Fall Reading- Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Eat Fat Lose Fat

By Cara, on October 1st, 2009

A friend told me that if you request books that the library ‘needs’ through their website, they actually usually get them. So as I see books come up related to real food or other things I’m interested in, I request them. So that’s what I’ve been doing lately, reading real books rather than blogs. If they’re really good and I know I’ll want to either re-read for inspiration or reference later on, I buy and add them to my book shelf (you can see a growing list of some of these on my sidebar).

Some recent reads:

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
I went ahead and bought this, since I was pretty sure it was worth it. And it is. I really wish I had read it before I got pregnant with Hannah, but I can’t change that now. Weston Price (a dentist) went around the world studying native cultures in the 30s and 40s to see how native diets contributed not only to health, but to bone structure and tooth health. He has pictures contrasting siblings born and raised on native (real) foods vs ones raised on modern processed foods and shows how the bone structure of the face changes, dental cavities are rampant, and other health issues. He presents a convincing argument that the need for braces to straighten teeth is due to a nutritional deficiency that lead to a facial deformity. Politically incorrect, I know, but he has lots of convincing pictures and data from studying thousands in native and newly modernized populations.

Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats
The library got this, I’m going to buy it some time though. Lots of information about coconut oil. Sally Fallon also talks about what I found accidentally when I started using coconut milk as creamer in my coffee while eliminating cow’s milk from my diet- eating a hefty amount of fat, particularly fat from coconut, keeps me (and apparently others) from craving refined foods or junk foods.

She has some more detailed information on losing weight with a real foods diet, which most likely will be good for me as I get older. Right now (I’m 26) I find that if I just cut out refined foods I get back down to my goal weight (140-145 at 5 foot easily. I can maintain that even if I’m eating about one serving of refined (sugar, white bread products, etc) something a day, but it does creep up if we end up eating the typical American diet for any length of time. I’ve also gained 65 lbs with each pregnancy, eating more real foods with my second, and eating pretty typical American with my first. As I get better with nutrition I’m curious if this will change or stay the same.