Nutrition has
Everything to do with HealthCopyright © 2004 Judith Schwader
Q and AHealth
http://QandAHealth.com
Nutrition has everything to do with health. This isn't news, exactly, but
looking around at the crazy information on the market, one wonders if anyone
actually makes the connection: what you eat affects how you feel. It's that
simple. Your health depends on the food choices you make in both the short
and long term.
Take a pill, and all you've done is treat a symptom. Change your eating
habits, and create a lasting change in your well-being. There are so many
approaches to eating, however, and so much conflicting information that it's
come down to this simple question: does whatever you're eating right now
make sense?
Well, sense isn't common, and it does depend on some good information. So
here is something to consider: what kind of foods are humans evolved to eat?
Cheetos? Don't think so. That's a no-brainer, but what about some others
that we counted as healthy staples until recently, like bread and pasta. Go
way back in your imagination, to hunter gatherer days - before agriculture
and the obesity which followed for the first time among humans - and
consider what would be part of our ancestors' normal diet. If you're about
to pop something into your mouth that wasn't around before agriculture, (a
relatively recent development in human history), then eat it knowing it's
not considered a 'normal' food by your body. Foods your body considers
'normal' contribute to your health, other foods are either neutral or
harmful. How simple is that?
A well-known exploration of this concept that certain foods help our
bodies thrive is Dr. Peter D'Adamo's book, "Eat Right 4 Your Type," in which
he bases his lists of what to eat and avoid on blood type. D'Adamo asserts
that type O is the oldest type, and the newer A type didn't show up on the
scene until agriculture. So, Os should eat lots of meat and veg because that
blood type doesn't know how to handle too much grain. Type As can eat grain,
but not dairy. Dairy is a category reserved as a 'normal' food only for the
yet more recent human blood type, AB. (Maybe we'll evolve a new type that
can handle Cheetos and red licorice, my personal favorite abnormal foods).
D'Adamo supports his blood-type theory with all kinds of careful
research, and so what? Does it make sense that humans should rely primarily
on foods that occur naturally? Absolutely. If you're going to eat a grain
like wheat then, eat it whole, or don't eat it at all, and don't eat much of
it anyway because humans pretty much made wheat up! I'm not going to take
the, "Does it occur naturally?" debate too far, because it's time to look at
another researcher's take on the food and evolution connection.
Dr. Phillip Lipetz wrote "The Good Calorie Diet," a book for the weight
loss market, but he also has supported his theories with all kinds of
careful research. His describes how the human response to starvation that
was developed during the ice age carries on today. Ironic, isn't it, that
the food available to us today - rich and sweet and abundant - causes our
bodies to behave as though starvation is at hand.
The short story for how this works is that up until the ice age, humans
ate whatever was readily available, like roots, plants, fruit, and a little
tasty carrion now and then. Along came the ice ages, and those foods became
scarce. Now humans were forced to hunt, but it was dicey and the weapons
were primitive, so spans of time occured between kills. The result: our
ancestors evolved ways to make the most of the conversion of excess blood
sugar into stored nutrition in the form of body fat. When they starved, they
lived off stored fat.
Today's diet mimics the ice age diet: high fat and high protein, and our
genetic programming says, "Uh oh, we're facing starvation again. Better
store up some fat." Lipetz goes into convincing detail about food
combinations in his book. He describes some that cause the creation of
excess fat, such as butter on bread. More useful are his combinations that
actually inhibit fat formation, like lean meat with most vegetables. In a
society where obesity and its attendant health issues are rampant, these
food combinations are helpful places to focus our attention. Yet the single
most useful bit to remember from his research is that foods which cause our
bodies to create excess fat all have one thing in common: they weren't part
of our ancestors' normal diet.
Armed with this overview, next time you're about to pop something in your
mouth - whether your focus is health or weight - you don't need to have a
bunch of rules and whacky information in mind. Just use common sense. Ask
whether it's a food that was around before the advent of agriculture. If it
was, go for it. If it wasn't, then consider that your body won't consider
the food 'normal,' and in both the long and short run, that's got health
consequences.
© 2004 Judith Schwader
Resource Box:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Judith Schwader has written extensively on health. She has a background
in social science and addressing chronic health conditions through nutrition
and life style. Judith's articles appear in:
http://QandAHealth.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
