- Science knows a lot less about nutrition than you would expect – nutrition science is a very young science.
- Two indisputable facts about the link between diet and health:
- Western diet consists lots of processed food and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grain, lots of everything except vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.
- Traditional diet suggests that there is no single ideal human diet but that the human omnivore is exquisitely adapted to a wide range of different foods and a variety of different diet – the relatively new Western diet that makes its people sick.
- Instead changing the diet, we tried to identify the evil nutrient in the Western diet – leaving the diet undisturbed.
- The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes.
- The healthcare industry makes more money treating diseases than preventing them.
- Confusion too is good business – the nutrition experts becomes indispensable, the manufactures can reengineer their products to reflect the latest findings, media can report these issue – everyone wins except the eaters.
- Journalism is in the explaining business and if the answers to the questions got too simple, they’d be out of business.
- There is a deep reservoir of food wisdom out there, or else humans would not have survived and prospered.
- Foods are more than the sum of their nutrient parts – we have yet to understand how these nutrients work together.
- Rules are hard-and-fast laws; personal policies supply us with broad guidelines that should make everyday decision making easier and swifter.
- Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.
What should I eat? Eat Food
- Distinguish real foods from the highly processed products of modern food science.
- Today foods are processed in ways specifically designed to get us to buy and eat more by pushing our evolutionary buttons – our inborn preferences for sweetness and fat and salt.
- These tastes are difficult to find in nature but easy for the food scientists to deploy.
- Cut down your sugar intake.
- Especially avoid high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
- Labels list ingredients by weight – avoid products that list sugar as the top three ingredients
- Simpler, less ingredients is better.
- Avoid food products that make health claims.
- Generally it is the products of the modern food science that makes the boldest claims. Growers don’t have the budget or the packaging.
- Removing the fat from foods doesn’t necessarily make them nonfattening.
- Carbohydrates can also make you fat.
- Eat the real thing in moderation rather than bingeing on “lite” products packaged with sugars and salt.
- Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not – margarine, artificial sweetener, fake fats, soy-based mock meats.
- Eat only food that will eventually rot.
- The more processed a food is, the longer the shelf life, and the less nutritious it typically is – nutrients are removed so the food is less appealing to fungi, bacteria and insects – thus extending the shelf life.
- Real food is alive and therefore should eventually die.
- Snack on fruits and nuts rather than chips and sweets.
- If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.
- It’s not food if it’s called the same name in every language. (Big Mac, Cheetos, Pringles)
What kind of food should I eat? Mostly Plants
- Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
- Plants are typically less “energy dense” – fewer calories
- Treat meat as flavoring or special occasion food.
- The water in which vegetables are cooked is rich in vitamins and other healthful plant chemicals.
- Eat organic and local.
- Soils rich in organic matter produce more nutritious food.
- Nutritional quality of any kind of produce will deteriorate in time.
- Eat wild foods when you can.
- Contain higher levels of various phytochemicals – they have to defend themselves without our help.
- Historically we tended to select and breed crop plants for sweetness.
- Mackerel, sardines, and anchovies > tuna, swordfish, shark (high mercury content)
- Fermented food – foods that have been predigested by bacteria or fungi.
- Transformed by live microorganisms.
- Yogurt, soy sauce, sauerkraut, kimchi, sourdough bread
- Eating fruits > drinking its juice
- In nature, sugars almost always come packaged with fiber, which slows their absorption and gives you a sense of satiety before you have ingested too many calories.
- “The whiter the bread, the sooner you will be dead.”
- White flour is not much different from sugar.
- Whole grains contain fiber, B vitamins, healthy fats.
- Regard nontraditional food with skepticism.
- Have a glass of wine with dinner.
- Be aware of your drinking pattern – better to drink little and often, and with food.
How should I eat? Not Too Much.
- The French Paradox
- Their eating behaviors compensates for the food they eat.
- The American food system has for many years devoted its energies to increasing quantity and reducing price, rather than to improving quality.
- Pay more and eat less.
- Choose quality over quantity.
- Americans spend less than 10% of their income on food, less than the citizens of any other nation.
- Eat less!
- Stop eating before you are full – when your hunger is gone.
- Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
- Pay attention to what your body, not just your sense of sight – is telling you.
- Eat slowly – it is a food experience.
- Law of diminishing marginal utility – for as you continue to eat, you’ll b getting more calories, but not necessarily more pleasure.
- Smaller portions – use smaller plates and glasses.
- Serve a proper portion and don’t go back for seconds (or at least wait several minutes before you go for seconds – you may discover you don’t need it).
- Eat meals and less snacking.
- Better to go to waste than to waist.
- Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does.
- America gas stations now make more money inside selling food and cigarettes than they do outside selling gasoline.
- Do all your eating at a table.
- Try not to eat alone – when we eat alone, we eat more.
- Shared meal elevates eating from a biological process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community.
- By growing your own food, you repair the relationship to food and eating.
- You escape the culture that implies that food should be fast, cheap, and easy; that food is a product of industry, not nature; that food is fuel rather than a communion with other people, with other species, with nature.
- Cooking for yourself is the only sure way to gain control of your diet.
- Cultivate a relaxed attitude toward food – don’t stress over breaking food rules.
- All things in moderations; including moderation.
