Think, Eat, Be Healthy

Book Review: “Real Food” by Nina Planck

“Real Food” by Nina Planck is subtitled “What To Eat And Why”. It was published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2006. The title and subtitle of the book neatly summarize the ideas put forth by Nina Planck in the text. Many of these are ideas that I live by and write about myself in this blog.

real food by nina planck

“Real Food” by Nina Planck makes a very strong argument for a whole food diet to achieve and maintain health.

Drawing on a wide range of scientific studies going back to the early 1900’s and up to the present, Planck makes the argument that health is best served by eating “real” food, not “industrial” food. By real food she means food as nature supplies it to us and as nature has supplied it to us for the past 100,000 years – the foods we evolved to eat and that our bodies are designed to use(These are what I usually like to call whole foods). Industrial food is manufactured, changed by man into forms that maybe our bodies cannot utilize as well as natural foods(I often refer to these as manufactured food-like products).

She eloquently makes the case for butter, cream and beef fat as healthy foods, but only if the cattle are allowed to eat a grass diet all year as nature intended. Strong evidence is presented that the modern institution of feeding beef and dairy cattle a diet of grain, and more recently of genetically modified grain, is what makes most modern beef and dairy products unhealthy for human consumption. Traditional fats such as pork lard, butter, beef suet and chicken fat, when the animals are raised eating a proper diet, are shown by Planck to be much healthier than the modern polyunsaturated vegetable oils pushed so hard by our medical authorities.

“Real Food” explores the connection between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Cholesterol’s part in atherosclerosis and heart disease is also addressed.  The conclusion of this book agrees with many others: there is little to no correlation between blood cholesterol levels and heart disease or between the amount of cholesterol eaten in the diet and blood cholesterol levels. This book argues, again along with many others, that systemic inflammation and oxidized LDL cholesterol are the true causes of these conditions.

Another argument made in this book that is sure to be less popular with many people is that humans really should eat some meat, fish, eggs and dairy. Just as cows are vegetarian and evolved to be healthiest on a diet of grass and herbs, Nina Planck argues that humans evolved as omnivores, both hunting and gathering, and that we are healthiest on a varied diet that includes plenty of animal products. Proof of this is implied through the difficulty of getting complete nutrition from a vegan whole food diet. A proper and suitable diet should not require pill supplements to avoid deficiency diseases.

This book makes a great deal of sense to me. Our great grandparents and people 75,000 years ago did not have vitamin and mineral supplement pills to take and yet lead long, productive and healthy lives on diets of locally available  whole foods. Though evidence shows that many Neanderthals and other early hominids lived five to six decades, there is very little evidence of heart disease or other chronic modern diseases. Yet today plenty of people in their thirties and forties are suffering from high blood pressure, heart attacks and diabetes. It is hard to believe that all of the highly refined and processed, hydrogenated, fortified and otherwise manufactured foods in the modern diet have nothing to do with this state of affairs.