Whole grains are bad for your health?

So I watched the documentary, "Food Matters," yesterday. It largely advocated a raw food diet. The documentary made a lot of sense and had the current head of the Gershon Foundation speaking in the film as well. Dr. Max Gershon also figures largely in the film, "The Beautiful Truth" (2008), which I plan on watching soon.

Anyway, I did some online research out of curiosity and the caveman or paleolithic diet actually conflicts with the raw food diet even though they both seem to agree on a lot of points like how humans evolved over millions of years not eating whole grains and raw vegetables, which contain toxins and 'anti-nutrients' prior to cooking or fermentation. The problem with cooking is that it denatures the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes present in the raw vegetable or grain.

Also, I was surprised to learn that soy in its natural state is highly toxic and needs to be fermented to render the toxins inactive (i.e., traditional soy sauce, miso, tempeh, 'stinky tofu'), and that regular unfermented tofu, edamame, modern soy sauce, soy milk may pose adverse health effects since they aren't fermented.


Oh and back to the point, I read a really interesting article asserting that the hunter-gatherer diet is what the human body is most suited for. The author argues that a vegetarian diet is unnatural and leads to a host of health problems, since vitamin B-12 is mostly present in meat for instance.

I just found it really interesting and surprising that the popular raw foods diet and the paleolithic diet both espouse that whole grains are bad for your health when so much of mainstream media is telling everyone to buy whole wheat bread, whole wheat pasta, whole wheat whatever, brown rice, etc.


So red meat may be more healthful than whole wheat bread? Some food for thought.