If you are a fan of Western films, you often see cowboys enjoying a big meal at the ranch or around the chuckwagon after a long, hard day on the lonesome trail. It’s likely though that the food of your average cowpoke didn’t include veggies beyond beans. They pretty much consumed dried and fresh meat, hard cheeses, dried fruit, biscuits, coffee and . . . yes, beans. Lots of beans.
Then again, imagine a time with no antibiotics in the grass-fed cows or dairy products, no chemicals used to grow the beans, fruit or coffee beans and no hybrid wheat flour, chemicals or preservatives in the biscuits. Maybe this “Western” diet wasn’t so bad after all. It just needed a salad and some sautéed kale on the side.
That said, cowboy fare of the Wild West is a far cry from the not-so-wild Western Diet. Consuming this modern nutrition includes a sizeable amount of saturated fats and sugar, a low intake of fiber and a procession of processed food that is far removed from that which grows naturally. It doesn’t take much thought to conclude that such a diet can’t be good for you in the end, except for the likelihood of contributing to a quicker end.
The Disease Factor
The unhealthy kind of food that contributes to a long list of modern diseases is found in today’s Western diet. Much of this is the “edible, processed and packaged stuff” found in the middle aisles of supermarkets. It’s not real food.
This “not real food” has had a major impact on the health of human beings who make it a regular part of their nutritional intake. In fact, the modern Western diet is the key factor in the onslaught of civilized diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and coronary heart disease.
Cultures that stick to local diets do not have to deal with these Western health issues. But given the poor opportunity of eating like the average North American, people in those cultures soon have to deal with Western diseases. All it takes to reverse those health problems is for them to return to eating their traditional meals. And real food is all it takes for anyone who wants to turn their health around.
Let’s Go Shopping!
You should be eating real food, especially fruit and vegetables. That’s one of the reasons farmer’s markets have become so popular. Shopping there is like having a good habit. So when you go into supermarkets, do the same thing: shop mostly in the fresh food sections and ignore most of what is on the shelves of the middle aisles. It’s processed.
Pretend as though the processed stuff is not meant for human consumption because it really isn’t, even though it is heavily advertised as convenient, wholesome nutrition. Such advertisements are to sell products and increase profits, not to maintain good health for adults, teens and children. The same can be said for the majority of fast foods. If you buy into the commercials and slogans, you buy into the Western diet and the poor health it delivers.
Your Microbiota Is What You Eat
Keep in mind that when you choose real food that provides nutrients from plants, you are feeding the microbes that are integral to maintaining your health. In 2017, the Frontiers in Immunology journal published a study analyzing the impact of the Western diet on the good bacteria that populate the intestinal tract. And it’s not good news.
The nutrients you ingest affect the microbiota and immune system, ultimately determining how well everything functions in your body. If you want a strong immune system that protects you, you can’t feed your good bacteria bad food.
AIM Supplemental Real Food Choices
The English Oxford Living Dictionary defines the word “supplement” as “A thing added to something else in order to complete or enhance it.” AIM has always recommended a whole-food diet as an essential way to maintain good health, along with taking its products as a way to enhance this healthy nutritional intake.
AIM offers healthy ways to increase your levels of plant nutrients in the concentrated powders of BarleyLife, Just Carrots, RediBeets and CoCoa LeafGreens, just to name a few of the easily absorbed, supplemental whole-food choices.
Making supportive nutrients available for your body and microbiota has possibly never been more important. Real food can help to prevent or reverse many of the modern diseases that tend to be increasing exponentially as the popularity of the Western diet grows globally. Adding the concentration of nutrients in AIM’s whole-food powders can help to increase your nutritional intake greatly.
Cowboys and cowgirls of days gone by would have likely appreciated the convenience of AIM products in their “Western” diet. Fortunately, these days AIM nutrition is available for all to distance themselves from the effects of the modern Western diet.
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