For several chapters I have been introducing you to protein and explaining why protein is your number one dietary need. Actually, the history of proteins is so old that it is new. There were no nutrition scientists or health teachers who warned our prehistoric caveman ancestors that if they wanted to be alert and powerful enough to survive the incredible dangers of life in their era, they had to “eat your protein every day.” “. What these ape-men ancestors did was take a piece of meat, most likely raw or half-cooked, and devour it. It was their instinct to forage for food that satisfied their hunger cravings and kept them strong enough to face the physical challenges of their rigorous lives. Even today, the instinct for protein, man’s best energy food, is strong among primitive peoples, although the supply of such foods available to them may be scarce. the most primitive

Tribes living in regions of Africa where hunting of wild animals is not abundant enough to satisfy their instinctive appetite for meat try to satisfy this craving by eating grubs and caterpillars, trapping birds, mice and ground squirrels. “Nasty eating,” you say. And I agree. But protein, however, is a quencher for the hungry native’s craving for energy foods.

With all the abundant sources of tasty, high-protein foods available to us, we can afford to look down on the disgusting habit of hungry Africans of eating caterpillars and mice. But now I’m going to surprise you: between our national custom of gorging ourselves on starchy and sugary foods and gulping down soft drinks, and the natives’ taste for worms and vermin, the early black man has more nutritional justification for his choice than we do. for our poor diets in this land of “culture and enlightenment.” At least Africans stick to natural protein foods that provide energy, while we indulge an artificially created appetite for starchy, sugary foods that are doing more to make us old men and women long before our time, and to weaken us as a nation, than any other factor. Please do not get me wrong. I enjoy a slice of cake, a slice of cake, a sweet or a plate of spaghetti as much as anyone. But I recognize these artificial foods for what they really are: dissipations, not nutrition. I realize that these heavy starches and sugars shorten life, they do not preserve youth.

Life would be pretty boring if we always did what we should. Of course, you’d be much better off never letting another mouthful of rich, starchy, artificial food past your lips. But you’re going to fall from grace anyway, even as I sometimes do myself. And it is far better for your psychology to say nothing of your opinion of your willpower, if you are given a 1 percent margin for “nutritional sin”! That’s why I always include a 1 percent dissipation allowance in my Eat-and-Grow-Younger schedule. But you must keep it out of the way, and not your main room.

There is a right time to indulge in sugars and starches, but that time is not the usual meal time. If you feel like you have to munch on a piece of candy or a piece of cake, do it at very infrequent intervals, between meals, and far enough away from the next meal that you don’t take the urge to eat. Suppress your appetite for youth-protective protein foods. But never, if you want to reap 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 on that day’s total protein nutrition, so if you sneak in a starchy dessert (pure starch, no vitamins, no minerals, and certainly no protein) instead of the ones shown , you’ll just be cheating. yourself. Like many other scoundrels, Starch has several aliases. When he wants to curry favor with his unsuspecting victims, he assumes the very formal name of carbohydrates. And when he wants to appear at his most tempting moment, he 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, radiant person, glowing with health and youthful energy. They stealthily undermine your sexual powers. Like thieves in the night, they steal your good looks. Unnecessary aging begins with the addiction to starch. Yes, that is the correct word, because it is an addiction, nothing less. More than half of the American population remains in a perpetual drunk: a sugar hit. The ardent anti-saloon flirt who points the pious finger at the town drunk, then goes home to eat three meals a day of heavy starch dishes: pies, cakes, rich puddings, plus chewy sweets and swallow sugary drinks, is as intemperate as the old drunk who smokes in the corner tavern. Any doctor can verify this excess in starches as a true addiction from his years of experience with the deception made by obese or diabetic patients who are supposed to abstain from rich and artificial foods. Because of their long-standing addiction, these “food drinkers” can’t stop eating a bite here, a slice there, even though their health – their very life – depends on drastically reducing their consumption of sweets and rich foods.

Doctors have discovered that no chronic alcoholic going through “the cure” can come up with more excuses to cheat than these starchy drunks. 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 “high” or satisfaction that an alcoholic experiences. when he gives in to his abnormal urges. The sweet habit takes hold with a control almost as tenacious as certain drugs. Anything to achieve that temporary feeling of energy and buoyancy, no matter how costly the habit may be on the body in the long run. The nervous system of a person who continually gets drunk on starch can be weakened just as surely as that of a chronic alcoholic.

But I have to be careful not to give all carbs a black eye, because like many villains, our bad guy also has a good side. Carbohydrates found in vegetables, fruits, milk, whole grains and seed cereals are good carbohydrates provided by natural sources. These foods also contain varying amounts of protein (something artificial starches completely lack), as well as valuable minerals and vitamins, and provide a much-needed addition to your Eat-and-Grow-Younger diet. It is only when carbohydrates stray too far from the “straight and narrow path” of good nutrition that they become harmful. You certainly won’t be advised to pass up all the sweets on this Eat-and-Grow-Younger program. Instead, it will be made into sweets that, in no time, will have you teasing a gooey cake made with white sugar and white flour. The flavors of the natural delicacies provided to you are not only “fit for the gods”, they are sweets that really help you stay young. “What candies 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 artificial carbohydrates, which, I bet, have made up about 95 percent of your sugar and starch intake for many years.

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