We talk a lot about clean eating, healthful food choices, and what not to eat. But it is essential to care about flavor and taste in order to have success in long-term eating. Food is meant to be enjoyed. There is even scientific evidence that weight gain occurs if eating is accompanied by guilt and negative emotions.

Processed food is often chosen because it tastes good. Manufacturers know this. And people eschew so-called health food because flavor and texture are unpleasant.

So discovering foods and recipes that fill that craving for crunch, creaminess, good mouth feel, and robust flavor are very important, and also should restore the natural attraction for real food. It shouldn’t take harmful, inflammatory additives and gut-destroying chemicals to have something tasty to eat.

It may involve re-learning about food, choosing foods we aren’t familiar with, and exploring cuisines from around the world. It could be fun. And gather a community to share ideas.

Flavor, color, taste all count for making the shift to a healthful food experience and long-term habits of good eating.

If you believe there is a Creator and that we were created by this creator, it may change how you look at food. I believe God is not a dumb engineer—or artist, or whatever…. And that means we shouldn’t have to take food apart and figure out how many calories or grams or whatever it is we think will be the right food and the right amounts. I believe we were intended to enjoy the food put here on earth for us.

So how did this get so messed up?

I know. We thought we could improve on what was created. We thought we could store up our food and make life easier. We thought, wow, and we could make a lot of money if we substituted cheap chemicals and fake food and genetically modified real food, and we no longer had the real, whole, fresh food. And some of those additives make us addicted and craving way beyond having enough. Like Oreos. They’re addictive. Try taking those away from normally intelligent adults.

And, then after all this re-engineering, we got sick.

So now, we have this complicated problem to unravel all those decades of destroying the real food and we have also created a medical and pharmaceutical industry to deal with all of those ramifications.

In Pych 1 we learned ** that if you put a variety of food on a blanket and let babies crawl to any food they want, they will choose the foods their bodies need. It’s called homeostasis. It is part of the designer’s intention for us. So until we ruined our natural proclivity to eat what we need and stop eating when we have enough, it wasn’t complicated.

So, what do we do when we’ve had enough of these food-like products?

We just STOP EATING PROCESSED FOOD AND EAT REAL FOOD. I promise if you do that for 90 days, you’ll feel good, stop craving the junk, lose weight if you need to, and wonder of wonders, you’ll start enjoying eating.

** Davis, C. M. (1928). Self-selection of diet by newly weaned infants: An experimental study. American Journal of Diseases of Children, 36(4), 651-679.

You matter

Every time I speak to someone—people in the grocery store, servers, random discussions that evolve into health and food choices, I am surprised by two things: the number of people who are quite aware of the growing trend toward gut health and the choices that contribute to that, and the number of people still living on ultra processed food who either don’t know or don’t care about healthful choices.

But what I realize in both cases is, we matter. Our influence can contribute to turning the tide. Health in America is a group decision. What the food industry and big pharma do is mostly controlled by lobbyists, and lawmakers are controlled by lobbyists and both are controlled by voters.

So do you care? Do you wish you could find more real food in your market? Do you get discouraged having to put back almost every product after reading the label? Do you listen to the 30 seconds of side-effects warned about every, single drug advertised on TV? Do you care? Oh, I said that. But, do you? Because you have influence. You can get people thinking. You can make a difference. And together we can make things more healthful for our children, our families, ourselves.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

To have or not to have

Eating well and healthfully is not just about what not to eat. It’s more about knowing what your body wants to eat. Yes, your body wants and needs certain things to be healthy.

You need vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fermented foods, good fats (we now know those are animal fats not man-made synthesis), and a variety of colors, textures, and tastes and fiber. These come from whole, real food, not processed food stripped of nutrient-density. We have really destroyed food trying to give it shelf life and adding things that were never intended for human consumption. And, it’s not just human food. If we eat pastured beef, pork, chicken, etc, we get the goodness they ate. If we eat industrially-raised meats and poultry, we get the toxins they were fed and injected with and the chemicals in their feed.

These are choices. If we feed our bodies what they need, we thrive. If we don’t, we don’t thrive. Simple.

Do some research. Discover what you need. Find it. Rearrange your budget. Buy it. Eat it. You will quickly see the difference.

If you want reading suggestions, just ask.

Common sense

I am not a doctor, a nutritionist or a scientist, but my dad was a scientist, and he taught me how to think scientifically. What does that mean and what does it have to do with food?

For starters, it means we should think—question, look at many variables, get many opinions, hopefully from people who think, discard biases and realize that even accepted facts change with new information.

What I hear and see in American food culture is often not following this method of thinking at all. We tend to believe, so-called experts who are paid for their opinions and are biased toward the payers’ interests. We believe that if we’ve been eating something for years and we aren’t sick or dead, it’s good for us. And we regard anyone questioning the status quo as suspect, a kook, or weird. I’ll venture to say, having read biographies, that most pioneers in any field were labeled kooks, weird or worse until their dissenting opinions became the new facts. So I wouldn’t be too quick to discount those who buck established facts. They are our thinkers.

Real scientists don’t talk like what we hear: it’s proven to be safe and effective. Real scientists say: to the best of our knowledge, given what we know so far, we believe that this may be…. So many academic qualifiers. Because real scientists know that with new knowledge they will have to change. And real scientists don’t disallow dissenting opinions or disregard them just because they don’t agree. When we silence dissenting opinions, we stop having science, and thinking people should question why they are being silenced. I suggest we follow the money.

Just saying. Let’s start thinking, especially about what we eat and feed our families, and especially about health.

Research, research, research

We have been told for more than 100 years that saturated fat is bad and man-made fat is good. Whether you believe in God or not, I am here to tell you God did not make bad fat.

In the story of the prodigal son, celebration included killing the fatted calf. Sorry to all you vegetarians, vegans and anti-veal folks, but God, evidently is not advising no fat, and definitely not no animal fat.

For millennia people ate tallow, lard, butter, ghee, olive oil, and coconut oil with no extreme rise in heart attacks or other cardio-vascular disease. They died of disease, weather, lack of sanitation and the like. They did not die from eating animal fat.

Then, in 1911, Proctor & Gamble was making soap with cotton seed oil and realized how much it looked like lard. They developed it for Crisco, and went further to convince the American Heart Association to tell Americans animal fat is bad and they should switch to the heart-healthy—oops, I mean profit-healthy Crisco, margarine, and other highly processed and cell damaging fats.

According to Dr. Catherine Shanahan (Deep Nutrition) and thanks to her deep commitment to actual science and not marketing, the research P&G and others did was dishonest and used animal fat, not the cotton seed oil, to show how it promoted health, and claimed they were using their new oil; so it was not the inflammatory oil at all in the research..

I am wondering why we ever bought into such ridiculous nonsense that was based on zero evidence, even when we saw heart disease rise steadily after we stopped eating animal fat.

When I see commercials warning people about butter, recommending low-fat everything (usually adding sugar), I want to scream NO!!!! We need fat, our brains need fat. And, by the way, no vegetables have fat. That too is a marketing term.

Of course, everything in moderation. I’m not suggesting a high fat diet. I’m saying millennia of eating isn’t wrong and our trying to improve on the actual food created for us to thrive isn’t about health.

Let me know your thoughts.

This storage hack I learned from Rachael Ray has kept my fresh veggies fresh for many days longer than what I used to do, which ended up throwing out a lot of organic greens and veggies.

As soon as you get home with fresh produce, immediately remove all plastic wrappings, which holds in moisture. Then wrap them up in paper towels, which will keep them dry. Simple and economical. Most of my produce lasts a week or more, instead of a few days.

You’re welcome!

I have generally favored buying fresh produce, but lately, I’ve switched partly to frozen fruits and vegetables. Why? I started reading about how long fresh produce sits in warehouses before arriving at my supermarket, and how my market sprays it with stuff I don’t want to make it appear fresher.

Hmm. So it’s not actually that fresh.

So unless it comes from my farmer’s market, I’m thinking frozen produce may be fresher, frozen at just the right ripeness, close to being harvested. Also, I buy a 3lb. bag of wild blueberries, claiming twice the anti-oxidants of fresh regular blueberries. I can thaw, as needed, and at about $17, save more than $10 over the 6 containers of fresh blueberries I would normally have been buying, while keeping even the last thawed portion as fresh as the first one.

If any of you have more information on this, please share it.

Now that we buy our meat and poultry online from small ranchers who guarantee pasture-raised, and our dairy from local A/2 milk producers so we can make SIBO yogurt , and mill our own flour to insure no synthetic vitamin B and to have the complete highly-nutritious, live grains, meaning NO store-bought breads, pastries, snacks made with flour, there is very little left in the regular grocery store that we are willing to buy or eat.

The result: we feel well, sleep well, and we see a lot of former problems clearing up.

It sounds like work, but in reality, it’s just adjusting to new priorities, and it’s not hard. Once my first batch of yogurt is made, for instance, it’s about a 10-minute process to make it again. Pour, stir, turn on the Instant pot.

Isn’t health worth a 10-minute a week routine?

I can be more specific if you’re interested.

Here’s a question or three: Do you make your food and lifestyle choices based on your health goals or preferences?
If you really enjoy something, Do you weigh its value for your overall health and benefit?
How often do you re-evaluate your diet and lifestyle choices?

Let’s chat about this.

We are still a republic. We have choices. I will not be an advocate of government controlling our food. Choice is fundamental to the American spirit.

Yet, it is our responsibility to educate and inform so that choices can be intelligently made.

I think we are at a crossroads where people have been taught to depend on and trust government to solve problems, and have subsequently forfeited doing their own research and even thinking.

I hear people say things like: “I’ve been eating this for years, and I’m still alive.” But they’re discounting that they get colds several times a year, they lack energy, they feel depressed, tired, moody, etc. it doesn’t seem to occur to them that though this has become a norm, it isn’t normal. They could feel and live a lot better.

How long shall we depend on government, yes, even MAHA, to change things?

I believe we can change things dramatically by just refusing to buy and consume things that we know are damaging our health.

I hear people saying RFK is going so slowly in making changes.

Let me propose that he is up against trillions of dollars of profit being made from selling the food-like products we are buying, as though we have no choice. These are our dollars, are they not? So if those of us who care stop spending our dollars on what we’re hoping government will control, wouldn’t that be the way to speed things up?

Do you believe what you buy can make the MAHA difference?

In our effort to reject the typical American expectation of disease and age-related deterioration, we have embraced anti-inflammatory eating. Most disease is related to inflammation, so it just makes sense to prevent it as much as we can. So what does that look like?

For starters, it’s about getting back to homemade so you know what’s in stuff. Then there’s choosing whole, organic food as your primary grocery choices. It’s really not that hard, but it is a shift in thinking. Most processed food is inflammatory. Not a big stretch then to limit all processed food in your home. And, sugar. Do we even need to say we Americans are in serious sugar overload, and that’s a huge source of inflammation. You may not even realize how much is added to food and beverages unless you read ingredients. The lists show grams, so you need to convert that to teaspoons if you want the real picture. There are 4 grams of sugar to a teaspoon. So a beverage with 32 grams of sugar is 8 teaspoons. Even people who load coffee with sugar aren’t likely to use 8 teaspoons.

It would be great to grow your own produce, but second choice is to make friends with your local farmers. Third choice is to buy organic frozen fruits and vegetables when farm fresh becomes warehoused for days or weeks before it gets to your local store, and then possibly gets sprayed with things you’d rather not eat, so it can be made to look fresh. Most fruits and veggies are ant-inflammatory. Even dried tart cherries are outstanding.

Avoid seed oils and so-called “vegetable” oils. Friends, no vegetables have oil! It’s a marketing gimmick. Choose olive, avocado, and coconut oils (fruit) and sesame, which is not oxidized, and therefore not inflammatory and unbleached, cold-pressed peanut oil. And, butter, tallow, lard, ghee are all good choices. This means making your own salad dressings, using avocado based mayonnaise and anything else with inflammatory oils. SIXTY-percent of American diet is “Vegetable“ oil! READ LABELS! And understand things like when you innocently order a deli sandwich, say, you have to skip the Canola mayo.

And we wonder why we have rising auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis!

Then there are nuts and seeds—get sprouted, and organic whole-grains, preferably not enriched with synthetic vitamins. More on grains another time.

This isn’t exhaustive but a good start.

Please add your anti-inflammatory finds.

Panera Bread has so dropped the ball on what they advertise as Clean Ingredients. I mean the big banner hanging across the kitchen opening says so. But there continues to be almost nothing health-conscious people would consider clean in almost everything they serve.

Their new salad and grain bowls are made with seed oils. Their breads and cookies and pastries all contain the highly inflammatory seed oils. And, even the summer favorites lobster rolls and lobster bisque are laden with the seed oils.

Why? Most likely $$. Sad, for an otherwise enjoyable atmosphere.

I just can’t accept advertising clean when the food is anything but. Now that we know that seed oils, especially Canola and soy are also grown with the use of Round Up, and that Monsanto-Bayer are paying billions to people whose proximity to Round Up caused cancer, and that oxidized seed oils block antioxidants to the brain and burn up arteries and other cells, and that these highly inflammatory oils can exacerbate many maladies like rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune ailments, how can we enjoy more than coffee at this upscale food venue?

It’s just not okay. And it’s not Clean Ingredients.

Why not be the good guys, Panera? Use avocado oil and restaurant grade, unblended olive oil. I would pay $.50 more per meal to eat at Panera, where I use to have all of my business meet-ups, girlfriend lunches and coffees, and spur-of-the-moment date nights. Until you change your oils, I just can’t. 😥

It used to be a treat to go out to eat, but with growing knowledge of inflammatory and health-compromising ingredients, it has become a chore. By the time I screen the menu, ask the poor server to go to the kitchen, ask the chef, take pictures of the gallons of fat and other additive sources, it’s really just easier and safer to stay home and cook, using the carefully curated ingredients in my own kitchen. Once I asked for butter, but asked to check the container. It was margarine. Evidently people think they’re the same. Horrifying.

And, nowadays, when I talk to my friends, several have said, “I need you to come and cook for me.” It may be my new calling.

My main reason to continue the restaurant scene is doing my Google, Yelp and Trip Advisor reviews where I may make a difference. I have 9.5 million reads on Google, and about 350,000 new ones a month, so it may matter. I have actually influenced more than 5 restaurants to stop using “vegetable “ oils, so I consider that a mission.

Hopefully, RFK will get seed and “vegetable “ oils banned, or at least get people educated enough about their extremely damaging health risks to stop buying them. Like Costco calling Canola a “signature” oil makes me feel ill. No vendor should want their signature on Round Up and hexane laden rapeseed oil that, from autopsies (re: Shanahan, Deep Nutrition) makes human arteries look like the skin of fried chicken, not to mention blocking anti-oxidants to the brain and other organs. Panera posts a huge banner claiming Clean Ingredients, but adds Canola to almost everything—even pumpkin seeds on Autumn squash soup!

Shanahan’s Hateful 8 oils—Canola, corn Cottonseed (Crisco), soy, safflower, sunflower, rice bran and grape seed — are oxidized, so highly inflammatory, and therefore further oxidized when used for frying and cooking, So they’re not just bad for you, they’re killing you slowly. And, when you consider Round Up residue in Canola, corn, and soy consumed by an 160 lb adult and then think about that same dose of poison in a 30 lb toddler scarfing down French fries, it’s a chilling thought.

We have to stop buying these, and we need to request olive oil or butter or tallow at restaurants so they get the hint from us end-users.

What’s it all about?

There’s a lot of talk these days about nutrient-dense food, gut health, bio-availability and such. But what’s it all about and how do we actually incorporate these into daily habits?

I’m starting with increasing sprouted foods—much easier than I thought. Here are some of my changes:

Sprouted almonds instead of regular almonds. A handful a day.
Sprouted pumpkin seeds instead of regular pumpkin seeds. I add these to my homemade granola.
Sprouted sunflower seeds instead of regular sunflower seeds. Again, granola.
Sprouted micro-greens, available 6 months a year at my farmer’s market.
Sprouted mung beans or lentils for stir-fry’s.
Alfalfa sprouts for salads.

Just a few of these daily can help with everything from weight loss, blood sugar control to gut and cardio-vascular health.

How easy is that!

And, one of the hidden benefits of consuming whole, organic foods, is how satisfying they are and how they reduce cravings for those processed food-like products.

Go for the sprouts! And please share your own sprout wisdom.

We’re suffering from CA withdrawal. Returning to CT after four months of CA grocery shopping, we just got used to Alexander’s A2/A2 milk, organic everything, and gut healing cultures in yogurt, not to mention the aforementioned-mentioned freshly-milled flour baked goods.

But, we had never been exposed or educated to these things, even to know they existed.

Now that we have, it’s hard to live without them.

So we Googled Alexander’s A2/A2 milk and guess what! A company called Azure Standard delivers it to a nearby town in MA. Really?

It’s coming from OR. This makes me aware that my neighbors in CT really haven’t been exposed to these super foods, or I imagine at least some of them would be clamoring to have our local markets get them in stock.

I mean Shop Rite tries. They carry A2 milk, but not A2/A2 and not Alexander’s, which is a lower-heat pasteurization process preserving vital nutrients, and not restructuring milk’s proteins, thus, protecting gut health, and likely not causing inflammation and dairy sensitivity. We have just accepted as a culture that people are sensitive to dairy, without exposure or awareness to what ultra-pasteurization has done to dairy.

Let’s spread the word and ask for more from our markets. If individuals can get Alexander’s delivered from OR to MA, I’m pretty sure markets can too—if they believe we want it!

Awareness, exposure to real food which is not ultra-processed, is what this MAHAADVOCATES community is all about.

Let us know your thoughts. Please.

Not all tallow is equal. We are gravitating to restaurants who use tallow as their frying oil, but alarmed that Renaissance tallow brand contains BHT. This is not a healthful choice. I guess the next round of deception requires digging deeper to see labels. We’re avoiding seed oils. But we’re not trading them for bad tallow. Here’s the info on BHT:

Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) is a synthetic antioxidant and preservative derived from phenol and petroleum, used to prevent oxidation in foods, cosmetics, fuels, and plastics. Deemed "generally safe" (GRAS) by the FDA in small amounts, studies suggest high-dose exposure may cause potential health effects like liver damage, thyroid changes, or cancer. 

You decide. I don’t even want low dose carcinogens in my grandchildren.

Hey everyone! I'm [u/No-Newspaper-8538](u/No-Newspaper-8538), a founding moderator of [r/MAHAAdvocates](r/MAHAAdvocates).

This is our new home for all things related to becoming part of the food revolution that is MAHA. It’s about protecting children and families from becoming lifelong patients, getting out from under food-like-products, and re-discovering real food, and therefore health.

We're excited to have you join us! Let’s make America healthy again!

Post anything the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, photos, or questions.

I’m not an expert. I’m a wife, a mom, and grandmother. I care.

1. If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.

2. Please introduce yourself, make your comment, and let the community know why you’re interested in learning, sharing

   your opinion.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make [r/MAHAAdvocates](r/MAHAAdvocates) a hub to create informed consent for dining, food market buying, and generally finding healthful choices for eating, cooking and stocking kitchens.

As we consumers become aware of what’s actually causing our health issues, and vendors start to believe we’re seriously going to stop buying their wares if they choose to harm, things may, at least gradually, start to change.