Avoid Charlatans, Eat Good Food
Everywhere we look seems to have someone trying to sell us a ‘fool-proof’ way to a healthy long life. If it’s not a vibration machine, or a gold solution, it’s an expensive book that promises if bought will teach us the secret to living forever. Each one of these products has a different business behind it, and a different celebrity that swears by it. And let’s not forget the special powers it’s gained from a different Power of the Universe. (POTU for short).
How can they all possibly be correct? Short answer, they’re not. They’re almost all charlatans, thieves to use plain English. The few that believe the hokum they’re flinging are simply deluded, mistaking the plural of anecdote for data and forgetting that humans are well and truly blessed with an ability to see only the things we want to see and find confirmation in the slimmest of evidence.
Almost all of them are charlatans, though. Most know they’re selling bunk, and the ones that believe it are just sad and deluded. Like those who buy their products, they mistake a few happy customers for real research, preferring to think they can see the world more clearly than the rest of us. They want these cures to work, and who wouldn’t? But the difference between wanting and having isn’t as fuzzy as the marketers would have you believe.
The best thing I can ever tell anyone that wants to live a long life is to eat well. More and more research shows us that a healthy diet can cure most diseases, or at least prevent them. Incorporating a diet that is rich in leafy greens, fresh fruits, and whole grains is the best chance for any of us to make our lives longer.
For example, are you aware of how many forms of cancer are lessened by a high fiber high plant food diet? I’m not sure of the exact number, but I am sure that it’s a large percentage. Scientists have done research is caners as diverse as breast, lung, mouth, and bowel. All of them are affected by fiber, phytochemicals, antioxidants or poluphenols.
Even the best research into healthy foods has trouble pinpointing exactly what it is in a particular item that makes it better for you. Think about it: how could the remedy for eating too many processed, chemical laced foods to be a highly concentrated processed chemically laced pill? The research on soluble fiber, to take another example, and its effect on cholesterol and heart disease points to the need to get fiber in a bowl, from oatmeal or cereal, rather than from a bottle.
Even the research on fiber and its effects on cholesterol and heart disease point to the need of solid foods. Sometimes the answer to a question is both as simple and complex as eating good whole foods.
