Okay, let’s get to the big old question in the title here first, shall we? The answer is…
I have no fucking idea.
Um, stuff you like? A balanced diet? (That sounds so PSA, “balanced diet”.) Well, there seems to be widespread consensus that lots of leafy greens are good, as long as we don’t have some e. coli infestation, and beyond that, um… Well, if you ask different people, you’ll get lost of different opinions. Don’t worry, I’m gonna talk about some aspects of those opinions, heh heh.
Here’s some things that bug me though when people list out what you should eat. Of course, I am easily bugged, but you knew that…
1. Our ancestors/people in this part of the world lived on this blah blah. Right. Good to know human being can survive on just about anything, isn’t it? We are a spunky species. I am not actually picking on anyone or anything in particular here—Michael Pollan, who I like, says the thing about only eating what your grandparents would recognize as food, and I’m very interested in the thrifty gene theory, which is about ancestral starvation, and so on, so I’m really not dismissing the idea that what we have ever eaten as a species can be relevant. In fact, if you change a diet and activity level within a couple generations, you sometimes see some bad side effects (Pima Indians and diabetes, for example.) HOWEVER, I get mightily annoyed with how often I hear this, because sometimes I think there’s a little lack of clarity here. Like, which ancestors are we talking about? The ones that lived to age 35, tops? The ones that were four feet tall and roamed the fucking icy tundra all damn day and were therefore a bit more active than we are now? How far back to we go, and would those same ancestors have been really ecstatic to have a tasty Fuji apple and a steak and a nice baguette? Are we talking about people who lived without cupcakes, because I don’t even want to think about that…
And when we are talking about different groups, let’s not forget that we humans adapt, and our enzymes and the way we store fat and our activity level and all kinds of things play a part in this. In fact, when you even break it down to individuals, you are gonna see some serious variation. There are people whose bodies hold up doing ultra-marathons, and that would fuck some of us for good. There are folks who eat eggs and bacon three times a day every day plus smoke a pack of Marlboros and chase it with whiskey shots and live to be a hundred. Is that going to work for most of us, hmmm? If your ancestors or people in the Arctic jumped off a bridge, would you?
Fucking ancestral eating my ass. (Cough, that one could be taken wrong…) Truth is, as a group we have never been so sedentary due to, well, less manual labor, and had so much and so many kinds of food available to us before. Oh brave new world, that has such people in it! People who romanticize the starvation and poverty of other times, the diets limited by climate and resources, the malnutrition and truncated lifespans of people who came before… Yeah, I’m not buying it.
Let me tell you, some of my ancestors lived on potatoes and alcohol almost exclusively, and it was good enough to produce a few great poets and a damn fine philandering president and when you take away the potatoes and the innate anger we feel, my people sometimes tend to get a little pretentious. I am not going to live on potatoes and alcohol though. Juliet says her people lived on kickass deli food and thank god for latkes and matzo ball soup, I’d jump ancestral ships even without Benny Goodman and Einstein and Leonard Cohen and, um, David Lee Roth.
Okay, another thing that bugs me…
2. I’m addicted to x food. Okay, perhaps you are, it is possible, and some people get help for that. But the sheer number of people who claim to be addicted to say, oh, sugar is just frightening. Addicted? Really? Perhaps you abuse it, by which we mean you sometimes use x food to change the way you feel, which would put you in line with, oh, just about all of us regular old people. Okay, fine, some people might abuse x more than others, and therefore wanna change their behavior because they have serious negative consequences from eating x. But the rest of you, let me know when you’ve knocked over a 7-11 with a water pistol to get a bag of C&H and some Twinkies and we’ll talk. Everything is a fucking addiction nowadays, sheesh.
3. It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle (except for..). Well, some things are lifestyles, and some things are diets, but let me tell you, if you start off eating a certain way and then are supposed to add or change it over time to a maintenance level, it’s a diet, even a temporary one. Maybe that’s not always a bad thing, but let’s call it like it is, shall we? Eating a way you could foresee eating forever—that’s a lifestyle, like a way you live your LIFE. People talk like diets are the enemy, but when it comes down to it, I think the real-est enemy is people full of self-hatred or total righteousness over what they ate or didn’t eat. The enemy is feeling like a failure because you couldn’t meet some crappy-ass and draconian expectations. I just despise the idea that we wrap up so much of how we feel about ourselves morally by what we chew and swallow. Oh, I totally fall into it too. But you know, the other day I ate like, half a loaf of challah standing at the counter and dipping chunks directly into a jar of preserves. (Don’t tell my sister about the double-dipping, she’ll get mad, she eats preserves too.) But here’s my little victory—I completely forgot about it until later that evening, and realized I had not engaged in any self-flagellation for it, I knew I wasn’t going to do that every day, I did not have to go out and exercise away the precise number of calories in that loaf, I just thought about it and laughed to myself. It was not mindful eating, or noble eating, and I was distracted, but it tasted pretty good and who really fucking cares? Should I go to the electric chair for it? I like that I forgot about it, that’s just my individual thing, because let’s face it, if I say I won my own game, what does it matter to anyone else?
Anyway, I was pretty interested in the low-carb kerfuffle on Shari’s recent post. I think she said it best—her post was about her struggles with eating in a way that was unhealthy (I don’t care what carb side you come down on, almost everyone acknowledged that starvation-calorie levels are NOT healthy) but there was much discussion over whether or not you can eat low-carb in a healthy way. Now, if I was gonna try and expound about my own nutritional philosophy, I’d probably start with the notion that you shouldn’t eat too much highly-processed food.
Um, guess what I had for dinner? A hot dog (cough) that was most certainly not organic (it was kosher though!) and some egg salad made with very highly processed mayonnaise, which I first had plopped on a bed of lettuce, and then once I got my requisite veggies, I smeared some on tasty honey wheat bread. Oh, then some cereal. And three chocolates from the box of candy my kid got me for Valentine’s Day. Can you tell FF has not been to the grocery store for a while and is down to the dregs, wondering how I can use BBQ sauce and jam to flavor noodles and old lettuce? But here’s my point: DO NOT LOOK HERE FOR ZEALOTRY (or even a good old college try). Anything I do maybe 80 percent of the time, I consider to be rockin’ fuck-yeah awesome woo hoo you-can’t-touch-this. I grade myself on a very generous curve.
With that in mind, I’m only suggesting you listen if something I said makes you feel good, and then go for it. Because when it comes down to it, I guess I’m a… happy-liker? Lazy-ass? Sensualist? Ne’er-do-well? Depends on where you sit, but as I mentioned before and a million times before that, I like lots of exercise that makes me feel badass, lots of food that is tasty, and not having to worry too much about any of it. I don’t want to eat boring things or crap (unless I haven’t been to the store, though egg salad with lots of mayo is fucking delicious), and I don’t want to sit on my ass and forget I have working limbs (unless some exercise rendered them useless temporarily). I wanna relish things, enjoy them and the feeling I get from them, appreciate and work for them and sweat and challenge myself and ewwww, this sounds awfully weird.
By god, I wanna feel something, dammit. Bring me some real food and a workout.
Good post. One thing to consider. I agree completely that it is a huge logical fallacy to say “Our ancestors did this, therefore it is healthy and ideal”. This twisted logic does really get to me too.
However, looking at life expectancy does not tell the whole story. The lower life expectancy of primitive peoples is largely due to higher infant mortality, poorer sanitation, and the general unpleasantness of their environment. Those that do survive into old age are largely free of the “diseases of civilization”, and in much better health than the majority of the aged western population.
No one is suggesting the we revert to living in the stone age, or eating exactly that way (or at least no one sane and educated).
However, we CAN use what we can logically conclude about ancestral diets as a starting point to investigate things now. For example, we know that grains we not something that people could eat in any large quantity before the neolithic age, since they require cooking or extended soaking. At least one study in pigs (frequently used as a research stand in for humans) has now demonstrated that blood lipid profiles, blood sugar levels, and other markers of health improved on a plant and meat based diet, as opposed to a cereal based diet.
We’re seeing the same trend with the rise in grass fed beef.
I’m not suggesting the “paleo approach” as a beginning and end point. Clearly more work needs to be done, to validate the specifics and their health effects in humans. However, while some of the more wild end proponents of it may undermine its credibility, be careful you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Chris
February 4th, 2009
brilliant!
surfmom
February 4th, 2009
Amen sista!
I don’t trust the USDA, Mark Sisson (though I love to read his blog while eating cereal straight out of the box), or some random doctor, nutritionist, scientist, blog writer, or blog commenter to tell me what I should be eating to feel *my* best.
There is no consensus among scientists on this stuff nevermind among “health professionals” or whoever. So we are left to blaze our own trail.
I’m right there with ya - running shoes in one hand, cupcake in the other. You don’t just take care of your body in a vacuum, you are taking care of your psyche at the same time - so be nice, right?
nolafwug
February 4th, 2009
I don’t know what I love more - the posts, or the links.
I do know that I love you for your unshaken commitment to what feels (and tastes) good. You really must come for dinner sometime. I’ll even have cupcakes for dessert.
Shari
February 4th, 2009
You rock. And an extra sweeping bow for forgetting about the challah and then again not beating yourself up when you remembered. I struggle with the “don’t beat yourself up” quite a bit, guess I need to keep working on grading myself on a curve. I’ve only known 2 women in my life so far who didn’t talk about food and judge themselves in that way and I think they are role models. And go nolafwug - I’m right there with the running shoes and cupcakes; in fact, when I go on vacation I look both for places to run/races and new cupcake places…enjoy it all!
MJ
February 4th, 2009
did you read what i wrote the other day? because this sure feels like a response to it. i’m getting there, slowly but surely.
and have i told you how much i lurve best foods mayo? a lot.
samin
February 4th, 2009
My feeling is that dieting for health and dieting for weight loss are two different things, and might even be mutually exclusive. Because as far as the body is concerned, losing weight is NEVER a good thing; it wants to hang onto every ounce it can. So a diet that causes you to lose weight has to be something pretty catastrophic, from the body’s viewpoint.
It’s a conundrum. If you listen to current medical opinion, being fat is just so incredibly deadly that a person should take ANY risk, do ANY crazy behavior, if it makes the pounds come off. But I have to wonder what years of restricted diets do to one’s body: have you actually improved your health by weighing less, or harmed it by messing up your nutrition?
I just abandoned a paleo-type diet recently because 1. it wasn’t causing me to lose any weight or gain any muscle, and 2. I just can’t believe in a lifestyle that doesn’t let me eat a carrot or a snow pea. I think that’s crazy.
As nolafwug comments, there’s no consensus about what’s healthy. You can find plenty of expert opinion to back up any theory.
Marla
February 5th, 2009
I like hot dogs too. And I think you’re very sensible, that is to say, you sound a lot like me.
I say yay good healthy food, try not to eat too much processed stuff but won’t beat myself up if I do (mmm hot dogs), and I like working out. Cause it makes me healthy. Yep. Really. And I like the feeling afterwards, and being sweaty. I have a ‘four pack’ and a rounded belly under it, thighs, bottom and breasts. And I like them all! I weigh myself about once every two months (haven’t yet this year), but don’t pay much attention to the fact that it gives me a borderline obese BMI for my height - cause I’m really strong, and have very heavy/healthy bones as well. And I love eating, cause food is delicious and does good things for me. And I would never follow some shady-sounding illogical diet just cause it might make me thinner.
So there.
Sara
February 5th, 2009
Amen to this post.
Belinda
February 5th, 2009
Great post.
I think paleo-dieters tend to get hooked on some idea of an ultimate human diet, which I’m not sure exists. Plus, I’m not sure how much philosophical sense it makes to replace dairy with coconut products - my ancestors probably didn’t see a coconut until a few hundred years ago.
And Chris, above: I’m glad you at least recognize that ancient man ate grains. I find a lot of online paleo-dieters think we never ate it at all until SUDDENLY we started cultivating it 10k years ago, for no apparent reason.
Carolyn
February 5th, 2009
I like it!
There is no “one thing” we need to eat to be healthy. You can eat whatever you want, organic or not. So long as you keep your calories under control. We all need our “sin foods.” Mine is ice cream…
Greg
February 6th, 2009
Dude. I think you just started a fucking movement.
And what you’re really saying is that we just need to take care of ourselves, right? We eat what makes us feel good (although it takes some time to figure out what that is). And–wonder of wonders!–it turns out to be healthy, most of the time!
I think you’re tapping into our collective subconscious that there is a larger problem here: we say we want to be “healthy,” but what we really want is to *look* “healthy.” And that’s getting to be dangerous, I think. Because the pursuit of that kind of appearance is leading to these fucked-up episodes of “Oh my God! I just ate half a loaf of Challah!”
So congrats on your small victory.
Jamie
February 6th, 2009
Carolyn -
I’m sure we did. I’m not more than an armchair anthropologist, but I’d imagine it was more of a gradual transition.
I suspect that in really early times grains would probably represent more work than they were worth - and probably were one of the less desirable foods. As the technology to process them advanced their abundant nature (they’re grasses after all, they grow everywhere) probably made them pretty appealing.
I’m not a fanatic with the philosophy that we should do exactly as primitive man did anyway. But I do think what we can logically conclude provides an interesting starting point for research.
On a personal note, my changing to a paleo influence did improve my blood lipid profile significantly, lower my bodyfat, and increase my athletic performance.
My two cents. I don’t really preach the no-grain thing to other people, since while it has worked for me, I don’t have good science to back it up.
Chris
February 9th, 2009
Great article. Say it like it is!
Building Muscle
April 7th, 2009