The Primal Blueprint (17 page)

¹⁵
Family Finances:
A 2003 book by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi called
The Two Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke
, details the financial challenges faced even by working families who enjoy income levels far higher (even adjusting for today’s dollars) than previous generations. While many point to the “
Affluenza
” mentality (The widespread cultural ill of excessive consumption habits detailed in John De Graaf’s book of the same name) for the middle class’s financial challenges, the authors make the convincing case that the larger, less optional expenses are the biggest culprit. Expenses for child care, car payments, college tuition and particularly surburban homes result in millions living in financial distress. Homes sold to families with children skyrocketed 79% in inflation adjusted dollars from 1983 to 1998. The two income couple (comprising some three quarters of all married couples) is a key component of the skyrocketing inflation of suburban home prices over the past 25 years. Hence a vicious circle emerges: home prices rise because many two-income couples can afford them…because they have two incomes! This sounds like “keeping up with the Joneses” times fifty million.

The
New York Times
, in 2003, revealed that a “typical household” (two income earners and one or two children – a demographic responsible for half the nation’s personal consumption expenditures) making $60,000-$80,000 per year spends 70 to 75 percent of their take home pay on essentials such as home costs, groceries, vehicles and fuel, education and health care. The authors of
The Two Income Trap
point out that the figure for these expenses was only 54 percent in the early 1970’s. Furthermore, the remaining 25% of disposable income, typically categorized as “discretionary”, is further eaten up by expenses that might be better defined as “essential” due to social pressures and norms: cell phones, cable or satellite TV, Internet service, high definition TV sets, digital entertainment like iPods. Arguably the category could extend to fashion, cosmetics and popular diversions such as movies and vacations.

¹⁶
Childhood Obesity:
The CDC reports that nine million kids ages 6-19 are overweight or obese, and that 33% eat fast food every day, (American Academy of Pediatrics). The prevalence of children (ages 6 to 11) who are overweight has increased from about 4% in the 1960s to almost 19% in 2004. (Dr Richard Troiano and Dr Cynthia Ogden).

¹⁷
Children Recreation
: Dr. Sandra Hofferth and colleagues report that the way children spend their discretionary time has changed - less time is spent in unstructured activities (e.g., free play) and more time is spent in structured activities (e.g., sports and youth programs). Other changes of interest include a doubling of computer use.

¹⁸
Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games:
The popularity has skyrocketed from zero in 1998 (due to poor graphics quality, slow Internet connections, and a consequent lack of interest.) to an estimated 30-60 million active users in 2007, according to a Giga Omni Media article. Some consider this a vast underestimate, due to millions of Chinese playing in Internet cafés for four cents per hour but not registering as paid monthly subscribers. World of Warcraft (8.5 million users), Hobbo Hotel (7.5 million) and Runescape (5 million) are the leading games. Pre-teen games Club Penguin (4 million) and Webkinz (3.8 million) are also extremely popular. A survey published on
Adpoll.com
indicated that 45% of kids play for ten or more hours per week.

¹⁹
ADHD Prescriptions
: Diagnosis rates of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have skyrocketed 500 percent since 1991, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. An estimated 7 million schoolchildren are being treated with stimulants for ADHD, including ten percent of all ten-year-old American boys, according to an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

A 1998 study by researchers Adrian Angold and E. Jane Costello found that the majority of children and adolescents who receive stimulants for ADHD do not fully meet the criteria for ADHD. The efforts of neurologist Dr. Fred Baughman, ADHD diagnosis critic, led to admissions from the FDA, DEA, Novartis (manufacturers of Ritalin), and top ADHD researchers around the country that “
no objective validation of the diagnosis of ADHD exists
.” A Maryland Department of Education study found that white, suburban elementary school children are using medication for ADHD at more than twice the rate of African American students.

²⁰
Life Expectancy of Today’s Child:
A 2005 report published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the prevalence of obesity is shortening average lifespan by a greater rate than accidents, homicides and suicides combined. Children today will lose some two to five years of life expectancy due to the prevalence, and earlier onset of, obesity-related diseases like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, and cancer. Dr. David S. Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital in Boston, said in the report, “Obesity is such that this generation of children could be the first basically in the history of the United States to live less healthful and shorter lives than their parents. There is an unprecedented increase in prevalence of obesity at younger and younger ages without much obvious public health impact. But when they start developing heart attack, stroke, kidney failures, amputations, blindness, and ultimately death at younger ages, then that could be a huge effect on life expectancy.”

²¹
American Television:
A.C. Neilsen reports that the average American watches 28 hours of TV per week and that 66% of households have three or more televisions at home (A.C. Nielsen Co.). Dr Donald Roberts and colleagues and Victoria Rideout and colleagues with the Kaiser Family Foundation report that children between the ages of 8 and 18 years spend an average of nearly 6.5 hours a day with electronic media.

“Do These Genes Make Me Look Fat?”

Obesity is really widespread

–
Joseph O. Kern II

Primal Blueprint
eating offers many health benefits, which served Grok and his ancestors well for over two million years. The most important goal of eating like Grok is to regulate insulin production, which leads to success with losing unwanted fat, maintaining an ideal body composition for the rest of your life, and virtually eliminating the major disease risk factors that eventually kill more than half of all Americans. Here are some other major benefits of the
Primal Blueprint
eating style:

Enhanced Cellular Function:
The ample levels of high-quality fat, especially the well-known omega-3 fats, found in
Primal Blueprint
foods provide optimum structural components for cell membranes and encourage your body to convert stored fat efficiently into energy. Yes, eating fat—healthy fat—will help you lose weight, as well as regulate your daily energy levels.

Improved Immune and Antioxidant Function:
Primal Blueprint
foods are higher in antioxidants and do not present the immune problems of grains and dairy. In contrast, diets with moderate to high levels of processed carbohydrates and simple sugars have been found to suppress immune function.

Lean Muscle Development and Maintenance:
The high-quality protein found in
Primal Blueprint
foods will help you build or maintain lean muscle mass, achieve ideal bone density, and be better able to handle your body’s day-to-day repair and renewal requirements. When you control insulin production and eat optimal amounts of protein, you become more
insulin sensitive
. This means the receptor sites in your muscle cells can assimilate amino acids and glucose efficiently, which is the key to muscle building and recovery. This touted benefit is dependent upon following a sensible
Primal Blueprint
–style exercise program that regularly burns stored glycogen and fat and promotes muscle growth.

Natural Weight Management:
Plants and animals are much more nutritionally dense than processed carbohydrate foods, which constitute a large percentage of calories in the typical modern diet. Eat like Grok and you’ll meet your nutritional needs in fewer calories. Secondly, the ample levels of protein and fat you will be eating have been shown by food scientists to provide deeper and longer lasting satisfaction levels—what they call
satiety
—than you get from a high-carb diet. Finally, when you consume fewer carbohydrates and, as a result, produce less insulin, your hunger and cravings (caused by
insulin removing glucose from the bloodstream after high-carb meals or snacks) will subside and you’ll intuitively moderate your caloric intake, simply by following your more regulated “natural” appetite.

Optimal Fat Metabolism:
When you reduce your consumption of grains, sugars, and other simple carbohydrates in favor of plants and animals, your levels of insulin and its counterregulatory hormone, glucagon, will be in an ideal balance, enabling you to utilize fatty acids (from both food intake and stored fat) as your preferred fuel source.

Reduced Disease Risk Factors:
Reducing intake of grains, sugars, other simple carbs, and processed foods, especially “bad fats” (trans and partially hydrogenated), will reduce your production of hormonelike messengers that instruct genes to make harmful pro-inflammatory protein agents. These agents increase your risk for arthritis, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and many other inflammation-related health problems.

Stable Energy Levels:
Primal Blueprint
foods help regulate daily energy levels, even if you skip meals, by optimizing insulin/glucagon balance so you can rely on your abundant fat stores for energy. Between-meal hunger subsides, while energy levels remain balanced. In contrast, excess insulin production from a high-carb diet depletes blood glucose levels, leading to fatigue and cravings for quick carbohydrate energy—and the need to eat every few hours.

“
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe
. —
Carl Sagan
American author and astronomer
”