FOR several chapters I have been acquainting you with protein and explaining why protein is your first dietary need. In reality, the history of proteins is so old that it is new. There were no nutrition scientists or health teachers to warn our prehistoric cavemen ancestors that if they wanted to be alert and powerful enough to survive the incredible dangers of life in their day, they had to “eat your protein every day. ” What these ape-man ancestors did was grab a piece of meat, probably raw or only half-cooked, and devour it. Their instinct was to look for food that would satisfy their cravings and keep them strong enough to deal with the physical problems of their rigorous lives. Even today, the instinct for protein, man’s best energy food, is strong among primitive peoples, although the supply of that food available to them may be scarce. The most primitive

The tribes, living in regions of Africa where hunting for wild animals is not abundant enough to satisfy their instinctive appetite for meat, try to satisfy this desire by eating worms and caterpillars, trapping birds, mice and ground squirrels. “Unpleasant food,” you say. And I agree. But protein, nevertheless, is a quencher of hungry natives’ craving for energy foods.

With all the abundant sources of tasty protein foods available to us, we can afford to look down on the hideous habit of hungry Africans of eating caterpillars and mice. But now I’m going to surprise you: Between our national habit of gorging ourselves on starch and sugar and drinking soda, and the natives’ taste for worms and vermin, primitive black man has more nutritional justification for his choice than we do for our diets. deficient in this land of “culture and enlightenment.” At least Africans are clinging to natural protein foods that provide energy, while we are indulging an artificially created appetite for starchy and sugary foods that are doing more to make us older men and women long before our time, and to It weakens us as a nation more than any other factor. Please do not get me wrong. I enjoy a slice of pie, a slice of pie, a caramel, or a plate of spaghetti as thoroughly as anyone. But I recognize these artificial foods for what they really are: dissipations, not nutrition. I realize that these heavy sugars and starches shorten life, they do not preserve youth.

Life would be pretty boring if we always did what we should. Of course, it would be much better if you never let another bite of rich, starchy artificial food pass your lips. But you’re going to fall from grace anyway, even like I sometimes do myself. And it’s much better for your psychology to say nothing of your opinion about your willpower, if you give it a 1 percent margin for “nutritional sin”! This is why I always include a 1 percent dissipation margin in my Eat-and-Grow-Younger program. But you should keep it on the sidelines and not in your main room.

There is a right time to sin with sugars and starches, but that time is not the usual time to eat. If you feel like you have to chew on candy or eat a slice of cake, do so at very rare intervals, between meals and far enough away from the next meal so that your appetite for youth-protecting protein foods does not quench your appetite. But never, if you want to get any benefit from this Eat-and-Grow-Younger regimen, include heavy starches with your high-protein meals. In the menus prepared for you in Part II, I have provided desserts that are both appetizing and nutritious. Your food values ​​are calculated based on the total protein nutrition for that day, so if you eat a rich and starchy dessert (pure starch, no vitamins, no minerals and certainly no protein) instead of those shown, you’re just cheating. yourself. Like many other scoundrels, starch has several aliases. When he wants to fight his way into the good graces of his unsuspecting victims, he assumes the highly formal name of carbohydrates. And when it wants to look more tempting, it turns to sugar. But it is like the starch that is commonly known. Artificial starches and sugars are spoilers. They sabotage your youth, your mental agility, your power to be a vigorous and radiant person, radiant with youthful health and energy. They stealthily undermine your sexual powers. Like thieves in the night, they steal your good looks. Unnecessary aging begins with addiction to starch. Yes, that is the correct word, because it is an addiction, no less. More than half of the American population remains perpetually drunk. The anti-salon league fanatic who points a pious finger at the town drunk and then goes home to three meals a day of heavy starchy dishes (cakes, pastries, rich puddings, more chocolate chews, and shots of drinks sugary) is equally intemperate. Like the old man who gets soaked in the tavern on the corner. Any doctor can verify this excess starch as a true addiction from his years of experience with the tricks that obese or diabetic patients perform that are supposed to abstain from rich and artificial foods. Due to their long-standing addiction, these “food drinkers” cannot refrain from having a bite here, a portion there, even though their health – their own lives – depends on drastically reduced consumption of sweets and rich foods.

Doctors have found that no chronic alcoholic going through “the cure” can make up more excuses to cheat than these starch drunkards. I am justified in calling these cravings an addiction, because carbohydrates (sugars and starches) are converted in the human body into a type of sugar that, in large quantities, gives the same “boost” or satisfaction as experienced by an alcoholic. when you give in to your abnormal cravings. The sweet habit takes hold with a grip almost as tenacious as certain drugs. Anything to achieve that temporary feeling of energy and buoyancy, no matter how costly the habit may be to the body in the long run. The nervous system of a person continuously drunk on starch can be weakened as surely as that of a chronic alcoholic.

But I have to be careful not to black eye all the carbs, because like many villains, our bad man also has a good side. The carbohydrates found in vegetables, fruits, milk, whole grains, and cereal seeds are good carbohydrates that are obtained from natural sources. These foods also contain varying amounts of protein (something that is totally lacking in artificial starches), plus valuable minerals and vitamins, and they provide a necessary contribution to your Eat-and-Grow-Younger diet. It is only when carbohydrates stray too far off the “straight and narrow path” of good nutrition that they become harmful. You certainly won’t be advised to pass up all the candy in this Eat-and-Grow-Younger program. Instead, you’ll turn into candy that, in no time, will have you flipping a sticky cake made with white sugar and white flour. Not only are the flavors of the natural delicacies provided to you “fit for the gods”, but they are sweet to help you stay young. “What sweets are these?” questions, half curious, half skeptical. I will post some recipes later. But first I want to make sure you understand the nature of the artificial carbohydrates that, I bet, have made up about 95 percent of your sugar and starch intake for many years.

You are not alone in this serious nutritional error, as it is an accepted American custom to serve a menu like this: French fries, meat, white bread, artificially flavored gelatin salad, chocolate cake, and coffee (sweetened, of course, with White sugar). I’m not citing this as a wacky menu rarely found on a table. This is a menu copied word for word from a newspaper article dated February 18, 1951, describing food on the enlisted men’s dining room food line at a large army camp in the east, a place where supposedly nutrition would be at its peak. best scientist. However, there was white bread made from devitalized grain, a salad made with an artificially flavored gelatin colored with coal tar dyes and sweetened with white sugar (like most artificially flavored and prepared gelatin desserts), chocolate cake made from more devitalized white sugar and more white flour, with even more refined white sugar in the coffee. No, in fact, Americans should never worry about not consuming “enough” carbohydrates. Our danger comes from consuming too many carbohydrates of the wrong type.