Introduction Blog

Hi everybody! I just joined this class on Monday after dropping my Social Psychology class. My major is Psychology right now, but I am planning to change it to Math. I also plan on doing a German minor, and I'm Pre-Med so I eventually want to be a doctor. I've always been really passionate about health and medicine, because my family preached to me from a very young age about how important health is. Recently, I've been very interested in nutrition and the healthiest possible way of eating, as shown by history and comparing different cultures and diets around the world. I suppose you could say I'm a bit of a health nut.

Here are three really interesting blogs I found that I think are relevant to this class:

1. Luscious Lipids
http://www.drfranklipman.com/luscious-lipids/#more-13980

2. Breast Cancer Deception: World Medicine
http://www.naturalnews.com/Report_Breast_Cancer_Deception_2.html

3. Exerpt from The Starch Solution
http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2012nl/feb/excerpt.htm

The third blog is especially interesting to me--I was directed to it by my grandfather who has been very influential in my interest in health and proper nutrition. This "blog" is actually an excerpt from a book written by Dr. McDougall about his take on what he calls "the real paleolithic diet." He discusses the importance of starchy wholes foods--unrefined grains, vegetables, fruits, potatoes, etc.--in our ancestors' diets as well as our own. He also discusses the difference between the wealthier people who were eating "richer" diets with more animal protein and the people who were eating more grains and plant-based foods, noting that bodies of higher-class humans who ate more like we do today indicated heart diseases just like we're seeing more and more of now. Not only does McDougall look back in history, he also explains different diets across cultures, discussing their starch-based diets and evidence of good health. I also really liked that he dispelled the common belief that starch is something bad that is only really found in potatoes. He provides a handy chart of starches that are classified as grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits. I've always known what healthy foods look like--whole, plant-based foods. I never thought of starch as the basis for a diet before though, so I found it really interesting to explore this blog. I definitely learned more about what constitutes starch and the importance of it in our diets, something which I really knew nothing about before.