I can no longer eat the junk I used without feeling it and I am more careful not to overindulge.   But I can still eat almost anything in moderation.   I often think that there is a fine line between eating too well in youth and too badly.   I often think back to my grandmother who often said, “You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die.”   I was never quite sure about the cause and effect relationship there.   But I believe a little “dirt” is healthy.   I believe that too much junk food and not enough natural fruits and vegetables is causing our kids to have diabetes at a young age.   But I believe the converse is true.  Feeding kids whole grains and vitamins is not healthy either.  It ill prepares their body for real life and they end up with allergies and chronic sickness.  Everything in moderation.

A few findings help prove this point.  First is that scientists are finding more and more information about the way the body breaks down vitamins and finding that there are all sorts of anti-oxidents and other nutrients in natural foods that we never really understood.  Red meat contains all sorts of great nutrients.  Fish which we feared for mercury provide Omega 3 (brain food) which this country’s diet severely lacks [take that either way].    The food pyramid keeps getting adjusted as we learn more and more.    Any the more we learn the more we realize how little we know.  But his story cinched it all for me.  

Peanut allergies, the worst among the food allergies, can be treated with “peanuts”.  A peck of dirt.   Growing up I never knew a single kid with a nut allergy.  Not a one.  Now there is an average of one in each of my kids classrooms (sometimes not nuts but some food restrictive ailment).   And the cure is to build up a kids immunity little by little.  Worked for chicken pox when I was a kid.  Works for all those bacteria in schools (those first few years in group education they are sick all the time and then it just stops).    People have used this technique to create immunities to snake venom and toxins for centuries.   And it takes a “new” study to try this with peanuts.   Maybe a little more common sense would help. 

Everything in moderation.  Including overreaching natural foods zealots and germophobes.  Got to eat a peck of dirt before you die.  Might was well start young and prepare your body for a long life ahead.