Food provides your body with the energy and nutrients it needs to function properly. It provides the building blocks for our cells, tissues, and organs, and it helps to support growth, development, and repair. Food also plays a key role in maintaining a healthy weight and help to prevent and manage chronic diseases such as obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. Food is also an important part of our culture and our social lives, and it can bring people together and provide enjoyment and pleasure just as much as it can be divisive.
What we consume becomes a part of us. You are composed of what you ingest and the human body is a marvel in being able to take in a massive variety of things and turn them into energy to survive. The body can survive on near garbage for way longer than you would think and it can expand on diet of a single item or shrink on calculated buffet. Through the proposed gut-brain connection what you consume can affect your mood with poor gut health inducing anxiety or putting your brain in a daze or good gut health producing euphoria or hyper focus. Poor dietary habits are responsible for more deaths than any other risk factor globally, including smoking. National nutrition surveys show that the majority of people do not follow dietary recommendations.
These recommendations are difficult to come by because nutrition is a hypercomplex field that’s tough to accurately study. We really are in the very infancy of understanding. Even the best-designed epidemiological studies are confounded by factors such as “healthy-user bias,” the tendency of people who faithfully adhere to a treatment to be healthier than those who are less compliant—even if the treatment is a placebo.
Abigail Zuger, a physician, notes that “in virtually all head-to-head comparisons of various diet plans, the average long-term results have invariably been quite similar—mediocre all around.” Given the “remarkable diversity of the human organism,” she adds, “it is foolish to expect a single diet to serve all comers.”
The spectrum here ranges from vegan athletes who do it as much for ethical reasons as performance benefits to the 100% carnivore diets and everywhere in between. Each point of this spectrum will have short and long term pros and cons. Each depends on you and on your starting point and your goals. Say you are a generally healthy lean person, the foods that work for generally healthy lean people should work for you. Say you are overweight, highly allergic, diabetic, or have hypertension and all the associated complications of these conditions. The foods you need adopt might not be a “diet” but ones that alleviate the complications with as little added stress as possible.
If you’ve paid attention to the food trends over the last 50+ years you know that we’ve swayed positions on the macronutrients (fat, protein, carbs) and on a number of the major food groups(grains, dairy, etc). In the 90s fat was bad, in the 00s it was sugar, in the 10s it was gluten and carbs. As of this writing, the modern food trend is centered around low-carb or keto diets.
But, your genes may allow you to consume large amounts of carbs without it having much of an affect on your weight or how you feel. Food companies have long funded research that spun their product in a positive light and major health institutions have promoted poor advice at the behest of lobbying or motivated interests. The classic food pyramid and even the current “My Plate” are generally considered poor recommendations arrived at by dubiously motivated thinking. Eating pasta before a 5k isn’t likely to do you much good. On the other hand jumping on the latest bandwagon like keto cereal or
I do want to further caution, just as eating whatever junk comes your way is dangerous long term so it is on the other end of the spectrum. Increasing our knowledge in this domain particularly can be a rabbit hole of endless optimization and can become so tied up with identity that it can be a culture war in itself. I want to caution against the focus on deficiency in one mineral/vitamin or too much of this other thing, especially when you think it is a magic bullet for solving an issue. Diets, cleanses, removing “toxins”, and many supplements are sold to those looking for a simple fix to a complex situation. If your goal is experimentation that’s fine, but do it with intention and care.
So,
If our bodies can produce energy from damn near everything, nutrition is complex, unknown, and variable by person, most “diets” are long term mediocre, our beliefs are outdated, and all recommendations are suspect, how are we supposed to move towards greater health?
First and foremost is to address negative systemic issues. Suspect you’re allergic to something? Allergy tests are worth every penny. And if you suspect you have an autoimmune disorder, it’s well worth the trouble to find out.
I’m going to present the rest of the information in three ways. I’m going to reiterate the common easy best advice you probably already know you should be doing. Then I’m going to give a bit more of a detailed approach to stepping up your nutrition. And finally I’ll go into the experience of food and a bit more detail on the elements of nutrition in case you want to add our best current understanding to your knowledge.
Common General Advice
- The most basic nutritional advice is to eat a balanced diet of home cooked includes a variety of different foods and whole ingredients from all the different food groups, including fruits and vegetables, grains, protein sources, and dairy. It is important to stay hydrated by drinking water and to limit your intake of added sugars, salt, and unhealthy fats. Additionally, pay attention to portion sizes and to try to eat regular meals at regular times to maintain a healthy weight and to support overall health and wellbeing.
This is the most bland set of information you could possibly assemble for the widest assortment of people. You’ve likely heard it over and over and read it with a roll of your eyes.
Well let’s upgrade it a bit and make it practical. The best place to start is just a simple tracking of what you consume. You could just use pen and paper, but there are plenty of apps like MyFitnessPal that will do all the heavy lifting for you. Commit to tracking just one week worth of food and see what the results are. The first step to any improvement is just becoming conscious of the information you’re hiding from yourself and will be just a bit harder to brush something off when it’s staring you in the face.
How many calories are you consuming?
The number of calories that the average man or woman should be consuming depends on a number of factors, including their age, weight, height, activity level, and overall health. In general, a sedentary adult woman should aim to consume around 1,600-2,000 calories per day, while a sedentary adult man should aim to consume around 2,000-2,500 calories per day. However, these are just rough guidelines, and if you’re reading this you shouldn’t be sedentary, and the actual number of calories an individual needs may vary depending on their unique circumstances. You could consult with a trusted healthcare provider or a registered dietitian to determine the appropriate caloric intake for you.
How much of each macronutrient are you consuming and/or what are their ratios?
Macronutrients are the nutrients that the body needs in large amounts to function properly. There are three main macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
- Carbohydrates are the body’s primary source of energy, and they are found in a wide variety of foods, including fruits, vegetables, grains, and dairy products.
- Proteins are the building blocks of the body, and they are essential for the growth, repair, and maintenance of tissues. Proteins are found in a variety of foods, including meat, poultry, fish, eggs, legumes, and nuts.
- Fats are a concentrated source of energy, and they are also important for the absorption of certain vitamins and minerals. Fats are found in a variety of foods, including oils, butter, some dairy, and nuts.
In addition to these three main macronutrients, there is also a fourth macronutrient called fiber, which is found in plant-based foods and is important for maintaining a healthy digestive system.
It is important to consume a balanced mix of all these macronutrients to support overall health and wellbeing. The mix will vary depending on your present state and desired goals.
What are your salt and sugar intakes?
Salt and sugar can be consumed as part of a healthy diet, but it is important to consume them in moderation. Too much salt and sugar are thought to lead to a number of health problems, including high blood pressure, weight gain, and an increased risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Though you can find debates on the salt since it is an essential element in the functioning of our bodies.
The American Heart Association recommends limiting your daily intake of added sugars to no more than 6 teaspoons (24 grams) for women and 9 teaspoons (36 grams) for men. This includes sugars that are added to foods and beverages during processing, as well as sugars that are added at home.
The American Heart Association also recommends limiting your daily intake of sodium to no more than 2,300 milligrams (mg). For people with high blood pressure or other conditions that require a lower sodium intake, the recommendation is to consume no more than 1,500 mg of sodium per day.
What kinds of food are you eating? Is it mostly take-out or home cooking? Or what percentage of each? If you’re making food at home is it heat and serve frozen food? Made from scratch? A mix? What’s the percentage of each?
This week of tracking your food gives you data. Some of you skipped right over this. Some of you started with the best intentions and life got in the way. One of you did it to an even more exacting degree that I could have imagined. But, notice which one of these you are. Some of you are saying, “get to the good stuff already”, some of you is saying “I would do this, but I’m too busy”,
Remember, there is no magic bullet, this is a months, years, lifetime process
Now that you’ve got a slightly clearer but rough idea of what you’re already consuming we can start making some changes. And we’ll start by aggressively removing the unanimously bad. Removing these obviously bad things are the low hanging fruit of nutrition and can produce way more of a benefit than adding any specific “good” thing. The unanimously bad include:
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Vices: binge drinking/multiple alcoholic drinks a day, smoking cigarettes/vapes, and drug addictions are all obviously poor choices. Deceptively simple choice yet often very difficult to remove if they are your vice.
- If this is the case for you, you’ve likely already identified them in Bedrock and begun sorting them in Struggle. That said, here are two specific resources: Allen Carr’s Quit Drinking Without Willpower and Allen Carr’s Easy Way To Stop Smoking
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Highly processed or refined foods - Most of these are produced to appeal to your want for ease and that hit on primal fat, salt, sugar buttons. Processing and refining strips much of the inherent good of the ingredients and adds them back artificially so the product actually tastes like something
- Examples include: chips, cookies, candy, sweetened breakfast cereals, baking mixes such as cake, brownie, and cookie mixes, reconstituted meat products such as hot dogs and fish sticks, frozen meals such as pizza and TV dinners, packaged breads and buns, energy and protein bars and shakes, meal replacement shakes and powders meant for weight loss, boxed pasta products, ice cream, sweetened yogurt, margarine
- Or look for ingredients like hydrolyzed proteins, modified starches, hydrogenated oils, colorants, flavorings, anything with high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners
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Refined sugars or really any sugar above a daily limit - perhaps 100 calories per day (about 6 teaspoons or 24 grams)
- Examples include: sweetened iced coffees, fruit juices, sodas, sweetened yogurt, chocolate bars, cereal, and many sauces
- Be sure to check the nutrition label and ingredients, sugar is often added into products you wouldn’t expect
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Replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat - The findings are suggestive of a small but potentially important reduction in cardiovascular risk on modification of dietary fat, but not reduction of total fat, in longer trials.
- Lifestyle advice to all those at risk of cardiovascular disease and to lower risk population groups, should continue to include permanent reduction of dietary saturated fat and partial replacement by unsaturates. Unfortunately, the ideal type of unsaturated fat is unclear scientifically even if traditionally the answer is animal fat.
The next best is to minimize the possibly harmful. Which seems like an optional step for easing into some diet changes. Turn things that are harmful only in excess into weekly or fortnightly treats, and daily indulgences into significantly smaller servings once a day. Prioritize the indulgences that mean most to you, and the rest won’t be so hard to avoid.
- Daily category:
- Keep refined sugars under a 6 teaspoon limit
- foods with additives, preservatives and poor quality controls,
- most store-bought packaged condiments and sauces (mayo, ketchup, and anything sweet),
- more than two servings of white rice a day (if you’re sedentary),
- most vegetable/seed oils (canola, sunflower, safflower, etc)
- Weekly category: Deep fried food, pastries/desserts, packaged food, takeout/eating in restaurants and fast food, anything with synthetic food coloring.
- Bad Habits: Prolonged daily exposure to environmental/urban pollution, eating till it hurts, storing hot/acidic foods or heating them in plastic containers (which may release BPA/pthalates).
Now we can start addressing what you ‘should’ eat. Traditional things are very likely to be healthy. Shop the perimeter of the store and purchase as many whole ingredients as you can. Make it a priority to cook meals at home as often as time, energy, and resources allow.
- Add/maintain foods and habits that have a long history of human consumption, as close to its historical form as possible. Anything eaten regularly as part of a large population’s diet for more than a Millenium is OK for this step. Organic is preferable, but not necessary. Use traditional preparation methods (like soaking legumes and beans), if possible. Find authentic recipes from the country of origin and follow them, think tribal foods, .
- Apart from ethical exceptions, this is not the time to pick a diet. There are hundreds of blogs with recipes that are cheap, easy, quick, and healthy. There are plenty of tools/apps that provide ideas, shopping lists, and recommendations. You can develop a repertoire of these meals that satisfy both your gustatory needs as well as your time and health considerations.
- Foods: Lots of vegetable, fresh/unprocessed cuts of meat and traditional organs, seafood, fruit, fermented foods (yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, etc), dried beans and legumes, traditional grains, seeds, nuts, mushrooms, full-fat milk. Switch from new-age oils to traditional fats and oils (tallow, olive, coconut, butter/ghee). Switch from store bread to sourdough/artisan.
- The better and more often you eat well, the less you have to tyrannize yourself over enjoying a slice of cake, an ice cream cone, or a pizza. It has always been easy for me to ignore since I don’t have a sweet tooth, but if you do, get the best possible stuff and enjoy it in moderation. Avoid it way more often than you enjoy it. Don’t skimp. Make it right, but make it a treat.
The next level is optimizing conservatively because everything beyond this point really is just optimization and is completely optional. There are plenty of very low risk optimizations, relatively time-tested, with evidence:
- FODMAPs are types of carbohydrates found in certain foods (an example is lactose), including wheat and beans. Studies have shown strong links between FODMAPs and digestive symptoms like gas, bloating, stomach pain, diarrhea and constipation. Low-FODMAP diets can provide remarkable benefits for many people with common digestive disorders.
- Frequency of food: You can eat at regular times to train the body what to expect. Or try intermittent fasting (strictly no calories for 12–16 hours or a full 24 hours once a week), under proper supervision if diabetic. Or try eating smaller but more frequent meals.
- Diets that don’t deviate too far from traditional foods and preparation (Paleo, Indian vegetarianism, indigenous and local foods etc.) They remove many things, but what they leave in is still traditional, balanced, time-tested and nutritious, and it does not innovate unnecessarily. This makes it seemingly safe despite leaving out traditional foods like grains or legumes.
- Consider the nutrient density of your food. The foods densest seem to be animal products, like eggs, yogurt, cheeses, meats, especially red meat, butter, cream, tallow, salami, small fish, and offal. You can think of these products as the bulk of the meal and things like refined grains, root vegetables, and fruits as the condiments
Then there are more risky optimizations which if you find effective and works for you, great! If not, be honest about the failure and reset.
- Less-known Diets (keto, high-carb, carnivore, new-age diets etc.).
- Supplements (well-known ones with traditional backing and certification/regulation). A general multivitamin could help by what amounts to a shotgun blast of essential nutrients. There are also plenty of supplements like b12, vitamin D, and fish oil, proteins (whey (plain, no additives) or plant protein (hemp hearts, brown rice protein, pea protein etc.)) that are likely safe and positive with a good track record especially for strength training. And, you may have vitamin/mineral deficiencies from your preexisting food choices or even genetics which can be fixed with a supplement. But, the vast majority are unnecessary, of dubious quality, and the same result can be fixed by going through the previous steps.
- Longer fasts - Increasingly risky the longer it goes
No doubt you think there’s a lot of stuff missing or wrong in these lists. You will want to add/edit things, and you should. This method is designed to accept new information, but only with overwhelming evidence over a large amount of time, and under actionable categories. It is not designed to be “scientific”, it’s designed to help you deal with information sanely. This focus on time-testing filters out the dead ends, and prevents you and loved ones from falling for scams, silly ideas and harmful things. Trust your gut so to speak and make your own rules of thumb based on that simple rule. For now, here are a few.
Did you see it on the news or a random blog on the net? Ignore it. Did you hear about it in one study or that one person promoting it? Ignore it. Do you see conflicting evidence of benefit or harm in multiple studies and meta-reviews over a decade? It’s a completely optional optimization.
Likely most of the major trends/modern processes/context introduces as much harm as benefit and falls under optional optimization that you can assess on the type of risk (cosmetic, physical, internal), level of risk (low to lethal) and whom it effects (kids, adults, elderly). Use your rules of thumb above to judge.
What can you do beyond this?
The world of food is deep. Beyond just the bare guidelines are the foodie experiences that can enliven your experience, light up your palate, and satisfy cravings you didn’t know were there. You are searching for a gateway that will tell you, yes this is not only worth my time and effort but is a better experience all around
As with many areas of life experience, experimentation, trial and error, and persistence goes a long way. You are searching for the gateway.
I’ll again stress the importance of experimentation not only trying what works for you but trying new ingredients for taste bud diversity.
Think Brussel sprouts are gross? Did you know they’ve been selectively bred since the 1990s to be less bitter and more flavorful? Try this:
To roast Brussels sprouts, preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit (204 degrees Celsius) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Trim the ends of the Brussels sprouts and cut them in half lengthwise. Toss the Brussels sprouts with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then spread them out in a single layer on the baking sheet. Roast the Brussels sprouts for about 20-25 minutes, or until they are tender and lightly browned. You can also add other seasonings, such as minced garlic, grated Parmesan cheese, or balsamic vinegar for added flavor.
Try the above with other vegetables.
There is likely a whole host of things you’ve never heard of or tried. What are bok choy, daikon, quinoa, or hominy? Have you ever used chopped sage or crushed juniper or chestnut flour? What wild plants grow in your backyard? And what interesting flavors and combinations might they produce?
Find a local food co-operative, their knowledgeable staff can offer guidance in high quality whole foods which not only pair well together but support the environment and social causes you may care about.
You can also take a social angle to nutrition as well. Food can really be about relationships. Cooking with your partner can deepend your relationship. Potlucks are a great way to spend time with family and friends. Perhaps you can make one change that creates better food systems for all. You may switch to organic products because you’ve read that conventionally produced foods lack the nutrients they once contained due to overproduction and poor farming practices. Perhaps you’ve read that certified organic, while a step up, no longer means what it intends and can often be low quality. Perhaps you’ve heard about regenerative agriculture, rotational grazing, or fair wages for farmers around the world. Putting your support behind companies, brands, and stores that support causes you care about whether it’s health, social, or environmental.
Summary
- Step 1: Assess and address any systemic problems like allergies/intolerances.
- Step 2: Remove the unanimously bad.
- Step 3: Minimize the possibly bad.
- Step 4: Eat traditionally.
- Step 5: Optimize conservatively.
- Step 6: Assess and update as needed
What might this look like in practice?
A healthy diet should feel like one of abundance. Food should feel joyous and vital. Food should be prepared and experienced side by side with others in daily life.
Breakfast: scrambled eggs with skyr and butter + homemade bread with more butter
Lunch: Leftovers
Sunday: Burgers, roasted potatoes, Monday: Pot roast, farro, broccoli Tuesday: Sausage, basil vegetables over basmati rice Wednesday: Salmon, asparagus, Thursday: Friday: Homemade pizza Saturday: Pork chops, garlic peas,