Today’s Inspiration: thewellnesswarrior.com.au
“I love this article because there is so much confusion for many people when it comes to ‘feeding ourselves’. It is a relatively simple concept but many people insist on making it really complicated.”
~Sophie
When did feeding ourselves become so complicated?
We need food to live. It’s pretty safe to say that this has always been the case. Way, way back in the day, even before the invention of sliced bread, our ancestors fed themselves to stay alive. They knew what to eat, when to eat and how to eat. They didn’t rely on nutritionists, dieticians, scientists, journalists or marketing hype to tell them what to chow down on; they just understood that certain things are made to be eaten and certain things aren’t. They used their common sense and intuition to guide them from the garden or the market to the kitchen. Then something strange happened. Food was no longer just food. Instead, food became the sum of all of its nutritional parts. Suddenly we needed a whole new vocabulary just to understand how to feed ourselves. We needed a science-type person to accompany us to the supermarket just so we could decipher between items that are fit to put in our gobs and items that aren’t. Whole food was out and antioxidant-, carbohydrate-, fibre-, protein-, phytochemical- and fat-content was in. We became a nation obsessed with nutrition. But did it make us any healthier? Funnily enough, no. Quite the opposite, actually. Puzzled? Turns out many of us are.
Michael Pollan, journalist and author of the best-selling In Defense of Food, describes the ideology around our thinking about food as ‘nutritionism’ – a pseudo-scientific way of looking at food. According to Pollan, nutritionism reduces food to its nutritional parts. We clever humans discover that a certain nutrient does wonders for our bodies and we try to isolate it, extract it and mass reproduce it. Take carrots, for example. Carrot is contains a highly beneficial nutrient called beta-carotene. Science guys got hold of this knowledge and decided to hunt down the beta-carotene in the humble carrot, extract it and make supplements out of it. They were a little bummed when they discovered that beta-carotene supplements were a poor-man’s nutrient in comparison to eating a whole carrot. Why? We haven’t yet figured out everything that goes on in a carrot. Vegetables in their whole form house a galaxy of nutrients, enzymes and other goodness that work together to deliver amazing benefits to your body.
Nutritionism also divides the world into good and evil, demonising certain nutrients while enshrining others. This would kind of make sense if the list of ‘good’ guys and ‘bad’ guys weren’t forever changing on us. Remember the days when protein was considered ‘bad’ and carbohydrates were ‘good’? Now it is the opposite. Thanks to Dr Atkins and his classmates, carbs are often wrongly accused of being evil. We may be clever enough to figure out that some carbs are bad for us, but we often forget that not all carbohydrates are created equal. The same goes for fat. The low-fat campaign began in the early 1980s and is just starting to fade out now. You know what else started around the early 1980s? The obesity epidemic and the rise of type-2 diabetes! Clearly, the science around these nutrition claims was not very sound. As soon as we were told to avoid fat at all costs, we began gorging on anything that was labelled as ‘low-fat’ and ‘fat-free’. Never mind the amount of sugar and refined carbohydrates that were taking its place and seeing us spiral into serious health decline.
Butter was another victim of the ‘low-fat’ campaign. Sure, butter is an animal fat and you should by no means use it as a condiment on everything, but it is a heck of a lot better than margarine. We now know that trans fats, as found in margarine, are lethal and responsible for many diseases. On the other hand, people have been successfully eating butter for around eight or 10 thousand years.
Nutritionist Cyndi O’Meara is another voice I respect whole-heartedly. She wrote the brilliant book, Changing Habits Changing Lives. What I love about Cyndi is that she prescribes whole foods, and does everything she can to warn us about the ramifications of the modernised food system.
“When we put 80 additives into a prepared meal (just read the ingredients on a packaged food), how could we possibly know the ramifications on what it does to our body. The mind boggles at the stupidity of the food, science and sickness industry,”writes Cyndi. “Don’t be part of the experiment. Realise that nurturing your body with real foods free from chemicals and additives is the best thing you can do for your health and nurturing.”
Nutritionism undermines our instincts. This modern, western style of eating has made us forget that we have things like culture, tradition and in-built common sense to tell us what we should and shouldn’t be eating. As Michael Pollan puts it, “People have eaten very well for thousands of years before they even knew what an antioxidant was, and they can do it again.”
What are we to do? Forget all of the lingo and stick to the basics. Eat foods that are as close to their natural state as possible and good health will follow. Weight loss will be a given. If it can sit in your pantry for years and not go bad, don’t eat it. If it contains ingredients that you can’t pronounce, don’t eat it. If you pick up something that your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognise as food, don’t eat it. It is that easy. By eating local, organic, fresh whole foods you can’t really go wrong. Your body is designed to eat food from the ground and if you feed it accordingly it will reward you by carrying you through a long, healthy and happy life.
What do you think about nutritionism? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic.
Read more here!
Love this article! I have eliminated all artifical sweetners from my diet and have adopted a whole grain approach to eating. It’s as easy to cook fresh ingredients as throwing a processed meal in the microwave. We try our best to shop local for all our foods, fortunately we have a great farmers market with locally grown produce and meats. It’s a little more expensive, but worth it. Definitely the healthiest approach to feeding your family… and much more delicious!
This is so good to read as a sixteen year old girl – a prime target for the whole dieting business. There’s so much pressure to eat 3 barely meals a day and kiss carbs goodbye. I love potatoes and noodles and wouldn’t give them up for anything. Thankyou so much for writing this! Showing this to my friends when I go to college this week.
I know, there is so much information out there and everyone tells you something different to do.. Listen to your own body and find out what works best for you! Just try to be healthy instead of losing weight and you’ll feel great 🙂
i’m a huge fan of this kind of thinking, food is food, and my body is pretty sensitive when it comes to what i eat, can barely even touch processed foods, such as hot dogs, bologna, pepperoni, you know those kinds of meats, as well as any sort of microwavable anything, i can only handle ice cream if its real ice cream, and if i can go to my local market to buy my veggies i do so because they are at least less harmful than those at the supermarkets or grocery stores. another thing to watch out for is genetically modified foods, and in north america, it’s all genetically modified to yield a bigger, redder, more ripe tomatoes, and they aren’t required to print anything on the label.
you know what i want to do, eat a real tomato and eat real food, grown by somebody out of the earth the way it was intended. when i was travelling overseas, i gained like 20 pounds, which is good, because i’m a skinny guy and food, if its not good for me, won’t stick to me. as soon as i came back home, all was lost and now i’m just another skinny guy again.
thanks for the article, gives me more justification that i’m thinking along the right lines 🙂
Thank you so much for commenting! That is so amazing, sounds like you are doing great!
Great post! Whole food is so much tastier too in my opinion. More complex and fun to cook with
totally agree!
It’s a shame that food is so bad for us. I used to enjoy eating when I was younger and much more active. Back then, if I ate too much, I could run it off but alas, too old to do that anymore. Now, I have to count calories to remain at a “good” weight and it’s taken all the fun out of it.
Great article. Keep ’em coming
Thanks for visiting my blog! Not all food is bad for you though! There are tons of things that will actually help your body and give you energy. Maybe it’s an idea to look for some healthy & tasty recipes to bring the fun back in eating 😉
Reblogged this on From Gastric Band to Fitness and commented:
This truely deserves a re-reblog, this is everything that I’ve been finding out along my path to health and fitness – Go Wellness Warrior and Daily Health Boost for finidng this gem
Thanks for the reblog! And Im very happy you like it!
This is such a good post. So much nutrition info is thrown at us that many people are confused as to what to eat. We have made eating a complicated matter. Counting calories, lowering fat, making substitutions for sugar. I believe everything is good for you in moderation. Eat real food that doesn’t come out of a box and you can’t go wrong!
Yes so true! Couldn’t say it better 😉
Ahhh!!! I love love LOVE this!! Great stuff 😃
Nice, balanced approach. Thanks for visiting my blog.
Thanks for this great blog, I love it! It’s full of such good sense that shines out like a beacon in the fog of the insanity around food.
I’m a great fan of Michael Polan. A lot of the biggies don’t like him. Ive seen some powers that be debate the contents of his books. It’s usually big business. They don’t like being exposed on their deception of consumers.
What a interesting article. Sometimes it makes you wonder if we have really advanced that much further then our ancestors. Sure in some things we have but in many things we have just made life more complicated and less magical then it really is.
I agree with this 100%. I generally eat very healthfully. But I was “rewarding” myself with too many sweets and processed foods, so I decided to do an experiment. I challenged myself to go the entire month of January without eating any processes foods – only WHOLE foods. I called it “The All-Natural Diet” challenge, and it has worked wonders for me. I’ve never felt better, more healthy in my life. I’m no expert and I didn’t get advice from any nutritionists. I just wanted to try this out for myself, and the results have been amazing. Try it for a few days, a week, a month…or make it a habit to continue doing it indefinitely. I promise you’ll feel healthier and you’ll probably lose weight. I wrote down some of my observations here: http://mjpavia.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/the-all-natural-diet/
That is awesome, I think you will inspire many others.
[…] article and a quick read that talks about the benefits of eating simple, whole, all-natural foods: When Did Feeding Ourselves Become So Complicated? (via […]