Diet Simplicity

As we went over previously (see https://gymsjim.wordpress.com/category/fitness/), diet is the single most important aspect of your fitness program. I personally enjoy the activity part of my staying in shape much more than the ingestion portion, since modifying my diet means restricting so many things which I like to eat. There’s just no getting around the fact, however, that what you put into your mouth will ultimately impact your overall health more quickly and more significantly than how many pushups you can get yourself to do in a day. It’s also a constant battle since so many food producers use enticing ads, convenient locations, and cheap prices to keep us eating poorly. Michael Bloomberg took all kinds of heat when as mayor of New York he tried to restrict how much pop (soda for you non-Midwesterners) anyone could buy at one time, but he was absolutely correct that slugging down thirty-two ounces of sugar water is horrible for you. I’m not here to advocate political solutions to our food issues (at least not for a while), but making it harder and/or more expensive to get junk that makes us unhealthy (which ultimately costs everybody in medical costs, time off work, and overall lost productivity) should be a top priority for America. Okay, end of lecture: So what’s a reasonable personal approach to the cornucopia of crap that assaults our senses all the time?

Keep it simple. That’s it. All right, now that we’ve solved that one…huh? You need more explanation? Well, okay, if you insist. Early on in my fitness quest, I checked out a book from my local library which got me thinking about the modern diet and still informs most of my decisions on how to deal with the constant barrage of food/diet advice to which we are all subjected. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you the name of the book or the author since I forgot them long ago (the book was already old when I read it in 1981), but its basic premise was based on the pace of evolution. (Yes, I do accept evolution as real.) Essentially, the author emphasized that all organisms evolve very slowly, gradually, over millennia, which means rapid changes will wreak havoc on species not already equipped to deal with those changes. A great example would be those terrible lizards, the dinosaurs, which vanished quickly once a meteor crashed into Earth and plunged our climate into an ice age. Their cold-blooded orientation doomed them once the need for a hotter metabolism arose. And so, we warm-blooded creatures came to rule the world.

As we became better and better at exploiting the bounty of resources provided for us, the book continues, we used our intelligence to take all kinds of shortcuts in growing, producing, and preserving food. Unfortunately, our bodies haven’t been able to keep pace with the innovations we’ve created. Basically, this author claimed that we have all become experiments in evolution as we habitually eat things with which our bodies have little history, changing the delicate balance of chemicals and minerals we used to evolve. One example which shows this (and is uncomplicated enough for even someone as limited in science/nutritional knowledge as myself to explain) is the potassium/sodium flip-flop.

In their more basic forms, foods generally have a healthy dose of potassium with relatively little sodium. Meats, fruits, and vegetables all have potassium in abundance but much less sodium—that’s why nobody has any potassium shakers on their dinner tables. And basic, simple foods were pretty much what we ate before modern food production took over. Thus, humans became accustomed to higher doses of potassium, compared to sodium. Our current recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for potassium is at least 4700 milligrams (mg) a day (and you can go over that without too many worries as long as you’re not too extreme) and no more than 2300 mg of sodium (and many are pushing to lower that even further to 1500 mg). Since we used to eat more basic foods all the time with exotic commodities like salt and sugar unavailable or expensive luxuries, we have come to need more potassium than sodium. Enter modern culture, agriculture, and food processors.

Keep in mind that as these changes emerged, we took the food production advancements that “modern” has come to mean as positives, and those creating and marketing these advancements were generally seeking improvements, or at the very least, trying to please us. Some tend to go overboard in their condemnation of food producers as evil souls who care nothing about our health. I don’t believe that to be true, although profit is often their primary motive and does take precedence over what is best for humans.

Regardless, as we paved paradise and put up a parking lot, we have come to rely more on food preservatives and heavily processed foods which often have huge amounts of sodium and very little potassium. Consequently, we now have issues with all the salt in our diets being linked to high blood pressure and heart disease while some suffer nutrition issues from too little potassium. This book advocated a return to a more “basic” diet, similar to what our ancestors ate. In summation, my first nutrition read some thirty-four years ago was a rough draft for the Paleo Diet movement of today.

Before you leap to conclusions on what I’m advocating, the way the Paleo Diet is set up and the limitations it requires make it one I would never recommend. (It was also rated dead last on a list of diets evaluated by U.S. News and World Report. See http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/best-overall-diets?int=9c2508 for the rankings.) The Paleo Diet bans grains, legumes, and dairy, all of which I love and can be very good for humans. I can’t imagine how legumes—one of the healthiest foods we have—could be considered a liability. No, what I took from this book was that much of the processing we do to food makes it worse and that we are usually better off keeping our food choices as simple as possible. A plain baked potato is a good food to eat. Add a little spray butter and pepper, and you’re still onto a healthy dish. But most of us slather on the butter, shake on salt liberally, and top it off with a tablespoon or two of sour cream; transforming the innocent, decent potato into a fat and sodium-laden harlot we should feel guilty eating on a regular basis. And to make it even worse, many have come to see the reasonably nutritious (and cheap) potato as guilty through association—French fries, we’re looking in your direction—avoiding a food (one medium-sized potato) that provides a decent amount of fiber, vitamin C, a touch of iron, a bit of protein, and—you knew this was coming—924 mg or almost 20% of our daily potassium needs. (Whenever I need nutritional data, I have come to rely on Fatsecret at http://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/ which makes it very easy to find many foods, including items served at restaurant chains.)

And it’s not just what we do after we’ve harvested our foods that hurt us. The drugs and hormones we give to animals to prevent them from getting ill in the horrible conditions in which we raise them for slaughter have become an issue for human health, not mention a moral question for anyone who believes living creatures deserve humane treatment. Plants sprayed with poisons pose problems (not to mention alliteration possibilities) that we could do without. Simplicity in food is something we should seek from its inception through its preparation until it ultimately reaches our stomachs.

So, for best health, we’re better off eating the things as unprocessed and natural as possible. Once you understand this, figuring out what to choose becomes relatively…ah…simple. Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, dairy, meat, seeds, and nuts are the basics which should dominate our diets in their most unprocessed forms. The more you mess with the fundamentals, the more you take chances that what we’re doing to the basics will make them much worse for you and your health.

Naturally, there are many modifications to foods’ basic forms (broiling your chicken, steaming your grains, making your fruits and vegetables into smoothies) that are perfectly okay, but you get the fundamental idea: Removing the bran and germ from grains makes our healthy wheat and rice pretty useless nutritionally, so we should strive to eat whole grains. We should avoid meats that have been subjected to all kinds of chemicals and drugs that we now use to speed their market readiness, not to mention preparation methods that coat them in white flour to be dipped in grease. The same is true of the vegetables and fruits we gather—we should steer clear of pesticide residue and cheese sauces. I could go on, but I think the premise is pretty clear. Strip away all the hype and complicated steps most diets foist upon us, and you will see the best ones are advocating the simplest foods with the most basic ingredients. We feel better and are healthier eating very basic, unprocessed things.

Obviously, we’ll need to go over this concept in much more detail as we go, not to mention highlighting some of the most harmful practices which have come to make us fat or unhealthy. There are also industry practices that are economically motivated and flat out dangerous that we have to educate ourselves to avoid. But, as a foundation for eating better, the best advice I have found so far is to keep it simple.