Hang in there. This story has a hopeful ending.

We human beings are built for scarcity. Not abundance.

As we learned last time, hunter-gatherers such as the Hadzas’ in Africa favorite foods are cooked meat and honey. Cooked meat smells and tastes delicious.  Honey is incredibly sweet. Cooked meat is nutrient dense and easy to digest. Cooked meat contains saturated fat which raises our HDL (good) cholesterol which keeps the arteries of your heart and brain clean and clear. Cooked meat contains the highest quality protein (animal protein) because it has all 8 essential amino acids (the building blocks of protein) present simultaneously. Only animal protein is truly complete protein. Cooked meat and other animal proteins like whole eggs and JDD whey protein isolate builds strong muscles, bones, and your immune system.

Hunter-gatherers are drawn to the delicious smell and taste of cooked meat and the spectacular sweetness of honey.

Hunter-gatherers have to work extremely hard (walking miles and miles every single day) hunting for meat. They are only successful occasionally. Finding honey is a very rare treat.

As a result, hunter-gatherers are very lean and healthy. They have no heart disease, obesity, diabetes or dementia.

Now let’s do a jump cut to the industrial food world of most Americans today.  Industrial food corporations today exploit and heavily market these deep evolutionary tastes and appetites of our ancient ancestors. Instead of the wild, organic meat of hunter-gatherers, we get grain-fed, grain-finished industrial meat with a very different fat composition than wild, organic meat.  Industrial meat is highly pro-inflammatory. Instead of meals of grass-fed, grass-finished high quality meat and some organic leafy greens, we get low quality corn fed meat buried among sugar-based buns; sugar and toxic fat based special sauce; and sugar deep-fried in toxic, pro-inflammatory oil called French fries. Instead of a rare tiny treat of wild honey a few times a year, the food industry fills nearly every aisle of our super market with highly concentrated sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup foods such as cookies, cakes, pies, pasta with pure sugar tomato sauce, and bread.

Because of our deeply evolutionary rooted taste for sweetness, we are extremely vulnerable to all these sugar and corn syrup foods, soft drinks, and supposedly healthy 100% fruit juice which are 100% the worst kind of sugar: fructose. Like juice boxes for kids.

I shop at Ralph’s. When I enter the store, I am forced to walk through the bakery section with that enticing sweet smell and multiple displays of individual slices or whole German-chocolate cakes and Dutch-apple pies. When I get ready to check out, first I have pass between glass-front refrigerators filled with a variety of soft drinks like coke. Then as I put my groceries on the conveyor belt, I stare into a 3 foot by 6 foot display of an amazing array of candy bars. 

Not only are we assaulted by a dazzling display of toxic fat and sugar, there is a virtually unlimited supply of sweet temptations.

As we have learned, sugar and other processed carbs raise the hormone insulin.

A major theme of the Joe Dillon Difference since the inception of my company in 1979 has been and continues to be insulin management. As I am sure you recall, the hormone insulin is the single most powerful fat-storing hormone in our human bodies. The hormone insulin blocks fat burning. Meaning: any time our insulin is elevated, our body cannot burn any fat at all.  None.  Elevated insulin creates a one-way gate into our fat cells.  Kind of like those toothed grates we drive over when we return our rental car. Chronically elevated insulin is the number one cause of inflammation.  And chronically elevated inflammation biomarkers in your male or female blood panels (respectively) such as fasting insulin, C-reactive protein, and/or Hemoglobin A1c are the root cause of all degenerative (meaning non-communicative) diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and dementia.

Couple the above with massive amounts of proinflammatory toxic oils like soy bean oil found in virtually all processed foods such as salad dressings, and we have a disastrous mismatch.Our deeply ingrained, ancestral tastes for fat and sweet are exploited and distorted. 

Your average grocery shopper shops hungry, without a list, and ignorant of the minefield they are entering. Cookie sections a store length aisle long. Chip sections an entire store length aisle long. Frozen novelties and ice cream a store length aisle long. Is it any wonder over 80% of all Americans are overweight? And over half of them are diabetic and/or obese. What’s the answer? How can you protect your and your family’s health?

1. Avoid shopping hungry. Have a JDD shake before you shop.
2. Shop with a list of healthy, life-enhancing foods. Recall one of our mantras: If you buy it, you and your family will eat it. Keep your house clean.
3. Shop the perimeter of your super market. That’s where the real, foods-as-grown foods are: meat, fish, whole eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables, butter.

One of my early heroes Jack LaLanne had a great saying: Ten seconds on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.

There is hope. Given what we know now, it is possible to live a longer, healthier, happier life than ever before in history.

The keys?

Stay Awake

Do your 4 measurements every day: weight, waist at your navel, navel skin fold, and thigh skin fold. Daily. Or, at least once every week.

Do your Male or Female blood panel every 3 to 6 months. Watch your trends. Are your blood biomarkers improving?

Remember:  each of us has virtually 100% control over our blood panel results. Born in 1944, my blood panel results are the best they have ever been.  And I am a former All American swimmer.  My fasting insulin is 2.0.  My C-Reactive Protein is .17.  My triglycerides are 28.  My HDL cholesterol is 111. Like you, I do 2 JDD shakes each and every day.  I start every single morning with a Joe Dillon shake: 2 cups of unsweetened coconut milk, 2 scoops of JDD protein, and salt.   I kick start my recovery with a JDD shake after every workout. I eat pasture-raised organic eggs fried in coconut oil.  I eat grass-fed, and grass-finished steaks.  I eat a big organic, raw green vegetable salad every day dressed with only with extra-virgin olive oil and salt. I take the highest quality supplements every single day including:  12 capsules of Super Omega-3 fish oil (6 in the am and 6 in the pm); I take 3-4 Vitamin D capsules of 7.000 iu’s each (I try to keep my blood vitamin D level a little over 100); I take 6,000 mg of Vitamin C every day (3,000 mg in the am and 3,000 mg in the pm) plus I take one 24 hour Vitamin C in the am and one in the pm plus I take one Ascorbyl Palmitate (fat soluble vitamin C) every morning with my JDD shake.

This is all on my website, Check out the Ten most essential supplements under my Online Store tab.

As the song goes: “Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be.”

Thank you. I sincerely appreciate your support. I love helping you and your family look good, feel good, and enjoy the highest quality life.

Join me on the path of loving kindness.
Joe