The Everyday Feast.

   This past weekend, on father's day, my family treated me to one of my favorite meals at one of my favorite restaurants. We went to Hillstone's, and I had the ribs, which in my opinion are the best ribs in the world. After I ate my entire rack of ribs, followed by half of my wife's, I started thinking about eating habits. Yea I know, I can never turn off Dr. Austin. I thought to myself, I just overate, I had a feast. In my defense, I did sub the fries that normally come with the ribs for a kale salad. But still I was stuffed, and eating this much in one setting is a rare occasion for me. But I thought, many people feast every meal.

   What I mean by this is not just do a large amount of people overeat, but they have a marvelous feast, an assortment and variety of items, fit for a king. Starting with bread and appetizers, followed by a plate filled with meat and potatoes or rice, maybe even a vegetable, followed by a big dessert, taken down with unlimited refills of their drink. When did eating everyday become a feast? For a large number of people in the world, it's not. But as Americans we have great resources, easy to find food, and cheap meals (price and quality). But when did we need a little bit of everything on our plate at once? I guess it is the mentality of "wanting it all". I was talking to patient of mine who is a history buff, and a published author, and he said that's why all the royalty died younger than the peasants. They overate, over drank, were overweight, and had many health problems. I think most of us would have thought it was the opposite, I know I did, I thought many of the peasants would have died younger due to lack of resources. But he assured me, and this guy knows his facts, that it was in fact the opposite. 

   So I started thinking of other cultures and what they probably ate. Humans started as hunter gatherers, so we ate a diet consisting predominately of nuts and berries, fish and occasional meat. But it's the food combining that I feel has caused a lot of problems in modern society. Take the native Americans for example, when they followed a herd of buffalo, and they ate meat, they didn't eat it with bread, cream corn, and a slice of pie. What I am saying is people ate what was at hand. Only the privileged had the luxury of eating a feast. But now, a majority of us are privileged enough to eat a 3 course meal. This puts strain on the digestive system, strain on your metabolism, eating simple carbohydrates and sugars with your meal spikes insulin levels, and causes your body to store more of that meal to fat. So next time you are ordering a meal

   

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