Getting What You Need

One of the best indicators that there is that a person does not know what they need from food is if they think a banana is a health food, and therefore eat one for breakfast.

Sadly, they have been influenced by the low fat food fat, and the mantra to "eat a million pounds of fruit and vegetables every day" that is the ubiquitous message from "the authorities." 

While it is true that some fruit and some veggies have a high level of micro nutrients relative to their caloric content, most of what modern fruit and vegetables have is a selectively bred high carbohydrate content - a content that is demanding in the marketplace by a population that eats over 150 pounds of sugar per year on average, and is therefore much less sensitive to sweetness - and thus needs an ever higher intake.

It's been covered in many of my prior posts - but it bears repeating - you could live a healthy, long life and never eat a fruit or vegetable.  The evidence that eating a lot of fruits and vegetables will help you live better or longer is about as convincing as the evidence that aliens have landed on earth and are being examined at Roswell.

So, if you like them, eat some apples and bananas and lettuce and make a splendid salad, but whatever you do - don't start your day with a banana!  Why?  For all practical purposes, except it is harder to carry, it's the metabolic equivalent of starting your day with a can of Coke or Pepsi.  Bananas are rated at 20 to 35 grams of carbohydrate.  That's a third of carbs you should eat in a day, which you will belt down in five minutes.  What does your body do with all that sugar, when it only needs about 5 grams of sugar to be "fully loaded"?  In defense of your nervous system, it will do whatever it takes to keep your blood sugars from going to high - so it will use insulin to turn some of that sugar to fat, and it will shunt some into your muscles if they are glycogen depleted, and it will convert some of the banana to liver glycogen.  In short order, especially if you are not fat adapted, your blood sugar will fall to a level that makes you feel "sub-optimal", and you will notice that you are hungry, and in all likelihood, the next doughnut you see will be a goner.  You will have put yourself on the carb train to crazy town, to the detriment of your health, performance and waistline.

Instead of the yellow elongated sugar pill, if you have to eat in the morning, eat a serving of protein, preferably with some fat - "bacon anyone"?  Fat is the A-1 diesel of the human body, as Dr. Kurt Harris put it, and does not stimulate the blood sugar reindeer games that carbohydrates do.  Protein is high in satiety, and is a versatile fuel source (it can serve as a building block or a fuel, as needed).  You will need to 60 to 100 grams of protein daily anyway, which isn't easy to get, so breakfast is a good time to start. 

My prediction - within a week you will feel noticeably better after eliminating yellow elongated sugar pills and taking the protein/fat substitute, with better appetite control and better mental and physical performance.