Grain Damage (A Book Review)

This short (52 page) book was an interesting read. The author, Douglas Graham is the Raw Food guru I'm reading in preparation for a month-long all raw-food-arama! [Click on Pic for link to Amazon]. Amazon tricked me into buying it during the (wait, you can...) checkout process, happens all the time.

I can't help but read these kinds of books, I have a food problem I guess. Here, Graham really goes against the grain. He modifies the old saying "never talk about politics or religion" as "never talk about politics, religion or food", since people seem to have equally strong feelings and convictions about diet too. I've certainly ran into that whenever the discussion about being a vegetarian comes up! And you are already getting worked up inside when you imagine that someone is about to tell you that whole-grain-bread is not good, not healthy, not an excellent source of fiber, and in fact is poison. It's heresy. This guy is suggesting that we live like monkeys, plain and simple.

I often think about how long we've been eating what we've been eating. Has it always been this way? It's on the aisle at Safeway, isn't that good enough? And, Mom told us what was good, and it was good what Mom told us. And what is the consequence of these choices, these packages I put in the cart? Like meat for example, how long ago did it actually become something that everyone ate, all the time? The same goes for grains. It looks to me like we've been eating grains a lot longer than we have been meat. I bet the low-carb folks have no problem with what Graham is saying about grains.

Here's some quotes from the book:

• The illogic of low-carb diets: You can eat all the butter and mayo you want, but you have nothing to put them on.
• For more than 99% of the time that man has walked the Earth, he has done so without consuming grains.
• Bread simply does not exist in nature.
• Before we began farming grains, the human population doubled approximately every twenty thousand years. Today, our population is doubling out of control: once every twenty years.
• In terms of yield in pounds per acre, grains are the least productive of all plant foods.
• Plant a tree, and it will yield for generations. Plant grains, and you are lucky if you get a crop.
• Before the introduction of grains, a squirrel could go from Maine to Texas without ever leaving the treetops.
• Farmers know that we can feed forty people fruit from the same acreage necessary to feed one person beef.
• Grains claim to fame is its storability, a feature that nullifies your chances of ever buying it fresh.

To wrap this up. I don't recommend this book unless you are serious about moving away from grains, and want some motivation. You can borrow my copy before I donate it to the Goodwill soon. I've always liked the idea of eating closer to the earth (not proximity-wise), less packaging, processing, organic, you know. As it turns out, grains cannot be eaten straight from the field, but require a whole lot of processing, water, energy, and come with a relatively puny amount of nutrition apparently. I am not giving up pizza, bread or grains, or anything that makes ME feel good! I'm not going to complain too much about population explosion either, else I may not have made it to the show myself! But, as always, I like to chip away at these kinds of things, awake.