On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 09:13:44 -0600, Philip <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Ginny's right. I've never met a person who ate a lot of grains who didn't
> have some health problems by middle age, but I have met some who think of
> themselves as "healthy." They attribute their aches, pains, pudginess,  
> bald heads, nearsightedness, high cholesterol, etc. to "old age" or  
> discount them as minor problems that "everyone" has. And it seems like  
> nearly every adult in modern society does have at least one of the  
> modern foods syndromes.

There are exceptions.  I'm one of them.  I'm 42 years old, and up until  
the last few years, I ate plenty of grain products.  I ate the "standard  
American diet" for most of my life, and a "country" diet for much of my  
upbringing (plenty of bread in that).  I have no aches or pains, am not  
pudgy, have all my hair, 20/15 vision, my cholesterol is 135, my blood  
pressure is normal (typically 120/80 or so), my resting pulse rate is in  
the low 50's, and I'm almost never sick.

I don't say any of that to boast, but just to point out that you're not  
necessarily doomed to health problems and early death if you enjoy a slice  
of bread (or pizza) now and then.

I didn't mention one thing that's notably different about me compared to  
almost everyone else I know -- I keep myself active.  I work out regularly  
(weights, martial arts, "cardio", etc.), and I purposely engage in  
difficult physical tasks on a routine basis (digging ditches, splitting  
firewood, moving big rocks around, carrying bags of feed or buckets of  
water, etc).  I still think that this is one of the absolute best hedges  
against "old age" that there is.  The paleo diet appeals to me because it  
fits with what our bodies were meant to do.  Similarly, our bodies were  
meant to *move*!

So it seems to me that getting the diet right is only one piece of the  
larger puzzle.

-- 
   Robert Kesterson
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