Food Fads vs Traditional Foods

There are new foods to the market as vegetables sources of protein for people such as chia, hemp and flax seeds.  However, some of these foods have very little history as a food and they have only recently been introduced as a food to America. I think its important that when we choose what we eat, we know the history of that food.  If you are familiar with John Harveg Kellog's famously nutty health sanitorium you will understand the importance of scrutinizing food marketing and experts.

Today, I'll talk about foods that have very little history of food and ones that have a long history regardless of marketing.

Corn Flakes vs Porridge:

Okay, but let's step back and talk about one of the first food introduced to us in the modern area: corn flakes. What's the difference between corn flakes and porridge? Corn flakes were invented in the 20th century as a way to use the huge amounts of surplus corn and instead of selling it as corn more money could be made made by manufacturing them into food. It was a great business model to take a lot of cheap food and make it into a special product. Corn flakes are one of the first truly industrially processed foods. All food goes through processing such as when taking soy beans and making tofu but this was the first time a product was made for the purpose of mass consumption. However something is lost when making corn flakes.When processing the corn to make corn flakes most of the nutrional value of that food is lost. Today,  manufacturers spray the flakes with vitamins to bring back some of the nutrition. However, porridges have a long history and have nutrition to them.

Vegetable Proteins:

So we'll get back to the new sexy marketed foods in America.

Chia seeds have been used as a food for over 4,000 years. The wild variety is very similar to the kind cultivated. That's a good thing.


Hemp and flax have little history as a food. This is because the foods have a really high phytoestrogen content in them. Phytoestrogens reduce the testosterone in the body. There has been a history of using phytoestrogens for medicinal purposes such as menopause when the estrogen levels of woman drop. And there has been historical uses for them as fibers and paints. But only recently has it just been marketed as a food.

Keeping phytoestrogens are more important then ever because we are exposed to a lot of it from plastics, to many industrial chemicals, to new foods that sell well as commodities. Many plants have phytoestogens in them in small amounts but what we want to avoid is constant and continual consumption of plants with high amounts in them.  These foods are changing our bodies and though while we may not see much effect our children and our children's children will see an effect.

One of the most visible media consequences of phytoestrogens have been early puperty age of girls. Another consequence has been the rising fertlity rates.

I think its important that when we choose what we eat, we know the history of that food. Michael Pollen has said that we shouldn't call anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. I think we could extend that thinking to beyond that to what the history of food is. Othe wise we are failed to repeat mistakes.