Walt Whitman knew more about health in 1850 than most of us know now
So Walt Whitman was preaching the gospel of “Paleo” long before Paleo was cool, advising people eat meat as the main component of their diets way back in the 1850s. Ol’ Walt also recommended lots of movement and exercise and basically advocating for standing desks, among other health tips. Walt was right then. And nothing’s changed….except maybe we’ve moved further away from these health ideas over time.
It amazes me how much nonsense is out there when it comes to health and fitness. Shows like “The Biggest Loser” and similar programs feed this notion that you can exercise to fight off weight gain, which is complete, utter nonsense and always has been. (Disclaimer: My kids and I really like the show. It can be very inspiring at times. I just wish the show would focus more on diet for weight loss instead of making it seem as if short bursts of exercise will let you have sustained weight loss).
The USDA Food Pyramid and most health advice from the Federal Government is laughably bad and horrible outdated scientifically. If you followed the USDA Food Pyramid you’d be a fat, unhealthy blob of goo. The Food Pyramid is a political document, nothing more.
From a moral standpoint, large food companies, generally speaking, are no better than tobacco companies — maybe worse. They put chemicals and sugars and other addictive substances into chemically-engineered things they call “food” that your grandmother would have called garbage. They addict people at a young age when they have limited self-control and then that kid turns into a fat, unhealthy adult with all sorts of medical issues that you and I pay for while the CEOs of these poison factories laugh all the way to the bank.
I mean, Chic-fil-A, the “we’re so holy we close on Sundays” fast food franchise, knowingly addicts children to unhealthy fried chicken substances by loading up fried chicken with sugar. Who puts sugar on fried chicken parts? Isn’t selling fried chicken parts enough? You have to double-down by loading it up with sugar too? (Here are the ingredients in Chic-fil-A nuggets from Chic-fil-A’s own website.) Apparently, they put so much sugar in their nuggets they had to list “sugar” twice. Along with a bunch of other horrible sounding crap like “leavening,” Dimethylpolysiloxane” and other spooky-sounding chemicals.) I don’t mean to pick on Chic-fil-A — all the fast food companies are equally guilty.
Walt Whitman was right — Health is pretty simple and always has been.
— Be active, and not just for an hour in the morning when you exercise but all day long;
— Avoid processed food and sugar;
— Don’t drink too much caffeine or alcohol;
— Be moderate in your exercise, i.e., don’t overtrain;
— Meditate;
— Walk as much as you can;
— Stand and move around as much as you can;
— Get outside;
— Surround yourself with healthy people and have a social circle you enjoy;
— Get a good night’s sleep;
— Don’t eat fast food
If you followed everything in the list above you’d almost surely be a more healthy person. Personally, I’m pretty consistently good at some of this stuff (I’m active, I move and stand a lot, I have healthy friends and I mediate) and I’m bad at others (I love coffee and drink 5–6 cups per day, I love good wine and Scotch, and I am really, really inconsistent with my sleep).
Here’s the thing, though: If you follow conventional wisdom when it comes to your health, you are making a huge, potentially deadly mistake.
Walt Whitman was right 120 years ago, and so were the Buddhists who meditated daily.
If you want to be healthy, look to proven, time-tested strategies and ignore fads and TV shows and profit-driven corporations intent on deceiving us into killing ourselves one bite at a time.
