Where it all began

I remember being a child, eating Cheerios with fat-free milk for breakfast, reading a quote on the box: "Research suggests that a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol may reduce the risk of heart disease." Even at a young age, I thought to myself, Wow, could that statement be any more non-committal?  Research suggests? Do they actually know anything?  So...this diet may reduce the risk?  How convincing! (not!)

A couple years ago, my older brother began reading Whole Health Source, a blog about ancestral nutrition and health that challenges the common perceptions about Which Foods Are Good For You.  Is saturated fat really bad for you?  Do whole grains really have health benefits?  What's the deal with all the industrial seed and vegetable oils - are they healthier than lard and butter?  How did the modern diseases of obesity, type II diabetes, and cardiovascular disease arise if we supposedly now know more than ever about how to eat healthy?  I think the two most convincing and motivating items pertaining to this in the blog are 1) He discusses cultures who have what would be considered a "bad" diet by American standards, including the Kitavans, and how the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke is non-existent in these cultures, and 2) the peer-reviewed studies that support the hypothesis that saturated fat and cholesterol lead to cardiovascular disease have gross misinterpretations of data and/or lack of a suitable control group (1,2).

Skeptical?  If I haven't lost you yet, thanks for keeping an open mind!  This blog, as the title suggests, dares to dig deeper.  I no longer just accept the food pyramid issued by the USDA.  Over the past couple years, my diet continues to evolve the deeper I dig.  After all, you are what you eat, and what you eat affects the development of your children, from inside the womb to throughout their entire childhood.  As a biomedical engineering graduate student, health/disease problems and solutions are never far from my mind, and I hope to organize my thoughts on a number of [perhaps politically incorrect] topics.  Feel free to share your thoughts and/or challenge anything you read in the comments section (intelligently and respectfully, please).