"Health Food Restaurants" Need to Check their Facts!
The First Watch Health Food Restaurant chain is all the rage. Its success gives us encouraging evidence that people want to eat healthier. Yay!
The problem is that too many Americans don't actually know what "eating healthier" is. So far, mainstream media and public schooling have been little to no help. Perhaps that is changing?
I've tried both of our local FW locations and won't be back. At least not until they start serving butter. REAL butter.
Most restaurants, unless they bill themselves as farm to fork, don't serve real food and don't make anything from scratch. It's all packaged, at least minimally processed, and pretty much comes out of the back of the same truck. I was at a Mediterranean restaurant the other day and and commented on their falafels. Turns out those tasty little balls of chickpeas come to the restaurant frozen in packages. I wish I didn't know that.
So, when it comes to where it gets its food, FW is just like all the other restaurants in town. It's OK, I've lowered my expectations for the most part. Butter is where I draw the line. Nowadays, the first question I ask when I go into a new restaurant is: do you serve real butter? If I'm going to eat the glyphosate-soaked white flour pancake, I'm going to have it with real butter. And it better be a fat pancake, thank you very much.
The thing that gets me about FW is that it calls itself a Health Food Restaurant, yet subscribes to several terribly outdated and downright dangerous "health" food theories, like:
"Lowfat is healthy."
Um, no, it's not. Our bodies need good fats like grass-fed lard, butter, coconut and olive oil. Particularly baby boomer bodies -- we need those fats (and cholesterol) for our brains, hormones and bones.
To add literal injury to insult, "lowfat" foods have replaced the fats with sugars to make the food taste good. Since there's little to no fat in lowfat food, there's no satiety either. This means you are hungry again sooner, which leads to eating more (lowfat) food, thus ingesting more sweeteners.
Sweetened food -- even if it doesn't necessarily taste sweet -- turns on the sugar cravings. So: you're hungry more often and you want sweet. This road leads to America's favorite destination: obesity, metabolic syndrome, insulin-resistance and, eventually, diabetes.
"Oh, that whole sugar-is-bad thing is blown out of control. A little sugar never hurt anyone."
IMO, if there's a number one poison in our food supply today, it's sugar. If it's beet sugar (and most of it is), it's GMO. If it's non-organic cane sugar, it's soaked in glyphosate during the harvest. Look around. People are fat because of sugar. Not from eating cakes and pies and Snickers bars, but, ironically, from eating lowfat diet foods!
"Lower calorie meals are the path to weight-loss and good health."
Not true either. While there is evidence that calorie restriction may lead to longevity for some people, that method does not necessarily require fewer calories in a day, and the practice appears to work only after you are at a healthy weight.
Eating lower calorie meals is not the path to lifelong weight management, good health or, for most of us, good times. Here's what will work: healing metabolism (adrenals, hormones, mitochondrial function), time-of-day eating, sleep patterns, exercise intensity and amount (less is better in this area), substantial GOOD calorie intake with plenty of healthy fats, and a commitment to stress reduction.
"Vegetable oils are heart healthy."
They aren't, plus they are often rancid and 95% are GMO, which is poison for human bodies.
"High cholesterol causes heart disease."
It doesn't. The China Study has been thoroughly debunked. Saturated fat doesn't contribute to hardening of the arteries or heart disease. In fact, sugar does. If your doctor still has you on statins or the like to lower your cholesterol for fear of heart disease, fire that doctor and get another one as fast as you can. Better yet, educate yourself, then decide on a healthcare professional.
So, no, I'm not eating at FW until they start serving real butter. At the moment, Cracker Barrel offers healthier food choices. By a long shot.
Resources:
Chris Masterjohn and Denise Minger on the China Study: http://www.westonaprice.org/our-blogs/cmasterjohn/denise-minger-refutes-the-china-study-once-and-for-all/
Chris Kresser on the Diet-Heart Myth: http://chriskresser.com/the-diet-heart-myth-cholesterol-and-saturated-fat-are-not-the-enemy/
Cholesterol and Heart Disease: http://www.fathead-movie.com/
GMOs in Our Food: http://geneticroulettemovie.com/
On Calories: http://amzn.to/29kKJm7
Margarine vs. Butter: http://hackinghealth.us/margarine-vs-butter/
Glyphosate-soaked flour: http://hackinghealth.us/gmo-glyphosate-sugarcane-dessicant/
Metabolic syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_syndrome
Guide to Sweeteners: http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/health/sweeteners-guide/