J. Alexander - The Prehistoric Diet: For the Modern Man and Woman

THE PREHISTORIC DIET

(For the Modern Man and Woman)

20 MILLION YEARS IN THE MAKING

J. ALEXANDER

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Copyright 2009 J. Alexander.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
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Printed in Victoria, BC, Canada.

isbn: 978-1-4269-1931-2 (sc)
isbn: 978-1-4269-3949-5 (e)

Trafford rev. 11/23/2009

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank my wonderful children, Daniel,Brooke and Benjamin for supporting my endeavor.

To my Mom Ethel, thank you for initially instilling within me the need to think outside of the box when it comes to the Natural ways of healing vs.needelsss medications.

My great appreciation to my front book designer Lauren A. Linden for her input and dedication.

The interpretation of her front cover art being Who we were and who we can be.

Many thanks to Benjamin Linden, my chief editor for his terrific and devoted work.

Contents

Why I Wrote This Book

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?

-Rabbi Hillel

Look over your shoulder; your childhood is following you. Our parents were wonderful, hardworking, lovingand clueless about nutrition.

In the days of Lassie , Mouseketeers , and Happy Days our diets were composed primarily of heavy meats, starches such as mashed white potatoes, pastas (many from a can), Chinese food (also from a can), white bread (nice and smooth) and mixed powdered sweet drinks. Cooked vegetables were cookedand cookedand cooked to a nice mushy consistency while the so-called salad consisted of overripe tomatoes, lettuce (which, it was made sure, was not so crisp as to take on the same consistency as the tomatoes), maybe a radish (which was purely for color since no one ate it) andthank goodnessa heavy salad dressing to manage an attempt at a salad. We had fish on the off day almost as a punishment, but things got better once battered fish sticks were invented.

Of course, for breakfast we had our multicolored and heavenly and heavily sweetened cereals or French toast, which had to be made with smooth white bread with no holes, and with lots of fake maple syrup and butter. Mom had a deep freezer so we could help ourselves to desserts a plentypies, ice cream, popsicles, and fudgesicals.

Fruit? Oh, we had our orange concentrate and a couple of apples that no one dared to approach because of their sad expressions. And when it came to sodas we had them with nice pure sugars and syrups since diet soda wasnt really an option then.

My childhood eating habits were really not that much different than those of millions of American households today, except that I did not have the thousands of fast food options that we have today, and the foods we ate then did not have the numerous new and improved additives that foods have today, many of which most of us dont have a clue how to say, much less define. Take the following additives I found on a box of cereal: polydextrose, coconut and palm kernel oils, cocoa processed with alkali, and BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole), plus artificial flavors (why do we even need them?). And why in another cereal do we need modified cornstarch, trisodium phosphate, and calcium carbonate?

As a child I became heavy or chubby, but not obese. My parents and siblings somehow stayed slim. Socially I felt unpopular; I was certainly not the athletic type and certainly not happy. Again, I was not obese but certainly stood out as the object of ridicule, as did maybe two or three percent of my classmates who were also heavywe were the heavy clique. In addition, I had terrible allergies to almost everything so I was put on years of allergy injections and antihistamines, which made me groggy and slowed down my metabolism. These injections would often cause my arm to swell up and would always carry the possibility of causing me to go into shock. So the die was cast early onI would always battle against extra weight and allergies.

At the age of 13, with a more expanded waist, Mom bought special Curb Your Appetite diet drinks, which I brought to the school lunchrooms to go along with saltine crackers, a hardboiled egg, and one of those very sad-looking apples. To this day I get a nauseous feeling thinking about this lunchtime cuisine. Meanwhile my classmates would sit down to their lunches of baloney-on-white-bread sandwiches with bags of potato chips and chocolate cupcakes and cola drinks. Well, at least my diet was a start, and I did take off some weight for a while until I went off that diet drink.

The battle continued and in my twenties I became convinced that natural foods were the answer. It was at this point that I opened one of the first that I opened Food for Thought one of the first health food stores in Boston Massachusetts. Working at the store was a wonderful learning experience since I observed so many of our customers being able to relieve themselves of so many ailments by educating themselves about the miracles of good, natural, unadulterated food. I myself was able to finally cease my weekly allergy injections, which, in reality, never seemed to help anyway. What did help was my understanding of which foods and environmental circumstances would trigger my allergies, hay fever and severe laryngitis and which foods and vitamins were beneficial.

Nevertheless, weight was always an issue for me. I did not try diet pills or expensive food programs since I knew of many people who tried and failed with these programs and who almost always put the weight back onand sometimes ended up even heavier than before. Thanks to the PREHISTORIC DIET, extra weight and allergies are no longer issues for me. My life has changed for the better; I am now the person I was meant to be.

I wish I could say the same for the rest of the country. In todays America, the obesity statistics are staggering. We no longer see a slightly overweight person here and there. Instead, we are faced with an obesity rate of almost one in three. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the most Obese state is Mississippi with almost 33 percent obesity, while the least obese state is Colorado at just under 20 percent. So congratulations to the great state of Colorado: only one in 5 is obese. Even though when I was in school it was no more than 3 out of 100 that was just heavy...

In reality, this is very bad news, and it greatly increases the crucial need to work out our countrys obesity situation. A new study shows that some overweight teenagers have too much body fat, which results in severe liver damage. The study notes that a handful has needed liver transplants. Many more may need a new liver by the time they reach their 30s and 40s, and by 2020 experts predict fatty liver disease will become the number one cause of liver transplants. This disease is called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

According to The Centers For Disease Control, 72 million Americans are obese in a finding from 2005-2006. My guess is that as of 2009 it must be even higher. Jack Rosemarin M.D., F.A.C.G., notes that 300,000 Americans die each year due to complications of obesity-related diseases such as colon cancer, heart disease, arthritis, type-two diabetes, high blood pressure, liver disease and pre-cancerous polyps. In addition, other ailments related to obesity include gall bladder disease, sleep apnea, respiratory problems, infertility, depression, back problems, stroke, varicose veins, fatigue and more.