A Word on Diets

My friend recently emailed me to let me know she was coming to town this weekend to visit family and go out for a nice dinner with them.  She asked if I could suggest good area restaurants, since she's now doing the Paleo Diet.  I started googling.  Yes, I've heard of the Paleo Diet, knew the basic tenets, but wasn't exactly sure of what was included/excluded.  Through my search, I came across a video called "The Perfect Human Diet".  What a load of crap!  I am so tired of diets based on half-truths and fuzzy science!  Sorry if anyone else I know is following this diet, but I just have to tell how I feel.  I hope I don’t step on any toes.

So I watch the video.  I get the main premise:  prehistoric man was able to grow a huge brain and make cognitive advances only after he started eating meat.  The evil in our present day diet is because we've gotten away from that caveman diet of meat, nuts, berries, and greens.  And I follow the logic.  All of our modern diseases come from the fact that we now eat cultivars--grains and legumes included--and dairy, and foods processed and over-processed from these cultivars.  OK. Then the "documentary" moves to an interview with a doctor, who walks around the grocery store telling us what we should and shouldn't eat.  Fruits and vegetables, OK.  Meat, OK.  (Only a brief reference, however, to how/where the animal was raised and what it was fed; no reference at all to the advantages of eating local and/or organic--BOO!).  Bread, no. Pasta, no.  Dairy, no.  Legumes (including peanuts), no.  Rice, no.  The much-maligned potato?  No, of course not.  Even GREEN BEANS are out.  WTF?!  I daresay that prehistoric man ate whatever crossed his path.  He probably dug up sweet potatoes and potatoes and other roots, if they were available.  He probably found some wheat-like grain and chewed on it until the gluten made it like chewing gum (something my husband used to do with wheat at the farm). Unlike our ancestors, we are going to the grocery store to find food, instead of foraging for it.  And all the fruits and veggies that the doctor said were supposedly OK on the diet?  Cultivars.  That's right.  BECAUSE THAT'S THE ONLY THING AVAILABLE TO US, unless we go out in the woods and forage for plants and berries, of course.  I'm thinking about these fabulous tiny wild blueberries we saw in the woods on a walk in Belgium this summer; but how many of those would we have to find to make a meal?  Just to get a handful was a lot of work.

Grrr.

That having been said, I know I feel better when I eat fewer/less grain-based foods in general, and have an easier time losing weight when I avoid them.  But that's because they are the most efficient way to get calories in!  Duh!  That must be why my growing 10-year-old craves them!  And of course diets that avoid grains and other simple carbohydrates will make you lose weight, because it becomes too difficult to make up the difference in meat--it takes too long to chew and process, and does make you feel fuller.  And so, de facto, if you follow this diet you will most likely eat more fruits and vegetables, thereby improving your cholesterol numbers, blood pressure, etc.  But why make up crap to make people believe that we're somehow able to eat like Paleolithic man?  And how do we really know what Paleo man ate?  (Oils are OK on the diet, which I'm not sure Paleo man had figured out how to make, by the way; I’m also not sure how many vineyards were around in Paleo times, but red wine is determined to be OK, while beer is out.  Hmmm.) Not to mention that exercise--the one factor that is undisputedly different from cavemen to present-day man--probably allowed them to eat whatever the hell they wanted.  If they had been foraging for Cinnabons, they were still foraging, and the activity alone would have probably negated any effect from simple carbohydrates and the ensuing insulin resistance.

Not to mention, if our diet now is solely causing our obesity and autoimmune epidemics, how do some people continue to stay thin and healthy?  Wouldn't everyone be susceptible to the effects?  What about those centenarian populations in the Mediterranean or Okinawa, who are eating rice, grains and/or potatoes and/or legumes like crazy?  How about those people in the south of France who eat the most saturated fat and meat (often with legumes, think cassoulet), and still live longer than the rest of France?  And why has the epidemic waited to swell until the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century?  Couldn't it have something to do with the invention of cars and drive-thrus and the domination of Monsanto instead?

Sorry, this video made me totally hot around the collar, as you can tell.   The whole thing just made me sick and tired of the "newest, best thing."  We know fruits and veggies are good for you.  We know the government food pyramid (now the “plate”) was devised by politicians, and is most likely not a good guide for nutrition.  We know that sweets should be avoided, or at least just saved for a special occasion.  But the human body is a marvelously adaptive organism, and tells us (pretty loudly) when it's not getting the right thing or enough of the right thing or too much of a good thing.  We just need to listen.  Clearly, that’s where the problem lies.  We’re not good listeners. 

I’ll freely admit, I have always been searching for the best diet for my own situation.  I still don't know why I have this autoimmune disease that makes my body attack its own connective tissue.  But I’ve found through my searching that there is no magic bullet, no amulet I can wear, no single nutrition advice--beyond the common sense advice--that will solve it.  Maybe it was something I was exposed to in childhood, some chemical or drug.  Maybe it's genetic.  Maybe it's dietary, but because of some fertilizer or insecticide or genetic modification that I don't know about and have no control over.  Maybe--and probably--I will never know in my lifetime.  Why do I eat the same or less as people who weigh so much less than I do? I may never know that either.  After sifting through thousands of pieces of nutritional, diet, and lifestyle information, I have come to one conclusion:  I only have to use my intuition and listen to myself.  This is of course both disappointing and liberating.  For myself, I do know that:  1) I have to watch portion control, especially around special occasions; 2) I have to watch alcohol consumption, those sneaky, empty calories; 3) I have to get enough sleep, or as much as I can; 4) I have to exercise, probably every day, probably an hour each time; 5) I have to eat lots of veggies and fruit and other foods that I know are good for me.  That's it.  That's all.  A full time job, of course, but frighteningly simple.