The Single BIGGEST Source Of ALL Health Issues NO ONE TALKS ABOUT

[BehcetsBoy]

In my health journey over the past 5 years, I've gotten little clues here and there on what I now believe is the BIGGEST and most OVERLOOKED health problem affecting us all. I've never been able to fully identify it until now.

This huge problem is freshness. Or rather, lack of freshness.

And I don't mean this in some 'woo-woo freshness is just better' way, I mean it in a very scientific way.

While many tout the health benefits of certain vitamins and nutrients, I rarely see any discussion on how much nutrition is left in the food by the time you actually eat it.

One of my first clues was an observation of my "disease" (Behcet's) that is acutely sensitive to Vitamin K2 MK4. Simply put: when I am ACTUALLY getting this Vitamin, I literally have absolutely ZERO symptoms to the point where I don't even have the "disease". After exactly 3 weeks of opening a new bottle of Thorne K2 however, the symptoms come roaring back until I open a brand new bottle. The only explanation for this is that within 3 weeks, the K2 has degraded to the point where I am simply using a worthless bottle of MCT oil. You might have noticed I put disease in quotes because I am certain at this point that this disease is really just a lifetime of K2 MK4 deficiency (which makes a LOT more sense now considering that the ONLY source of K2 MK4 in the world is FRESH grass fed and finished meat/eggs/dairy, and it is extremely difficult to acquire this, and literally IMPOSSIBLE if you don't actively look and educate yourself).

My second clue is that I feel AMAZING physically and especially mentally when I eat a brand new fresh frozen cut of Salmon (raw). However, if that fish is left to age a bit at room temperature and in bright light and/or cooked, not only do I not feel good, I actually feel pretty bad just as you would expect. Ray Peat has written extensively on this, and he IS right to an extent I believe. Oxidized and aged fish oil is probably bad for you, but I really can't say the same thing about fresh and properly preserved fish.

Now think about this. When the actual hell do we eat anything fresh? I can tell you for a fact that almost EVERYTHING you get at ANY supermarket is probably at least a month old. For example, any milk you get in a supermarket is probably at least a month old, in that time exposed to tons of oxygen, bright lights (at every stage all the way up to sitting in a bright supermarket shelf), and heat (pasteurization).

Most meat, for example, is purposefully aged for weeks to get a more desirable flavor. And then with all the processing, transportation, and the time you buy it and eat it, its well over a month or two old. Then you cook it destroying even more of the little nutrients left in it.

Orange juice is usually a year old:


Its actually so bad with OJ that manufacturers often need to add back the orange juice flavor before packaging it for sale, otherwise it would taste like water or crap.

I could go on and on, but basically EVEN if there is something healthy in any food, the way most people buy it means it is usually worthless or even BAD (like oxidized fish for instance) by the time you actually eat it.

How many people are growing their own food in their backyard, or have a high quality farmer from whom they buy food on a daily basis? Almost ZERO. Is it any wonder why we have such a health epidemic?

Contrast this to the way our ancestors ate. They didn't have refrigeration, so any meat or fish they caught would have been eaten very quickly. Yes they might have stored it a little with fermentation which could possibly ADD nutrition to the diet (such as Vitamin K2 MK7 and Probiotic bacteria) but they were getting so much nutrition from the fresh food they ate that the nutrients lost from the aging/fermentation was irrelevant.

If our ancestor left their milk just lying around for a month without doing anything to it, it would smell horrible, and for a good reason. It is nature and our instincts telling us that this milk is BAD for you because it has gone rancid. This same principle still applies to foods today, the only difference is that most foods we buy today are so processed and industrialized that these natural indicators of good and bad are long gone.

Histamines are built up in food as they age and oxidize, this in my opinion is the nail in the coffin of nature telling us that freshness is KEY.

 

[yerrag]

Freshness is definitely overlooked. I started a thread recently about ascorbic acid, and asked why sailors in earlier times would get scurvy when they would be eating meat and fish on their long journeys, when RaynPest says meat contains the oxidized version of ascorbic acid. It turns out a lot of it has to do with freshness. It's so important to take note of this. Even frozen meat contains much less vitamin C than fresh unfrozen meat from the public market, from new slaughter. This makes me appreciate more buying from the public market than from Costco's frozen meat section.

Heck, I'm considering changing my lifestyle to where I don't need to have a freezer.

 

[BehcetsBoy]

Freshness is definitely overlooked. I started a thread recently about ascorbic acid, and asked why sailors in earlier times would get scurvy when they would be eating meat and fish on their long journeys, when RaynPest says meat contains the oxidized version of ascorbic acid. It turns out a lot of it has to do with freshness. It's so important to take note of this. Even frozen meat contains much less vitamin C than fresh unfrozen meat from the public market, from new slaughter. This makes me appreciate more buying from the public market than from Costco's frozen meat section.

Heck, I'm considering changing my lifestyle to where I don't need to have a freezer.

For sure, try to limit the use of refrigeration as much as possible and always go for fresh food. The problem is, where can you legitimately get real fresh food nowadays? Most things that are labeled 'fresh' supposedly are probably still days old or maybe even weeks.

Actually I wouldn't limit the freezer as much as the refrigerator cause I've noticed (like in the case of the frozen Salmon) that the freezer better preserves the food than room temperature or refrigeration. I would actually prefer a food that was immediately frozen after harvesting because it will probably be preserved better than other methods.

 

[yerrag]

For sure, try to limit the use of refrigeration as much as possible and always go for fresh food. The problem is, where can you legitimately get real fresh food nowadays? Most things that are labeled 'fresh' supposedly are probably still days old or maybe even weeks.

Actually I wouldn't limit the freezer as much as the refrigerator cause I've noticed (like in the case of the frozen Salmon) that the freezer better preserves the food than room temperature or refrigeration. I would actually prefer a food that was immediately frozen after harvesting because it will probably be preserved better than other methods.

I can buy fresh food - fish, pork, chicken, beef - all freshly butchered and not frozen. And it only costs more for the chicken. Where I live, there are still many people who don't have freezers, and even if they do, they don't have enough money to stock up on food in the freezer. But having lived in the US, I can understand how difficult that could be.

The freezer's needed as a buffer. In an emergency, as long as there's power, the freezer gives us food. But the refrigerator is where I keep leftovers, and a few cold drinks.

 

[tankasnowgod]

One of my first clues was an observation of my "disease" (Behcet's) that is acutely sensitive to Vitamin K2 MK4. Simply put: when I am ACTUALLY getting this Vitamin, I literally have absolutely ZERO symptoms to the point where I don't even have the "disease". After exactly 3 weeks of opening a new bottle of Thorne K2 however, the symptoms come roaring back until I open a brand new bottle. The only explanation for this is that within 3 weeks, the K2 has degraded to the point where I am simply using a worthless bottle of MCT oil. You might have noticed I put disease in quotes because I am certain at this point that this disease is really just a lifetime of K2 MK4 deficiency (which makes a LOT more sense now considering that the ONLY source of K2 MK4 in the world is FRESH grass fed and finished meat/eggs/dairy, and it is extremely difficult to acquire this, and literally IMPOSSIBLE if you don't actively look and educate yourself).

This might not be "freshness" or K2 degrading, but it's possible it doesn't keep in suspension very well, and you use up the majority of the K2 in the first 3 weeks. I have had great success with many forms of K2, and the doses I was taking was usually in the range of 1-15mg a day, sometimes up to 45mg a day. Never noticed any lack of effectiveness towards the end of the bottle either, though I have many used capsules.

Contrast this to the way our ancestors ate. They didn't have refrigeration, so any meat or fish they caught would have been eaten very quickly. Yes they might have stored it a little with fermentation which could possibly ADD nutrition to the diet (such as Vitamin K2 MK7 and Probiotic bacteria) but they were getting so much nutrition from the fresh food they ate that the nutrients lost from the aging/fermentation was irrelevant.

If our ancestor left their milk just lying around for a month without doing anything to it, it would smell horrible, and for a good reason. It is nature and our instincts telling us that this milk is BAD for you because it has gone rancid. This same principle still applies to foods today, the only difference is that most foods we buy today are so processed and industrialized that these natural indicators of good and bad are long gone.

Your assumptions are off here. There were plenty of older techniques of food preservation, including dehydration, salt, and fermentation. Cool cellars were also used, not as effective as modern refrigeration, but still effective.

Pemmican, jerky, cured meats, yogurt, cheese, kefir, butter, and sour cream are all foods that predate modern refrigeration by hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

 

[BehcetsBoy]

This might not be "freshness" or K2 degrading, but it's possible it doesn't keep in suspension very well, and you use up the majority of the K2 in the first 3 weeks. I have had great success with many forms of K2, and the doses I was taking was usually in the range of 1-15mg a day, sometimes up to 45mg a day. Never noticed any lack of effectiveness towards the end of the bottle either, though I have many used capsules.

This wouldn't explain why a new bottle immediately fixes my problems though. I often buy a couple of bottles at the same time, and even if I didn't, they sit in a store shelf so wouldn't an unopened bottle have the same issues with suspension?

Your assumptions are off here. There were plenty of older techniques of food preservation, including dehydration, salt, and fermentation. Cool cellars were also used, not as effective as modern refrigeration, but still effective.

Pemmican, jerky, cured meats, yogurt, cheese, kefir, butter, and sour cream are all foods that predate modern refrigeration by hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

I understand there are a number of different preservation methods but my main point was that our ancestors were eating super fresh same day catch foods which would have given them unbelievably high nutrients stores in their body so they could afford to lose nutrients from fermentation and aging. We can't really do that because we are getting very little fresh un-oxidized nutrients to begin with.

 

[tara]

The problem is, where can you legitimately get real fresh food nowadays?

Garden. Great for fresh greens, berries, etc.
Farmers markets etc.
Get to know your local butcher, and find out when you can get meat at its freshest.
Go fishing. Gather shellfish.
Keep a couple of chooks.

But yes, it isn't always easy or possible. Might be able to get something fresh regularly, though.

 

[BehcetsBoy]

Garden. Great for fresh greens, berries, etc.
Farmers markets etc.
Get to know your local butcher, and find out when you can get meat at its freshest.
Go fishing. Gather shellfish.
Keep a couple of chooks.

But yes, it isn't always easy or possible. Might be able to get something fresh regularly, though.

Some excellent tips. I really would like to look more into fishing in my area.

However, with meat from a butcher it's really hard to get fresh meat because it's often aged by the time they even receive it and even in just a few days after the animal is slaughtered it is not really fresh anymore. So unless they are slaughtering the animal right next to the butcher, processing it immediately and you can pick it up on the same day (and eat it on the same day) all of which is highly unlikely then it's probably at least a few days to a week old when you eat it in the best un-aged scenario.

At farmer's market, unless they harvested the food that morning, it's likely a few days old at least.

So this is what I mean when I say it's really really hard to find fresh food and even fresh things are still a little older than ideal.

 

[GreekDemiGod]

I started a thread recently about ascorbic acid, and asked why sailors in earlier times would get scurvy when they would be eating meat and fish on their long journeys, when RaynPest says meat contains the oxidized version of ascorbic acid. It turns out a lot of it has to do with freshness. It's so important to take note of this. Even frozen meat contains much less vitamin C than fresh unfrozen meat from the public market, from new slaughter

True. However, folks today who are on a Carnivore Diet do not get scurvy, even by eating only frozen meat.
The reason the sailors got scurvy is because they also ate biscuits (carbs), which increased their need for Vit. C.

 

[yerrag]

True. However, folks today who are on a Carnivore Diet do not get scurvy, even by eating only frozen meat.
The reason the sailors got scurvy is because they also ate biscuits (carbs), which increased their need for Vit. C.

To avoid scurvy not much ascorbic acid is needed. So eating frozen meat would provide enough of the vitamin C needed to prevent onset of scurvy. But if they ate beef jerky as a lifestyle for example, especially made under high heat, they would be more likely to develop scurvy than when they eat fresh meat, as the dried meat contains even less ascorbic acid. I'm just citing an extreme example just to make a point.

 

[TheBeard]

Cooked plant food = poison
Cooked animal food = poison
Raw plant food = poison
Raw animal food = life-giving, healing, energizing

 

[milkboi]

Cooked plant food = poison
Cooked animal food = poison
Raw plant food = poison
Raw animal food = life-giving, healing, energizing

I don't think raw fruit (/juice) is poison. And cooked for that matter.

 

[Hans]

Your assumptions are off here. There were plenty of older techniques of food preservation, including dehydration, salt, and fermentation. Cool cellars were also used, not as effective as modern refrigeration, but still effective.

Pemmican, jerky, cured meats, yogurt, cheese, kefir, butter, and sour cream are all foods that predate modern refrigeration by hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Right on. That's one of the reasons why I did an article on why intermittent fasting isn't normal: Repeat after me: Intermittent fasting is not normal

People always had food available, except when there was a famine ofc, but that wasn't a regular thing.

 

[Peatogenic]

It's why I despise pre-cooking food. Which makes life very complicated. I don't choose any food to eat that is allowed to sit or refrigerate for very long. Freshness/rawness feels like my rule before anything else. In some ways, this is a luxury that I can actually do this (to the best of my ability) compared to my ancestors.

 

[somuch4food]

Freshness and local (thanks to @Hans thread) will be my focus next. I will try to buy more local and preserve myself.

I don't like that the frozen fruit I buy comes from another country when we produce the same ones locally. Plus, they taste much better when local since they are harvested ripe.

Also, I can actually taste chlorine in some bags of frozen fruits. It reminded me that most everything sold in supermarket is washed with chemicals to prevent spoilage and outbreaks.

 

[Dave Clark]

Cooked plant food = poison
Cooked animal food = poison
Raw plant food = poison
Raw animal food = life-giving, healing, energizing

Life taking if they contain parasites, worms, etc.

 

[tankasnowgod]

This wouldn't explain why a new bottle immediately fixes my problems though. I often buy a couple of bottles at the same time, and even if I didn't, they sit in a store shelf so wouldn't an unopened bottle have the same issues with suspension?

I think it can. You said you were using the lower dose Thorne. K2 would settle towards the bottom of the bottle, and the dropper would pick up the higher K2 oil for the first few weeks. Each time you open a new bottle, you're getting the higher percentage K2 oil, from the bottom of the bottle.

You could put this to the test by only risking one bottle. Open two bottles at the same time, use the drops from one, and just leave the second bottle open for about the same amount of time. After the first loses it's effectiveness, try the second bottle that you have been doing the same air exposure to. If it seems effective for the same amount of time, that would suggest that suspension issue is bigger than freshness. I'm not sure, but would think this is more likely, as saturated fats like MCT oil are really good at maintaining their freshness for years, and Thorne uses MCT.

I understand there are a number of different preservation methods but my main point was that our ancestors were eating super fresh same day catch foods which would have given them unbelievably high nutrients stores in their body so they could afford to lose nutrients from fermentation and aging. We can't really do that because we are getting very little fresh un-oxidized nutrients to begin with.

Sometimes they were, and unless you are a hunter or fisher, you likely aren't getting the same level of freshness. But this was likely seasonal, in the summer you might be eating fresh kills 5-7 days a week, in winter, you might be eating preserved meat every day for 3-5 months. It's really hard to judge, and with the way agriculture and shipping are today, we might be getting "fresher" food more often now.

 

[BehcetsBoy]

I think it can. You said you were using the lower dose Thorne. K2 would settle towards the bottom of the bottle, and the dropper would pick up the higher K2 oil for the first few weeks. Each time you open a new bottle, you're getting the higher percentage K2 oil, from the bottom of the bottle.

You could put this to the test by only risking one bottle. Open two bottles at the same time, use the drops from one, and just leave the second bottle open for about the same amount of time. After the first loses it's effectiveness, try the second bottle that you have been doing the same air exposure to. If it seems effective for the same amount of time, that would suggest that suspension issue is bigger than freshness. I'm not sure, but would think this is more likely, as saturated fats like MCT oil are really good at maintaining their freshness for years, and Thorne uses MCT.




Sometimes they were, and unless you are a hunter or fisher, you likely aren't getting the same level of freshness. But this was likely seasonal, in the summer you might be eating fresh kills 5-7 days a week, in winter, you might be eating preserved meat every day for 3-5 months. It's really hard to judge, and with the way agriculture and shipping are today, we might be getting "fresher" food more often now.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that if I just shake the bottle and mix up the K2 more before using it then it will still be effective even after 3 weeks and for a long time after?

 

[tankasnowgod]

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that if I just shake the bottle and mix up the K2 more before using it then it will still be effective even after 3 weeks and for a long time after?

That might work too. Cheaper way to test. Maybe try that with the next bottle.

 

[TheBeard]

Life taking if they contain parasites, worms, etc.

No one ever died from raw spoiled food.
Only cooked spoiled food. The bacteria becomes toxic when it grows on cooked food.
It's healthy when it grows on raw food.
You ever died from eating Roquefort cheese?