Killing Them Softly With Cheerios?

As you can see, we all love our Cheerios. Or the generic equivalent. I mean, hey, I AM still cheap. :)

The title comes from reading I've been doing on other blogs, all of whom seem to be (the Husband would say SEEM to be is the key phrase here) much more diet-conscious than I am. In other words, they think cold cereal is of the devil because of the processing it goes through. I agree that Sugar Sparkles are probably not categorized as health food, but Cheerios? They're just oats that have been made into a slurry and then shaped into happy little O's. Can't be that bad for you.

In case ya'll haven't heard of the Nourishing Traditions trend, Nourishing Traditions is a part cookbook, part diatribe written by a lady named Sally Fallon. She's not a dietitian, just a concerned citizen who can use exclamation points with the best of 'em. I bought the book mainly because I wanted a sauerkraut recipe and also because I wondered why in old books they were forever soaking their oatmeal overnight. (It cooks quicker that way in the morning.) I read it, beyond the recipes, because I felt I should be fair and a lot of very nice bloggers like her work.

I... thought it was a bit thin. I find Dr. Dean Ornish relatively more plausible and I'm not an Ornish fan-- although the Sally Fallon way of eating would be a lot more fun than Ornish, because you get to eat a lot of butter. (They both, however, don't let you eat pork.) Pretty much it boils down to: Fallon thinks saturated fat is the necessity of life, Ornish thinks it will kill you. Take your choice. :D (I will cook more of Fallon's recipes I think, because I like butter. Sue me.) The problem with both styles of eating is that they cut out entire swaths of foods, and think that thereby everyone will be enabled to live to be 100. (Or more. Fallon points out that in Bulgaria or some such place they live to be very, very old, like 120, and they eat tons of saturated fat and have great teeth.)

Ornish thinks saturated fat is poison. Fallon thinks that unfermented (unsoaked) grains are poison. Which begs the question, was God having an off day when He made eggs or grains respectively?

(The answer to that rhetorical question is "clearly no" in case you had your doubts.)

So what's a healthy way of eating? Well, the only time the Lord ever spoke on the issue it also banned pork, shellfish, and several other things so I suppose one could eat (Biblically, not talmudically) kosher and feel good about that. However the Lord also made me a Gentile and put some explicit thoughts about Gentiles keeping kosher in the New Testament, so perhaps we might take His word for it and regard all food (even Cheerios) as clean.

Whew. I feel much better now. :D

I have to go grocery shopping today and get some bananas and other things, so it's good to have that cleared up.

Happy cold snap,

Breanna

(Can you tell it's snapping here?)