Most people know how to eat in order to stay alive and avoid malnutrition. Thanks UK Government for your bang average at best and woefully inadequate at worst nutritional guidelines. Is it OK to eat well enough just to survive? If you knew the chasm of difference between how you currently eat and what a few simple and delicious changes would make to how you feel now and the quality-of-life long-term, would you continue down this path?
I have two jobs currently, one (my passion) is Personal Training at Graft Haus gym Leeds and the other is converting VW campervans with a small family business in York. At lunch time between cutting roofs off vans and installing hand-built wooden interiors we sit on an old picnic bench that is held together only by the bodies of the woodlice who live there past and present. We have to make sure the weight is spread evenly to make sure the seats don't collapse and we all end up sitting in our lunch.
At this table of up to 7 middle age blokes you can imagine the conversations that take place, but most days I field multiple questions about my 'vibrant' looking lunchbox...
"What's in there today?"
"That looks 'interesting'"
"Don't you ever just think fuck it I'm gonna 'ave a massive bag of crisps?"
and so on.
I'm careful not to make a big deal about the differences between our choices of grub, brushing off the comments with "when you get out of the habit of eating stuff like that you stop wanting it altogether", and "it's just last night's dinner"; often chilli con carne, fajitas or a beetroot-stained chicken salad etc, nothing crazy. Nothing extreme. Just healthy, filling whole food.
Compared to my workmates though, it does look wildly different. There are varying degrees of nutrition at the table, one is slightly more enlightened than the others and often has rice and mackerel — macros hit at least — but some of the other boys have lunch boxes containing white bread, processed meats, crisps, chocolate bars, pre-packaged waffles and chocolate croissants, all made 'healthy' by the apple they eat half of and then lob over the fence to Daisy the cow.
This, to a lot of people, seems pretty normal, but unfortunately is almost completely devoid of nutrition; simply calories and a long ass list of gut-microbiome destroying, artificial ingredients.
I do not say this to belittle or criticise, I respect these guys greatly and consider them good friends, I would never judge someone for their choices. But inside it saddens me knowing the damage they're doing that they have no idea about.
Day to day they're fine, they make it through work feeling 'normal' by the steady flow of sweetened caffeine and the odd mid afternoon biscuit. The difference between them and me is clear to see visually, I look healthy & lean and they look (sorry boys — but you'd probably agree) tired and squidgy. This isn't what worries me though, it's the ticking time bomb of inflammation that is the cause for concern here. Over time, these poor dietary choices accumulate and as your body becomes less efficient with age, the toll that lack of nutrients takes on the body, and the beating down of the microbiome from processed foods means that in our 60's and beyond, the difference won't be healthy vs unhealthy. We'll look and feel like a different species and it'll seem like we're a generation apart rather than 5-10 years.
This is not just a problem at my workplace though, it's societal. Compared to the rest of the country, these guys would be considered average if not on the slightly better side of average. At least they have physical, active jobs and aren't sitting down at a desk all day.
Preaching to them won't elicit change, it'll probably piss them off and alienate us from each other. All I can do is just continue to set a good example and answer any questions as positively as possible. It's education that is to blame here, not the individual. Our schools do a terrible job of teaching us how to eat for health, and how to prepare healthy food. The Government is if-not out of touch with health, then blatantly corrupted by the money garnered from major processed food companies.
The NHS — as wonderful an institution as it is — is so overloaded by keeping the people at the wrong end of poor diet alive that they have no hope of addressing the root causes, and the snakepit of social media is dominated by misinformation, myths, lies, and short term gratification diets that it's making the problem worse.
I recently read a book called 'Food Isn't Medicine' by Dr Joshua Wolrich. I really enjoyed this book but it left me frustrated at the lack of messaging around my favourite topic. So here is my attempt to try and dispel a few myths and provide some real world practical solutions to help you fuel a healthy lifestyle…
Vegan and Vegetarian diets
Firstly I should say that I have great respect for people who stick to any diet for ethical reasons, especially a difficult and restrictive one like veganism. Unfortunately a lot of people are duped into believing it is super healthy for them when in actual fact, excluding animal products from your diet can be problematic. Yes it is possible to get everything we need from plants. However, because you're swapping out incredibly nutrient dense foods like meat, fish, eggs & milk for foods that contain far fewer nutrients per calorie and are often highly processed, the health outlook is just worse. For example, to get enough protein to build a strong healthy body from plants, it's going to take a large volume of food, making it difficult, uncomfortable, and high calorie. Opt for high quality and high welfare animal products, you'll get more nutrients per gram of food and your body will work much better, I promise.
Plants are incredibly healthy for us, and they should make up the majority of our diets. I beg of you though don't make the remainder processed foods and meat alternatives, these do you no good. Animal proteins and fats give our bodies and our taste buds so much! Without them we likely develop deficiencies in vitamins and minerals leading to under performing bodies.
Low fat / fat free dairy
The other day I was looking for yoghurt in the supermarket. Annoyingly the only yoghurt on the shelves were fat free versions. The reason fat free yoghurt is even a thing is down to semantics and bad health logic. The word fat might as well be a homonym, meaning that it has two different meanings. The fat we build up on our bodies from spending too much time in a calorie surplus is wildly different from the dietary fat we get from things like cheese, meat, eggs, avocado, nuts & seeds. The latter has very little to do with the former.
Why is low or fat free dairy so rubbish? Take milk for example. Roughly, it's made up of water, sugar in the form of lactose and lovely nourishing fat, as well as other goodies like protein, vitamins and minerals. When you remove fat, one of the three main constituents of milk, you leave behind a higher proportion of the other two, water and sugar. Removing the fat from milk turns it from a super nourisher into sugary water with proportionately less good stuff per ml and more sugar. This principle works the same with all reduced fat dairy products. So your fat free yoghurt may have fewer calories per gram, but the nutrients you get per calorie is much much lower. Meaning you either need more total volume in order to get the nutrients which 'uh oh' means more sugar, or you just miss out on the nutrients because you can't afford all of those calories without adding body fat.
Disclaimer, I don't mind semi-skimmed milk too much as a lot of the protein remains, and it does have fewer calories so can be helpful for people actively trying to reduce body fat.
Red meat causes cancer
Red meat is the spiderman of nutrition. It's had a tough time lately being vilified and blamed for cancers and heart disease, when in actual fact it is quietly going about its business keeping us strong and resilient when given the chance. Bring on BBQ season!!! Red meat is incredibly nutrient dense and we should be eating more good quality sources of it, end of. Most 'studies' that argue consumption of red meat has negative effects on your health like causing cancer, heart disease and diabetes do not distinguish between the raw material (the stuff you can get at the butchers) and processed meat (a packet of Richmond sausages). Processed meat does have many ill effects on your health, cancer being top of a long list, while actual meat does not. Eat more good quality red meat in fact and it's highly likely your body composition and health will improve drastically because of the amount of protein and nutrients it contains. Just don't be silly and eat only meat, the carnivore diet is not good for you.
Eggs give you high cholesterol
Eggs are one of the most nutrient-dense foods you can eat, rich in high-quality protein, B vitamins, choline (essential for brain health), and antioxidants. People used to think that because of the fat content, eggs increase blood cholesterol. Thankfully we now know this not to be true. In fact, research shows that dietary cholesterol from eggs has little impact on blood cholesterol levels. Eggs are a super helpful and cost effective way to get enough protein into your diet every day making them a powerful part of a balanced diet that supports heart health, muscle repair, and overall vitality. I eat at least 6 eggs every day. My girlfriend eats 3 a day and I'm working on increasing that.
Dairy alternatives
This is capitalism, not health! Unfortunately for some, dairy is not an option because their bodies don't have enough lactase to break down the lactose. The vast majority of people who think they're dairy intolerant though, just had a poor gut microbiome and so linked dairy to some bloat or other gastric symptoms, decided they were intolerant, cut it out altogether and now their guts have lost the ability to digest it. If this is you, start small, gently reintroduce dairy to your diet and you will soon likely be able to enjoy the wonders of milk again. Even better, you won't have to pay through your calcium deprived teeth for the expensive, less healthy, processed, sugary, nutrient deficient dairy alternatives that have become all the rage.
Creatine
People seem to be cottoning on to this one, or maybe it's just my algorithm showing me what I want to see. It feels like creatine is going through its popular era and people are becoming less afraid of it, which is great. Everyone should take creatine. For all you worried mums out there, no creatine is not steroids, or even a gateway to steroids. Creatine is a naturally occurring compound that we create a small amount of in our bodies and is found in most good sources of protein. It is great for muscle (the largest endocrine organ in the body) and metabolic health as well as cognitive benefits.
It is the most widely studied and therefore safe supplement of all and research is coming out all the time about new benefits of taking it. The recommended dose used to be about 5g daily, but I personally take 2-3 x that and so should you. And your parents, and your grandparents, and your kids!
Food, schmood
At the end of the day, we all spend too much time buying into the latest hearsay and fads out there that are being sold to us to make someone somewhere a lot of money. All we really need to do is regress and simplify. Do less to our food, eat a lot of different foods, add things that are good for us rather than ban things that aren't. I have no problem at all with occasionally eating processed stuff or unhealthy foods, the only problem I have is that we still call them 'food'.
Food is ingredients that we put together on a plate and eat to nourish and fuel us. Stuff we get in packets or out of machines should not be referred to as food. Let's keep them, down a different aisle, consume them in moderation, but recategorise and rename them. Any good suggestions for a new name for processed foods would be greatly appreciated 🙂