Whole Foods

No ... I'm not going to weigh in on Whole Foods (the store) pushing a vegan agenda or anything like that.  I want to talk about the eating paradigm advocating "whole foods" - aka "real foods".  

I will absolutely not argue against any whole/real food diet.  I'll even go a step further and state that IMO, most such diets truly comprised of whole/real foods, no matter the type/source, are likely infinitely more healthy than the alternative.

No, CarbSane hasn't gone over to the dark side or lost her feeble mind (don't you just love it when former bunny-eared anonymous bloggers refer to themselves in the third person?) .  No.  I want to talk specifics and definitions here.

What is a whole food?  Well - at the very least it is eating at least a part of a food source in its entirety.  To wit:

• Eggs are a whole food, whites OR yolks separately are not.
• Corn on the cob is a whole food, corn oil is not.
• Cow's milk is a whole food, anything but is simply not.
• Coconut meat is a whole food, coconut oil is not.
• Sunflower seeds are a whole food, sunflower oil is not.
• Almonds are a whole food, blanched almond meal is not.
• A turkey with giblets is a whole food, ....??
• A pig complete with chitterlings and such is a whole food, bacon is ??, lard is not.

I could go on down that list.  I've been criticized and essentially ridiculed in the past for daring to compare today's modern refined/processed foods with ... well ... foods that are by definition refined and processed, only in a more natural-friendly way.   

I think we can ALL agree (or at least I hope we can) that franken crap foods are not food at all.  Even then, as I'm often told, I do believe that when we introduce ourselves to reality, some amount of those foods is going to comprise a portion of our diets.  Some can be purists.  More power to you, and I'll leave it at that.

Folks, there is absolutely nothing more inherently healthy about Stevia sweetened whipped heavy cream atop a blanched almond flour pancake with six, better make that only three, blueberries as compared to real maple syrup poured over a regular pancake.  Flour is flour - stripped of the "bran" it really matters not that wheat flour has starch and almond flour has fat. You're eating a pancake and a refined/processed topping.  We can argue till we're blue in the face whether almonds are a more nutritious option compared to whole wheat berries (I would come out in favor of the almonds FWIW), but it is disingenuous to use those arguments to argue over which pancake is better or more "real".  Neither is whole.  Neither is more or less a real or natural human food.

I'm often fascinated by the full fat vs. low fat dairy debates.  For the record and for starters, let me be clear.  Low fat no more means Kraft fat free sour "cream", than high fat equates with Velveeta.  I'm talking real dairy products - no fillers or fake "foodstuffs".  

When you think about it, dairy is probably the creepiest of all human foods.  Really.  Really really think about it.  I've been talking about my yard birds lately and it looks as if yet another bird is trying to make their nest on my front step light.  No doubt they'll be unsuccessful because the crows around here are hip to that nesting site and ate all of the robin eggs produced last year.  Any nature show watcher is aware of nesting turtles having to protect their eggs from predators.  Eggs make good food.  Natural food.  A food predators not only will eat given the chance, but that they seek out.  

Except for the occasional zoo/domestic animal "awwwwwwwww" story, we simply DON'T see any wild animals consuming the infant foods of others.   I'm not sure I've ever seen an adult animal feed from the teet of a lactating member of another species.  So even raw cow's milk is simply not a natural human food.  Period.  Get past it.  This dairy lover has, no need to rationalize dairy consumption to me.  But also don't try to snow me with rationalizations about how any sort of dairy is somehow a superior real whole human food to other foods found in nature or other forms of dairy.  

Do you know where you get that whey protein used in so many low carb products and concoctions from?  Skim milk is no more a franken food than the heavy cream that was skimmed off the top!  Folks keep trying to convince me that milk left to its own devices magically produces cheese and yogurt.  Or does it just spoil .....  I prefer part-skim mozz.  It's a whole lot less oily than the whole milk version when melted.  Is it any less a real food than the whole milk version?  Let me check the label:  Pasteurized Part-Skim Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, and Enzymes.

Face it folks, coconut fat no more drips from the coconut than sunflower seed oil drips from the seeds.  Recognizing such truths can elevate the level of debate on nutritional issues.