More Diet Stuff

Yesterday I posed a blog about my 7 year journey eating a vegan diet. Nutrition is a hot topic. Many people have conflicting theories and studies on what makes for a healthy diet. I’m certainly not a nutritionist and can only make personal observations.

Vegan or vegetarian diets tend to be the sort of thing that younger people try at some point in their lives. Most drop the diet out of boredom, inconvenience, or lack of satisfaction. A significant percentage stop due to medical reasons.

It’s my observation that too many vegetarians end up eat a very unbalanced diet. A lot of people survive on sweets, fruit, junk food and french fries. Even just eating too much fruit can give you problems as natural sugar is still sugar.

Personally, I did some research and avoided these problems. My digestion was fine. My teeth were good. My lab tests were in the normal rage. My diet had a lot of olive oil and other vegetable fats. I ate a lot of beans and rice to get good balanced protein. It wasn’t a perfect diet as I indulged in french fries and chips more than I should have. However, it was balanced enough to avoid most vegetarian complaints.

A lot of former vegetarians discovered most of their health problems went away when meat and dairy were reintroduced to their diet. Of course, there are people now who eat paleo and carnivore diets. It’s not for me as it’s a perfect diet for setting off a gout attack. A paramedic friend of mine remembers when paleo diets first became popular. He responded to a lot of people who were having painful gout attacks for the first time in their lives.

I really think we are omnivores and do best with a variety of foods. We can survive on very limited diets, but thrive on more variety. One thing that I still eat a lot less of is dairy as too much seems to give me problems. Once again, that’s something personal.

Of course, I’m a big believer in getting your vegetables and fruit from plants grown in good healthy soil with a minimum of pesticides. When I buy eggs and meat I try to get them from small local farms that treat their animals humanly. Big industrial farms may be efficient, but their methods and products are questionable.

So how does all this affect us as preppers? That’s where it gets interesting. I know how to store and prepare a wide range of foods. My food storage has an awful lot of beans and grains because it’s a cheap way to get a lot of calories. Too many people store such foods but don’t know how to cook them properly and don’t know how their bodies will actually respond to them. These are things you don’t want to find out in the middle of an emergency.

While I do have some shelf stable meats it’s a much smaller part of my food storage. Of course, I live in the woods on a lake. Fish and game are all around me.

Currently my doctor has me on a low salt diet. Fortunately, during my culinary journey I learned how to use a lot of different spices. Low salt food does not have to be bland. My main problem with food is that I love it too much.

-Sixbears