Sustainable Eating - Like your grandparents, not cavemen, by Lee Harrington
Sustainable Eating - Like your grandparents, not cavemen
I repeat: modern diseases are NOT caused by eating ancient foods.
But we don’t have to go back to paleo man to find a healthy eating pattern.
In the face of the criticism that low carb, keto, or fasting are “unsustainable,” I present the reality:
Until the late 1920s, none of the stuff we now eat as “normal” even existed.
If we just ate like our great-grandparents, we wouldn’t be drowning in obesity, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes.
What is this post trying to say?
That your health can be improved.
That Type 2 diabetes can be reversed.
That arthritis can diminish.
That whole-body vitality can return.
All by changing what you eat.
But many voices out there claim it’s unrealistic to change your eating long-term. To which I say: unrealistic compared to what?
Let’s take just one example:
“Not eating fast food is unrealistic.”
But fast food didn’t even exist until the 1950s.
So what changed?
Changing your diet to whole, natural foods changes your health.
For a while, you may need to be more restrictive — to heal a damaged metabolism.
But I’m just one of hundreds of thousands of people turning their health around. Overcoming what was once called a “progressively degenerative disease.”
Not with surgery. Not with pharmaceuticals.
Just by changing what we eat.
Real food doesn’t have an ingredient list from a chemistry set. It is sustainable — but so is Big Food’s effort to addict you to toxic junk masquerading as food.
Don’t fall for the marketing and the convenience. Good-for-you food brings health to your life.
The food is the disease.
Not being able to eat ultra-processed, profit-first food without getting sick does not mean you’re diseased.
It means you’ve been poisoned.
It means you’ve been addicted.
I won’t soft-pedal the difficulty of change.
Low carb. Keto. Fasting. They’re not easy.
But they work.
And they don’t need to be forever.
Once you heal, you can widen your choices — but only to real food.
The kind your great-grandparents ate. You just can’t go back to unlimited modern food — because that food is toxic to you.
Here’s a document I compiled showing when each major modern food item or category entered the scene:
The diseases came after.
Ancient foods are not the cause of modern disease.
p.s. Always consult your health team for your specific needs.
p.p.s. Educate yourself so you can fully participate in your health strategy.
Harrington, Lee. Real Food for Real Health: How Modern Foods Wrecked Our Metabolism.
Fung, Jason. The Diabetes Code: Prevent and Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally. Greystone Books, 2018.
Bikman, Benjamin. Why We Get Sick: The Hidden Epidemic at the Root of Most Chronic Disease—and How to Fight It. BenBella Books, 2020.
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I Have Good News. Type 2 Diabetes Is Not a Disease!
Written by Lee Harrington
Published June 14th, 2025
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