by Todd Walker
Part 3a in our series – The Essential Pillars of Preparedness for SmartPreppers
Essential Pillars of Preparedness Series
- Part 1 ~ Health: The Essential Pillars of Preparedness for SmartPreppers
- Part 2 ~ Water: The 2nd Essential Pillar of Preparedness for SmartPreppers
- Part 3 ~ Food: How to Build a Big Fat Pantry
[In Part 3a, I felt the need to supplement Part 3 with the 4 essential standards of any SmartPrepper’s healthy nutrition plan]
Six pack abs are built in the kitchen – not the gym.
Training time in the kitchen pays off! Image Source
This is not a tutorial on how to build sculpted Spartan abs. However, if that’s your goal, spend more time prepping in the kitchen than over-training in the gym.
Here’s the thing.
80% of your body composition is determined by what you eat!
You won’t reach optimal health or survival without feeding your body good stuff. Could you survive eating processed junk? Yes – for a while. But eventually your SADiet (Standard American Diet) food choices will turn into SADisease (Standard American Disease).
Here are the main SADiseases linked to the SADiet: obesity, type 2 diabetes, 80% of cardiovascular disease, and over 30% of cancers. Consuming processed food (chemicals resembling food) is the best path to leaving the land of the living.
That’s the SAD news.
Here’s the GOOD news – SADisease is completely preventable – even reversible!
Making simple chances to your eating pattern can prevent you from being a SADisease statistic. Knowledge is empowering. But only if you take action and start Doing the Stuff for optimal health.
Part of Doing the Stuff is practicing skills before a crisis occurs. We call it Preventative Prepping. You can apply the same principle nutritionally to prevent SADisease and reach optimal health.
Healthy nutrition is not only an essential pillar of preparedness, it’s the foundation upon which all other pillars rest. Nutritional professionals, aided by Big Agra and corrupt corporations, have successfully demonized what your body needs to thrive before and after any crisis.
So, what does a ‘healthy’ nutrition plan look like?
A SmartPrepper’s nutrition plan should include these 4 standards
1.) Nourishes your body
Avoid processed foods. You can only read food labels if your food is pre-package. Eat what your body needs to thrive. Most packaged, processed foods don’t meet this standard and leave you overfed and under nourished. Instead of eating chemicals resembling food, feed your body real, whole foods like these ….
- Naturally raised animals
- Plants
- Nuts
- Free-range eggs
- Healthy fats – butter from grass-fed animals, coconut oil, nuts, to name a few (if you’re fat, you’re not eating enough fat)
- Fermented foods gets your gut flora in shape
2.) Recharge your brain batteries
Here’s a study suggesting that eating foods rich in vitamin B12 will keep your brain from shrinking and stave off dementia. Meat, fish, fortified cereals or milk should be part of your balanced nutrition plan. Liver and shellfish are your best bet for boosting your B12 intake – especially for senior preppers.
More smart foods that nourish your noggin:
- Eggs – the yellow yolk are high in protein, fat, and other essential vitamins and minerals.
- Fish – your brain is 60% fat. Feed it high quality, wild caught, oily fish for an Omega-3 feast.
- Nuts – excellent for your grey matter
- Check out the Brain Pyramid here
3.) Feeling full
Does your food satisfy your body and kill hunger? If an hour passes and you’re hungry again after eating, it’s a good chance you’re not feeding your body what it needs to stay satiated. High carb, sugary meals may be the culprit.
Eat from the list on #1 above. Quality, saturated fat is the key to feeling full.
4.) Peak physical performance
Eat a diet of happy animals who ate a healthy, natural diet, plenty of green, leafy plants, and listen to what your body tells you. You body is a high-performance machine. Treat it that way.
Take action, analyze, and adjust to how your body reacts to the fuel you feed it. Action is the first step.
These are the four standards to keep in mind when making your grocery list and food storage plan. You may think this is not realistic for long-term storage. If you’d like, you can take a peek at my Primal Pantry here.
This is not a fad diet. It must become a lifestyle. Once you begin your journey to food freedom and healthy nutrition, you’ll begin to see positive results. Eating healthy stops being something you have to do and become something you love to do.
You’re plan doesn’t have to be perfect. The key is to start and make this a lifestyle change. It gets easier the more you do the stuff.
Keep Doing the Stuff!
Todd
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Survival Sherpa 
obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease are genetic. Truely obese people cannot help it and their parents are typically obese because of their genes as well. Diabetes is genetic, you don’t “catch” it from your food. The reason this myth has legs is simply because if you are diabetic then you must be very careful of your diet. So it’s a logical jump for people to assume that diet can cause diabetes too. Most heart attacks are the result of a number of different genetic predispositions. Again if you have ne of these genetic illnesses diet can help. As in if you have high cholesterol then a low cholesterol diet helps reduce it slightly. If you don’t have high cholesterol your diet generally won’t give you high cholesterol.
Cancer is a whole other ball game. There is no evidence that any component of your diet will “cause” cancer. There is some, very little, evidence that “some people” (i.e. those with a genetic predisposition) will more readily develop a specific cancer from some diet and lifestyle components. Obviously smoking and lung cancer is a well known link. Some would link body fat and breast cancer but that link is very tenuous at best. Most of the data about this depends more on tweaking the statistical data to develop some kind of link then it is “fact”. Eating big macs won’t give you cancer or cardiovascular disease or diabetes or cause obesity.
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Do you believe that simply having the so called ‘fat mass and obesity gene’ will make you obese? I don’t. A person’s genes are not his/her destiny.
Also please share any research you have concerning diabetes being genetic. Here’s a couple of links I thought you might find interesting. Thanks for your input.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-causes/genes-and-obesity/
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/epigenetics/#axzz2mMQUhdZo
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To say genes are not destiny is an over simplification. I have brown eyes. My mother had brown eyes. No amount of excercise, diet or supplements will change my eyes to blue.
As for obesity, lets not talka bout simply BMI > 30 lets talk weight >300 lbs. Truely obese people are genetically obese. They “can” get to a “normal” weight if they go on and stay on a starvation diet. However they cannot lose weight or keep the weight off once they lose it if they eat a normal diet. They are truely destined to be obese. If you have a friend or relative who is obese you will quickly discover that they don’t want to be obese and will do anything to lose weight. On the other hand you will find many people (and I am one of them) who cannot become obese. I eat junk food, four meals a day and my weight not only stays the same but is the ideal weight for my hieght. Why? Genes, simple as that.
The rate of diabetes has stayed the same in recent history contrary to some of the media reports. What has changed is: 1. a concerted effort to identify people with undiagnosed diabetes and 2. an increase in those races where diabetes is more common (blacks, hispanics, Indians, South Pacific islanders, etc). There are special nterest groups whose agenda is to attract more funding and more attention to diabetes. So consequently they use these two facts to distort reality and would have you believe that the “rate” of diabetes is increasing. It is not, American Indians still have the same very high rate of diabetes while Americans of European descent still have the very low rate of diabetes. Blacks still have a very high rate of diabetes and most hispanic groups too have a very high rate of diabetes. The only thing that has changed is we have identified more people with diabetes earlier then we would have without the greater effort to test them. Most people with type II diabetes don’t show symptoms until late teens to early 20’s and some not until their 30’s. The confoundng problem with diabetes that allows and even encourages the belief that we “catch” it from our diet is: 1. That what we really see is the symptoms not the disease and the symptoms typicaly don’t show for years. 2. That since diabetes requires a specific diet to minimize the symptoms it is a “reasonable” leap of faith to assume that it was our diet that gave us diabetes. It is not of course, you get diabetes from your parents and grandparents, etc.
Diabetes relates directly with obesity and cardiovascular disease. You are 2-10 times more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease if you are diabetic and 2-4 times more likely to be obese. This brings us to the myths about obesity and cardiovascular disease. Since diabetes and existing cardiovascular disease responds positively to a specific diet again it seem like a reasonable conclusion to assume that the same diet will prevent cardiovascular disease in otherwise healthy people. This is like saying since peanut butter is dangerous to smeone with a peanut allergy restricting peanut butter will prevent a peanut allergy. It will not of course. You either have the allergy or you do not. You may never know if you don’t eat peanuts but on the day yu eat peanuts and discover the allergy you understandably might blame the peanuts and not your body or genetic makeup. Health is a complex issue especially with the enormous genetic diversity of the human race. It is easy to oversymplify things and to jump to conclusions.
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I believe in a good fat pantry is a way to stave off financial ruin, but according to soldiers serving during Katrina, the government will steal anything more than three days worth of food in an emergency.
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Specifically on this topic here are some additional Super Solutions for Preppers
Bee Pollen in detail! http://herbalsurvival.blogspot.com/2013/07/preparing-for-seasonal-change-bee-pollen.html
3 Superfoods that will help you survive a food shortage
http://herbalsurvival.blogspot.com/2013/08/3-superfoods-that-will-help-you-survive.html
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Obesity is caused by sloth and gluttony. There may be some thyroid issues out there but if you take in 3000-4000 calories per day without burning off the excess through vigorous exercise, you become fat.
Our society doesn’t work for it’s food anymore. We don’t grow it, hunt it and often don’t even prepare it. We conserve thousands of calories per day while intaking more than our fit and feral ancestors.
We simply haven’t evolved for our modern grocery store diets.
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“We simply haven’t evolved for our modern grocery store diets.”
There were at most less then half a billion people on earth when we were all hunter gatherers and life expectancies were n the late 30’s. Today with our “modern grocery store diets” there are over 7 billion with no end in sight and life expectancies are in the high 70’s to low 80’s. This doesn’t look lie a faliure in evolution or adapting to me.
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Gone with the wind….. You need to watch the documentary, ‘Super Size Me’. This gentleman proves how your diet harms or heals.
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Type 2 diabetes is nearly 100 percent lifestyle. Do more research. Type 2 diabetes can be arrested and even reversed with diet and exercise.
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