28 Mar What is the Ultimate Nutrition Science?
Were you thinking it is represented in the food pyramid, or rather, My Plate? Or maybe you need to consult with a dietician or nutritionist. That could be helpful, but I have another idea.
Ask your great-grandmother.
She probably ate organic food, because all food was organic, though it wasn’t called that. She might have had a vegetable garden in her yard. My grandfather would eat a papaya for breakfast every morning it was in season and it came from the tree in his yard. What could be fresher, with all the nutrients at their peak? Better than farm to table, more like yard to mouth.
Prehistory has the key.
How did our species thrive and spread throughout the world? Were there scientists giving recommendations? Of course not. In simpler times, people used two things to know what to eat: appetite and tradition. And those two things are pointedly ignored by current food guidelines. Follow the formulas given and you’ll be healthy.
But I don’t see enough healthy people anymore. I see overweight children and half of all adults might be prediabetic or diabetic. We’ve been told just count calories, and it doesn’t matter the source. But food is so much more than calories–your great-grandmother didn’t count calories and diabetes and heart disease were way more rare then.
Food is medicine.
A long time ago when I taught early childhood education to college students, I read an article about how children ate in China. Their grandmothers would go at lunchtime to the preschool and feed the child. The reason they gave was “so they would eat”. Now we all know that preschoolers will eat so they must have had another purpose. It was that food was considered medicine, or actually the path to health. No one would want to take a chance that a child would not eat the food required for a healthy body and strong mind.
I listened to an Indian American man tell about his new restaurant serving Indian food. He explained that India was once a collection of kingdoms, each with their own special curry. The curry contained the ingredients most needed to keep the people of their area healthy. You would find different ingredients based on whether the people lived in the north, the mountains, or the south, and so on. Years of experience helped refine the perfect curry for the health of each area.
The word recipe originally meant prescription. In France, a long time ago, if someone was unwell, that person was given a recipe of herbs and foods that were healing for that condition. That’s quite a bit different from modern prescriptions, consisting of synthetic chemicals called drugs.
Who are your ancestors?
In modern times, people have a real genetic mix. Especially in America, people are descended from people from about every continent in the world. If you know how your ancestors ate, you have a clue as to how you should eat.
In the early 20th century, a dentist traveled the world to find out what indigenous cultures ate and if their diet led to health, and healthy teeth in particular. His name was Weston A. Price, and he discovered a vast amount of variety in diet. For examples, the northern people, known as Inuit or Eskimo, eat almost entirely animal fat. They thrived. And that’s a direct contrast to the much studied Mediterranean diet.
The Mediterranean diet is right for Mediterraneans. If you are not of Mediterranean heritage, take time to have a conversation with the old people in your family. Find out what were the traditional dishes. Ask what were the family favorites before the skill of cooking was replaced with driving through pick up windows.
Note that the old recipes were all made of real food, not with processed food-like items that overflow the grocery aisles now. So Just Eat Real Food and have fun experimenting with your ancestral foods. Find what works for you. Go back before the guidelines and our search for convenience confused our idea of what a good diet for each of us really is.
The ultimate food science is cuisine.
Note that cuisine is a French word. The French have always taken good food seriously. Here in New Orleans, our cuisine is heavily influenced by the French. I have a little French blood, but I definitely resonate with French food. I think it’s from the culture I grew up in. The point is, I know what I like to eat. So I can rely on my appetite and French traditions to get me started in finding a healthy diet.
Let me help you find your healthy diet. I have found mine, and it’s delicious, and yours will be too. Contact me. As a National Board Certified Functional Medicine Health Coach, I have the skills and education to support you, and I’m passionate about helping you improve your health.
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