the meat must be cooled every second of everyday until it is sold.
I once read that if a family of 4 were to eat a steak dinner (not local or organic) their carbon footprint would be the equivalent of leaving every light in their house on while driving around in an SUV for four hours.
The cost of our food goes beyond what we pay at the register. Do you really think that buying $2/lbs hamburger is the actual cost that it took to feed, raise, slaughter and ship that meat? Or paying $1 for a hamburger at McDonalds?
This is made possible by the seemingly infinite budget of the United States Government. Without the implementation of subsidies and tax breaks, our food would never be as cheap as it is today. Sure cheap food is great, we have more money to spend on other, often times more important things*. However this system is not honest. We do not pay for the food that we eat. Sure this system works now, but it won't be able to work in the future. No other industry on the planet (other than oil) has been altered and derailed as much as our food system.
* Which makes zero sense. We have such an intimate relationship with our food, that their really is nothing more important than the food that we eat.
This is why organic and local food is so expensive. We are actually paying the true cost of the food that we eat.
Ryan
PS. Fast food companies get their meat from old dairy cows that are either diseased, or unable to produce milk anymore. Thought you might want to know that.
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