Despite my unconventional lifestyle, I tend to be very trusting of authority.  In a dicey situation, I walk toward the policemen rather than away.  I scoff at Mark's conspiracy theories and believe in sound science.  And I lapped up the USDA food pyramid in health class, vowing to eat 6 to 11 servings of carbohydrates per day and to consume fats only in extreme moderation.

At the same time, I believed in what I call the hippy food pyramid.  It looks a lot like the USDA food pyramid, but is a bit stricter and more specific.  Whole grains make up the base of the hippy food pyramid, and soy replaces meat in many instances.  The vegetable and fruit section is a little heftier and red meat is bad, bad, bad.

Over the last year, though, I've been slowly learning nutritional factoids that don't seem to fit my old view of proper nutrition.  As Mark and I incorporated these anti-USDA nutritional guidelines into our lives, we felt perkier, smarter, and thinner.  But I was concerned about making drastic shifts in our diet based on half-understood truths, so I checked out Michael Barbee's Politically Incorrect Nutrition.

The book was eye-opening, full of twenty pages of small print references to back up his nutritional guidelines --- ones that my gut already told me made sense in my own life.  I've excerpted the most game-changing facts in this week's lunchtime series, but this is one book I recommend checking out on your own and taking the time to slog through.  Yes, it is dense, but isn't it worth putting in a bit of study time to take care of your most important possession --- your health?

This post is part of our Politically Incorrect Nutrition lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Politically Incorrect Nutrition Complicated nutritional guidelines Good foods that are bad for you Bad foods that are good for you The best diet

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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