Craft a Lifelong Healthy Diet

Cotton Candy – Health Food?

Healthy : What Now?

Holy crap! Will we ever run out of fad diets to latch onto? There are way too many to keep track of and the results are ephemeral at best. Let’s instead have a conversation about what things are so undeniably harmful to you, and those that are clearly healthy for you and see where that takes us, ok?

Don’t eat food that comes in a package. Processed foods are evil. They are almost always high in simple carbohydrates, sugars, “natural and artificial flavors”, MSG, and other nasty things.

Sugar

Can we all get behind the statement, “sugar provides you no nutritional benefit”? Sure, it is a fast-acting source of calories. Those empty calories don’t come with fiber, micronutrients, or really anything but sugar. This includes honey, syrup, agave, corn syrup, fructose, and lactose. Sugar is pretty much a non-nutrient in all of its glorious forms. Sugar is also a raging monster when it comes to playing with your body chemistry. It sets your insulin on fire, and causes all kinds of unpleasant outcomes.

The articles and studies on this are legion, but just a tiny quick summary might be in order. Heart damage, belly fat, cancer acceleration, leptin resistance, insulin resistance, fatty liver, brain disorders, DNA damage and aging, osteoporosis, diabetes, gallstones, arthritis, and a whole host of maladies are strongly provoked or caused by excess sugar. All of this for what? A quick energy high? Satisfy a sweet tooth? Sugar is not necessary to you and the risks of it far outweigh the nearly absent benefits.

Of utmost importance is to avoid diets, and instead craft a diet

Grains

That shouldn’t have been hard to understand or generally agree with, right? How about this one: There is absolutely no nutritional requirement for wheat in your diet. Glycemic index is a rough measurement of how quickly your body responds to the introduction of sugars and carbohydrates in your diet relative to glucose. It is a proxy for carbohydrate impact on your body, and wheat flour has a glycemic index slightly higher than table sugar! In other words, wheat flour is potentially more harmful to your body than table sugar. Even whole wheat flour is nearly as bad as sugar, so don’t fall for that whole-grain shtick…it is nonsense!

Many refined grains are also potentially bad for you, as are some of the gluten-free options like tapioca and corn starch. Your body functions at its absolute highest potential without any grains being introduced in your diet. There is no dietary need for grains, stated another way. If you do decide to eat grains, you should certainly attempt to take them in the whole-kernel or milled whole-kernel form. These whole grains do provide some benefits to offset the damage they cause, but the negative insulin response to these foods cannot be completely overcome. They are also quite addictive. Who can eat just one slice of hot-from-the oven bread, or one Oreo, or one Cheeto? The folks who design these foods know that they can make them addictive and that this results in greater profits.

When you eat carbs, use copious amounts of whole vegetables and moderate amounts of whole fruit with some legumes and roots sprinkled in for fun and variety. If you are spending most of your shopping time in the produce department, you are ahead of most. The point is, vegetables, fruits, legumes, and roots provide us with a rich abundance of micronutrients, antioxidants, enzymes, and other fun and healthy stuff.

Proteins

When it comes to protein and fat sources, there are many complexities to consider. Generally, processed meats and fats also tend to be overall BAD for you. MSG, trans-fat, and other oxidation products in fats and meats tend to be dangerous to your DNA and also translate into higher risk for cancers, brain disorders, and other scary maladies.

Organic, grass-fed, wild-caught, wild game, and other forms of highly natural meats can be an important and nutritious part of any good diet. Field/stream harvested game and fish are some of the finest and healthiest proteins you can get your hands on, from which our paleo-ancestors partook as often as they could. Grain-fed meats are generally of considerably lesser quality but can still be a pretty reasonable option for a moderate but significant portion of your protein intake. When it comes to fish and other seafood, it is truly buyer-beware. Know your sea food and from whence it comes. Much of it is fake, some of it is based on very sketchy farming practices. Fraud and corruption rule too much of this industry.

Healthy Fats

Fats are such a controversial subject. For so many years, we have been taught to fear fat and to seek low-fat diets. This nonsense was foisted upon us using some very sketchy “science” and political shenanigans. Fats are critical to your body and you absolutely cannot live without ingesting some fat in your diet…that is a fun fact. You cannot say that about carbohydrates.

As with proteins and carbs, there are good fats, bad fats, and borderline fats. The worst fats tend to oxidize heavily at temperature, and this includes the majority of cooking oils and trans-fats. Corn, vegetable, canola, and various combinations thereof are pretty much ticking time bombs. Nature did not intend for these kinds of fats to be isolated, concentrated, and used for cooking. Far safer cooking fats are those that do not oxidize quickly at high temperatures, such as coconut, avocado, and olive oils. Actually natural animal fat, unprocessed, is also a very heat-tolerant and natural fat for cooking.

Nuts are loaded with good fat. These are quite healthy options for fat ingestion, as they are highly natural and happen to taste good overall. Avocados and coconuts are also very important types of naturally fat-laden foods that are healthy for your body.

Boiling it Down

Are you beginning to detect the trend here? I’m not advocating for one type of diet or another. I am strongly advocating for eating whole, natural foods as the core of your diet. Natural or organic produce, wild or wild-approximating (e.g. grass-fed) meats, or healthy unprocessed or moderately processed fats, it is important to take your food as close to the hoof or vine as possible.

The paleo-diet folks may have it closest to right. It isn’t about eating only meat…a good “paleo diet” actually features whole foods, and particularly features a lot, and I mean a LOT, of vegetables. Meats tend to be wild caught fish and game or very close approximations, and good fats work. Paleo actually forms a pretty good starting point for your core diet. Then you can modify as you learn and apply what you’ve learned.

Avoid

Let’s take the flipside of the argument, for simplicity’s sake. Processed carbohydrates are simply not good for you. You can reap huge benefits just by avoiding processed sugar, wheat, and corn. Avoid the gluten-substitutes that are high in calories and instead try almond, coconut, and flaxseed flours if you must have some kind of flour in your diet or culinary preparations. If you take highly processed carbohydrates out of your diet, this is one simple lifelong diet modification that will undoubtedly yield you real and positive results. Don’t get me wrong, corn on the cob, wild rice, and some modest amounts of true whole grains can be enjoyed by most of us. We just tend to take that to unreasonable extremes.

Of utmost importance is to avoid diets, and instead craft a diet. Your diet should evolve into something that is the core of your existence, not a fad or something with an expiration date. Adopt and improve healthy eating choices throughout your life and enjoy a little bit of everything. You can have that lemon meringue pie at Thanksgiving. Heck yeah! You can indulge in almost anything once a week or three or four times per month. The point is to have that core diet in place so an occasional indulgence is never a “cheat”.  Enjoy and savor treats the rare times they happen! Then you don’t have to cheat.