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Contributing Author: Chek, Paul H.H.P.
Paul Chek is a world-renowned expert in the fields of corrective and high-performance exercise kinesiology. For over twenty years, Paul’s unique, holistic approach to treatment and education has changed the lives of many of his clients, his students and their clients. By treating the body as a whole system and finding the root cause of a problem, Paul has been successful where traditional approaches have consistently failed. Paul is the founder of the C.H.E.K (Corrective Holistic Exercise Kinesiology) Institute, based in California, USA.
» Website: www.paulchek.com
The story of grains is part and parcel with the story of bread, neither of which the human machinery is designed to function optimally on. While I’m sure this comment is a surprise to some of you, significant amounts of scientific evidence suggests that for all of human evolution, right up until approximately 10,000 years ago, the primary staple in the diets of most civilizations was animal meat. There were times when meat was scarce for a variety of reasons, yet in general, our consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds was seasonal and supplementary. Most of the animals we preferred to eat, such as deer, were plant eaters. These animals served to condense nutrition in their meats, one pound of meat containing the nutritional equivalent of several pounds of vegetables. Such a dense nutrient source allowed us a to have a sustaining food source during the winter months during the period in which we had minimal food storage methods other than the cold itself. Although many argue (mostly from an emotional bias) that we must have carbohydrate sources to function, current biochemistry reveals that we do have the capacity to convert some fat molecules (glycerol) into carbohydrate (Exercise Physiology, by McArdle, Katch and Katch). These inhibitors can neutralize our own digestive enzymes, resulting in the digestive disorders experienced by many people who eat unsprouted grains; there are many scientific indicators linking grain consumption to rheumatic and arthritic conditions as well (“Cereal Grains – Humanity’s Double Edged Sword,” by Loren Cordain). Complex sugars responsible for intestinal gas are broken down during sprouting and a portion of the starch in grain is transformed into sugar. Sprouting also inactivates aflatoxins, which are toxins produced by fungus and are potent carcinogens found in grains. |
In 1964, it was found that boys in Iran and Egypt had severely underdeveloped testicles. Tests showed that they had extreme zinc deficiency, yet zinc was plentiful and widely consumed in those countries. It was discovered that zinc was bound by phytates in the bread they ate, and while the bread contained a great deal of zinc, it was useless because it was locked up (“Trace Minerals” by E. DiCyan, Ph.D) This important finding will become even more important in understanding the potential downfalls that come with over-consumption of processed grains as presented below.
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Here we are, after 130 years of consuming highly-processed grains in the form of breads, pastries and cereals, and chronic disease states are rampant among most industrialized nations, with the greatest prevalence in England, which has the greatest consumption of white flour, white sugar and tea per capita. The US running a strong second! Not surprisingly, we appear to be continuing another trend that began with the introduction of the steel roller mill – a declining birth-rate. The more bran and germ millers extracted from flour, the lower the birth rate per 1000 people there were in England between 1872 and 1945. Today, things are not much better. Artificial insemination is a big business, and if not for advanced medical technologies, we would be losing a huge amount of babies that wouldn’t have survived even 100 years ago. Additionally, there are significant reductions in sperm counts among males, which may well be the result of both over-consumption of highly processed foods and toxicity in our food supply and our eco-system. While environmental chemical exposure is suspected, there is a very real possibility that malnutrition secondary to consuming too many processed foods is a possibile cause. Francis Marion Pottenger, Jr., MD, demonstrated with his cat studies that feeding cats processed foods led to numerous disease processes, infertility and eventually extinction! The diet plans in these books commonly resemble the USDA Food Pyramid, which is commonly referred to as the USDA Feedlot Pyramid by nutritional experts such as Dr. Barry Sears, author of The Zone Diet, because such dietary proportions are far better suited to fattening both animals and people than they are to health and vitality! Unfortunately, the USDA food pyramid is used as a guideline by most school cafeterias preparing food for your children!
Additionally, in his book Beating the Food Giants, Paul Stitt shows us that the average breakfast cereal today ranges between 46% and 53% sugar! With this knowledge, watch to see how much sugar people add to their cereals before eating them and how much soda pop is consumed in concert with many of these non-foods! |
We have an epidemic on our hands with insulin insensitivity (Syndrome X), adult onset diabetes and obesity! We have children consuming massive quantities of sugar and food additives, most of which, like sugar, are stimulants. White flour is literally a sugar in itself, and where it is mixed with fats in processed foods, the fats are commonly hydrogenated and rancid, increasing your susceptibility to a number of disease processes! If you want to flatten your abs “forever!” I suggest the following CHEK Points:
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