What Makes a Good Diet?

Part One: Healthy Body

Diet

I.   Where to begin

Everyone wants to be happy, but it’s not always easy to know where to start. For a long time, I thought that the key to being happy was to have some earth-shattering revelation about life, and that everything else would follow from it. As fate would have it, as a young man, I had such a revelation. I pierced the veil of delusion and saw my true nature. For a few hours, I was a living buddha, brimming with wisdom and enraptured in the pure joy of being. Unfortunately, this state was precipitated from eating hallucinogenic mushrooms, and when effects wore off, I found myself even more miserable and confused about life than before. Having anticipated this would happen, while still in the throes of drug-induced satori, I contemplated the best advice to give my sober, unenlightened self. After some contemplation, I settled on this: quit smoking, and remember to meditate, in that order.

Unfortunately, I didn’t not follow the advice of my enlightened self, at least not right away. Instead, I tenaciously clung to the hope of enlightenment by sudden realization. I did this, even though I wasn’t doing anything to prompt the spontaneous epiphany that I so desperately desired. I foolishly believed that enlightenment was a riddle that needed to be solved. And so, I became lost in an endless loop of thinking, trying to rationalize the unrationalizable. For years I carried on like this, depressed, with mild psychosis and a burned out nervous system--my only souvenirs from my brush with the infinite. Eventually, I realized that I was only causing myself misery and that had to let the whole thing go. So much for the top-down approach.

Gradually, I quit smoking cigarettes, and it made me feel a lot better. Then, since I no longer had the excuse of being a smoker, I started focusing more on exercise, which in turn got me focused more on diet, then I got turned on to healthy living in general. Eventually, I started feeling pretty good. Maybe I wouldn’t reach enlightenment in this lifetime, but if I gave some care and attention to my health, at least I could be a reasonably happy, normal human being. As it turns out, eating a nice green salad is a far more reliable way to feel good than trying to figure out the secret to enlightenment. So, let’s start there.

II. What Makes a Good Diet?

Watching their kids run around the playground for hours at a time, parents often wonder where they get all that energy. How can they play for so long and not get tired when so many adults can’t find the energy to peel themselves off the couch and walk the dog around the block? Why do we need to drink our double latte just to get going in the morning, only to gas out by late afternoon? Is this just an inevitable part of getting older, or is there that we can do to keep our energy levels high? There is no reason why adults must be perpetually tired any more than we need to feel sick and mentally dull. The remedy to all these maladies is simple: eat a healthy diet.

Back when I was in the throes of teenage depression, I lamented to a friend about being unmotivated and unhappy. He, very reasonably, suggested that I try to improve my diet. I was scandalized. This was serious business, after all. I was on a mission for spiritual insight, not for dietary tips. I failed to realize it at the time, but Jason’s advice was exactly what I needed to hear.

I had no idea how poor my diet was, or how much it affected my mental and emotional health. I had inherited from my parents the Standard American Diet, and it left me overfed and undernourished. For example, a 'healthy' dinner in my home growing up included meat, a starch and a vegetable, full stop. So, I grew up thinking two pork chops, a cup of white rice and couple tablespoons of canned green beans counted as a healthy meal. Believing this, I didn't think much of having a less healthy breakfast of a bowl of sugary cereal, or microwaved pizza-pockets for lunch, because at least I was having a healthy dinner. I rarely questioned my dietary choices, because my eating habits were ‘normal’, but I had no idea how much my poor diet was affecting my wellbeing.

Initially I was in denial, but like a parasite, Jason’s advice slowly burrowed its way into my brain. I was slow to learn and changes were to unfold gradually, over the span of years, but I did make progress. As I began to augment my diet to prioritize health over palatability, I began to realize that the healthier the food I ate, the better I felt. Which may sound obvious, but to me, the cultural narrative about eating healthfully always emphasized maintaining a good weight and preventing disease. These were never big concerns of mine as I had always been slim and believed that I didn’t have any chronic disease, so when I discovered that good food made me feel more healthy, more energetic and happier, it came as a surprise.

I don’t blame my parents for the diet they passed on, because they didn’t really know what healthy eating habits were. The basis for their idea of a healthy diet was probably the same as mine: the food pyramid that was posted on classroom walls. Remember those? They broke food up into six groups. Beginning from the base of the pyramid, going upward, the categories were:

1. Grains, cereals, rice and pasta
2. Fruit and vegetables
3. Dairy
4. Meat and eggs
5. Oils and fat
6. Sweets and snack foods

The idea was that the closer to the base of the pyramid the food group was, the more servings you were supposed to have. Sometime in my twenties, after I had begun to develop an awareness of good nutrition, I was taking a cooking course at a local high-school. I noticed that in the classroom, there was one of those old food pyramid posters. When I had been a high school student, I had assumed that those posters were accurate, but suddenly it seemed all wrong.

The first thing that struck me was that carbohydrates, which included foods like white bread pasta and white rice, were as the base of the pyramid, and thus the foundation of a healthy diet. But should I really eat ten servings of carbs every day? Was that really ideal? I knew that some of those foods weren’t particularly healthy, especially white bread. I found it hard to believe that a good diet may include eating four bagels every single day. Other food recommendations didn’t seem right either. Being a pescatarian at the time, and feeling quite fine about it, I didn’t feel that meat was necessary or even particularly healthy, but there it was: another staple of the 'ideal' diet. Perplexingly, three servings of red meat were supposed to be just as good as three servings of beans or chicken or fish. Wasn’t eating too much red meat supposed to be bad for you? Additionally, it seemed strange that vegetables and fruits were recommended in roughly the same amount. Surely it was better to eat a bowl of salad every day than a bowl of fruit, wasn’t it?

Despite the other questionable recommendations, what really struck me was that dairy was given its own section. Having been introduced to the vegan argument against animal products, I knew that dairy wasn’t particularly healthy, and that there weren’t any nutrients in dairy that couldn’t be gotten elsewhere. I also knew that lactose intolerance was not a discrete condition, but something everyone had to some degree.

I didn't know then that East Asian people, tend to have very low lactose tolerance and that traditional dishes from China, Korea and Japan, don’t use dairy. But even people of Northern European stock have limits to the amount of dairy they can process, as is evidenced by the “two-liter milk challenge”, in which one attempts to drink two liters of milk in one sitting without vomiting. Spoiler alert: it’s basically impossible.

It seemed odd that dairy should be in the food pyramid at all, until I looked closer and saw that the poster was sponsored by the dairy industry. Instantly my suspicions were validated. Obviously, the dairy industry isn’t going to give objective advice on nutrition: it’s going to try and sell milk products. Additionally, if the recommendation about how much dairy to eat was misleading, it called into question everything else on the poster. At best the food pyramid lacked nuance. At worst, it was simply wrong.

Some years later, I came across a book called Eat to Live by a nutritionist named Dr. Joel Fuhrman. The central idea of the book was an equation: health equals nutrients divided by calories. This idea is simple but profound. Following this principle, Fuhrman constructed his own version of the food pyramid. In this food pyramid, vegetables make up the base. The second tier is bisected, containing fruits on one side and beans and legumes on the other. The next tier is also bisected with seeds, nuts and avocados on one side, and whole grains on the other. The fourth tier contains naturally produced, unprocessed animal products and oils. Finally, the peak of the pyramid is reserved for foods that should rarely, if ever be eaten: sweets, processed foods, and commercially produced animal products. Unlike the traditional food pyramid, Fuhrman eschews recommended serving amounts for a recommended percentage of calories for each food.

Fuhrman's book came a revelation to me. I had long thought about what the ideal food pyramid would look like, but I had not imagined Fuhrman’s vision. I immediately began altering my diet, increasing the amount of vegetables, and reducing the amount of everything else. At first, it was uncomfortable--my digestive system wasn’t used to processing that much vegetable matter. However, I immediately noticed a big difference in how I felt. I became increasingly energetic, positive and better able to concentrate just by doing that one thing. I also lost a lot of weight around the middle. I haven’t yet been able to establish a regular routine of eating enough vegetables to make up fifty per cent of my calories, and I’m not sure I ever will, but reading Fuhrman’s book stoked in me a renewed interest in nutrition and inspired me to pay more attention to what I was putting in my body.

Creating that awareness of healthy eating hasn’t yet excised all unhealthy food from my diet, and I don’t expect it ever will. I think I’ll always want to enjoy the occasional slice of pie or bag of chips, but now they come as a rare treat instead of business as usual. The majority of my calories now come from healthy, minimally processed foods. There isn’t the temptation to go back to the way I used to eat, not only because I feel better eating this way, but also because my brain, my palate and my gut have adapted, and eating healthy has become my preference.

Transitioning from an unhealthy diet to a healthy one can be difficult because human nature is at odds with Fuhrman’s equation for health. It’s natural for human beings to be attracted to calorie-dense foods. For the vast majority of our evolutionary history, getting enough calories was a constant challenge. That’s why we love sweet and fatty foods. Unlike us, if our ancestor’s caloric needs were met, there was virtually no danger of being undernourished. In an evolutionary blink of the eye, we find ourselves in the modern age where calorie-dense, nutrient-deficient foods fill our pantries and refrigerators. The upside of mass-manufactured processed foods means that we can feed many more mouths. The downside is that these foods those mouths are eating are nutrient deficient and unhealthy.

One result of the proliferation of processed foods is the obesity epidemic. Conventional wisdom says that the way to cure overweight is to eat less. Unfortunately, people seldom ask why they feel compelled to eat so much in the first place. We are drawn to refined foods because they satisfy the palate. However, they aren’t the best at satisfying hunger because they have a high calorie to volume ratio, and can create unnatural hormonal responses that suppress satiety.

Also, they don’t satisfy our micronutrient needs, so we get caught in the trap of a large amount of high-calorie, micronutrient-deficient foods to get the nutrition we need. For example, if my body needs more omega 3 fatty acids (a common deficiency), I could swallow a few fish oil capsules and my body’s nutritional needs would be satisfied with very few calories. But if sensing I need those omega threes my body compels me drink two cartons of soy milk, I’ll get the omega threes, along with a load of calories that I don’t need that will turn into fat.  

I am lucky that I can drive to the grocery store and buy whatever I want whenever I want. For someone like me, there are only three obstacles to adopting a superior diet: lack of knowledge, lack of bodily awareness, and lack of discipline. We will take a look at all three obstacles, but first let's address the issue of knowledge. Some people spend their entire lives learning about the intricacies of nutrition, but a basic understanding takes only a few minutes. Armed with a little understanding about the foods we eat, we can be better able to take our health and happiness into our own hands.