Something even sadder than the Standard American Diet
The Standard American Diet -- "SAD" for short -- gets blamed for a lot of health issues in the US and there is certainly some truth to that, though I think it's probably more complicated than that. Even sadder than that is the recommended Standard Diet for People With CF (pwcf).
The general recommendation for pwcf is:
The problem is that pwcf tend to have high medical bills and low incomes and the above guidelines get mashed together with wanting low cost foods while all other food chemistry details get ignored. The result is that when you search for dietary recommendations for pwcf -- for recipes and the like -- what you find is a junk food diet in which PEANUT BUTTER is a staple item.
This is true in spite of all pediatric clinic teams including a dietician or nutritionist and until recently most CF clinics were pediatric clinics because it wasn't all that long ago the life expectancy for CF was just eighteen years old.
In fact, when I was still on CF lists someone posted a short, poignant email announcing "Today is my child's 18th birthday. When he was born, life expectancy for CF was 18. It's now 36."
When kids with CF began surviving past the age of 18, the medical establishment didn't immediately know what to do with them. Prior to that "CF doctor" basically meant "pediatrician."
Anyway, I don't eat a lot of peanut butter and spent about six years doing my best to avoid all peanut products and only added peanut products back into my diet later, after my condition was much better. I'm especially picky about avoiding peanut oil.
I still have to be picky about the quality of such products and I still limit them because even the good peanut products -- like organic peanut butter and dry roasted peanuts -- are pro-inflammatory and I start turning into a psychobitch my kids can't stand if I eat them too often, so if I forget, my KIDS enforce the "Mom, step away from the peanut butter." rule.
When we were homeless and so poor we were underfed part of every month, they sometimes just THREW OUT the peanut butter because I am more prone than them to poverty mentality and feeling like I can't "afford" to NOT eat this food that is clearly damaging me because I'm homeless and blah blah blah.
On one CF list, there was discussion of some movie with a character who had CF and I remember people saying on list how unrealistic it was because her fridge was full of things like salads and they don't eat stuff like that. Not high calorie enough.
I eat lettuce regularly, sometimes as part of a salad, sometimes on things like tacos. Lettuce is one of the three alkaline super foods I know of (cucumbers and celery are the other two) and it's good for the gut and anti-inflammatory.
I have never counted calories but I likely eat more calories than is typical for a woman and I am a butter fiend and sometimes eat bacon (when my lungs are not rough -- it contains nitrates/nitrites and can really tear up the lungs if they are already stressed). I can also suck down the salt like there is no tomorrow. CF is essentially a salt-wasting disease.
BUT for all that I do consume such things in quantity, I pay much more attention to QUALITY than quantity.
Because I suck down so much salt, I don't want table salt with crap in it like anti-caking agents. Coolios if your biggest concern is not having your goddamn salt CLUMP up on damp days but that's not my biggest concern.
At the cellular level, CF is a bottleneck in the system. It causes a defective cell channel that can't handle normal levels of traffic of certain molecules.
So we don't really know what all CF does with "unimportant" chemical details like anti-caking agents AND if you take on a LOT of salt and you use table salt, you are also taking on a LOT of anti-caking agents. That's a NO from me.
MCT oil has long been medically recommended for CF and other gut issues, such as stomach cancer, but it gets treated like a supplement. MCT just stands for medium chain triglycerides and is simply the chemical name for the TYPE of fatty acid.
There are also short chain triglycerides and long chain triglycerides. My research hasn't really covered short chain triglycerides but in a nutshell long chain triglycerides are the ones that jack me up and keep me sick.
If you have CF: NO PEANUT OIL.
And start a health journal and track which oils screw you up.
Eat all the salt and fats you WANT that your body CRAVES, but more importantly eat the RIGHT kinds of salt and fats.
And eat an anti-inflammatory diet. CF is a very deadly inflammatory condition. The single most important metric for my diet is it has to be anti-inflammatory and this detail is completely overlooked in the Standard "Junk Food" Diet recommended for PWCF.
They recommend that VERY ILL people who are DYING eat JUNK because it's high salt, high fat, high calorie and CHEAP.
That's a no from me. A very hard no.
In fact, that's a big fat FUCK YOU and the horse you road in on.
The general recommendation for pwcf is:
- High Calorie
- High Fat
- High Salt
The problem is that pwcf tend to have high medical bills and low incomes and the above guidelines get mashed together with wanting low cost foods while all other food chemistry details get ignored. The result is that when you search for dietary recommendations for pwcf -- for recipes and the like -- what you find is a junk food diet in which PEANUT BUTTER is a staple item.
This is true in spite of all pediatric clinic teams including a dietician or nutritionist and until recently most CF clinics were pediatric clinics because it wasn't all that long ago the life expectancy for CF was just eighteen years old.
In fact, when I was still on CF lists someone posted a short, poignant email announcing "Today is my child's 18th birthday. When he was born, life expectancy for CF was 18. It's now 36."
When kids with CF began surviving past the age of 18, the medical establishment didn't immediately know what to do with them. Prior to that "CF doctor" basically meant "pediatrician."
Anyway, I don't eat a lot of peanut butter and spent about six years doing my best to avoid all peanut products and only added peanut products back into my diet later, after my condition was much better. I'm especially picky about avoiding peanut oil.
I still have to be picky about the quality of such products and I still limit them because even the good peanut products -- like organic peanut butter and dry roasted peanuts -- are pro-inflammatory and I start turning into a psychobitch my kids can't stand if I eat them too often, so if I forget, my KIDS enforce the "Mom, step away from the peanut butter." rule.
When we were homeless and so poor we were underfed part of every month, they sometimes just THREW OUT the peanut butter because I am more prone than them to poverty mentality and feeling like I can't "afford" to NOT eat this food that is clearly damaging me because I'm homeless and blah blah blah.
On one CF list, there was discussion of some movie with a character who had CF and I remember people saying on list how unrealistic it was because her fridge was full of things like salads and they don't eat stuff like that. Not high calorie enough.
I eat lettuce regularly, sometimes as part of a salad, sometimes on things like tacos. Lettuce is one of the three alkaline super foods I know of (cucumbers and celery are the other two) and it's good for the gut and anti-inflammatory.
I have never counted calories but I likely eat more calories than is typical for a woman and I am a butter fiend and sometimes eat bacon (when my lungs are not rough -- it contains nitrates/nitrites and can really tear up the lungs if they are already stressed). I can also suck down the salt like there is no tomorrow. CF is essentially a salt-wasting disease.
BUT for all that I do consume such things in quantity, I pay much more attention to QUALITY than quantity.
Because I suck down so much salt, I don't want table salt with crap in it like anti-caking agents. Coolios if your biggest concern is not having your goddamn salt CLUMP up on damp days but that's not my biggest concern.
At the cellular level, CF is a bottleneck in the system. It causes a defective cell channel that can't handle normal levels of traffic of certain molecules.
So we don't really know what all CF does with "unimportant" chemical details like anti-caking agents AND if you take on a LOT of salt and you use table salt, you are also taking on a LOT of anti-caking agents. That's a NO from me.
MCT oil has long been medically recommended for CF and other gut issues, such as stomach cancer, but it gets treated like a supplement. MCT just stands for medium chain triglycerides and is simply the chemical name for the TYPE of fatty acid.
There are also short chain triglycerides and long chain triglycerides. My research hasn't really covered short chain triglycerides but in a nutshell long chain triglycerides are the ones that jack me up and keep me sick.
If you have CF: NO PEANUT OIL.
And start a health journal and track which oils screw you up.
Eat all the salt and fats you WANT that your body CRAVES, but more importantly eat the RIGHT kinds of salt and fats.
And eat an anti-inflammatory diet. CF is a very deadly inflammatory condition. The single most important metric for my diet is it has to be anti-inflammatory and this detail is completely overlooked in the Standard "Junk Food" Diet recommended for PWCF.
They recommend that VERY ILL people who are DYING eat JUNK because it's high salt, high fat, high calorie and CHEAP.
That's a no from me. A very hard no.
In fact, that's a big fat FUCK YOU and the horse you road in on.
