Once in a while someone will come along having watched some sort of health documentary asking if its true that doctors don’t learn about nutrition in medical school. If not, they take it as a fact that medical schools are not particularly interested in nutrition or even worse are aligned with Big Pharma to push drugs.
Nutrition is Simple
I guess maybe I’m a little annoyed about the assumption that doctors don’t know much about nutrition. I assure you, it’s not that doctors don’t know enough to provide solid nutritional advice.
I’m not saying that there is not a use for more nutrition courses but does anyone seriously think the health of our population would improve if only doctors took more courses on nutrition? Here’s the truth. Nutritional advice is simple. I’m going to shorten Michael Pollen’s famously short advice to make it even easier. He said “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”. But the most important part of that is: Eat food.
Food vs “Food”
In other words, most of what is out there nowadays is not real food. Almost 60% of our diet and 70% of our children’s diet is comprised of ultra-processed foods. Though we label it as foods, many of these like hotdogs, donuts, sugary cereals, soft drinks, etc. are not actually food. They resemble nothing found in nature. Since we humans evolved over the millennia with natural foods that come from the Earth, it makes sense that our bodies are optimized to extract the nutrients it needs when we consume natural whole foods. It’s really a wonder that we even allow companies to maximize profit by allowing these the label of “food” at all.
In contrast when “food” contains additives, chemicals, and requires significant processing to alter its state, our bodies are often unable to properly metabolize it. Today you’ll hear a lot of conflicting advice about the best diet: keto, paleo, vegan, Mediterranean, DASH, etc. There are finer points to be made here and I do not think these are all equal (for the record, I largely agree with Pollan), but I can tell you that there is a significant overlap among these various diets. Namely, they all advise against consuming highly processed foods. Just stick with “eat food” and you’ll get a good majority of it right. The rest is fine tuning.
Take your Medicine and “Let Food be thy Medicine”
Now its true though that doctors often prescribe medications when the reality is that “eating food” would be a much better option. All sorts of conditions from GERD, hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol, and even to some degree mental illnesses can be treated and sometimes reversed just by cutting out the processed stuff and eating actual food.
Why then do we prescribe medications for these conditions? Don’t tell me your doctor did not tell you to eat fruits and vegetables and avoid fast foods and other highly processed foods. I’m sure he or she talked about that along with exercise, sleep and a few other healthy habits. It is only that we collectively have a hard time meeting the basic nutritional advice. It’s the logical consequence of mixing food, capitalism, and human biology. Of course it need not be this way. All it takes is optimizing our food environment by ridding ourselves of the constant temptation.
Next time you’re prescribed medication for your medical condition, take it as prescribed. But also challenge yourself to “let food be thy medicine”. You may not be able to optimize what the rest of the society sells you but you can optimize your home environment and rid yourself of any sweets, chips, sodas and other highly processed foods. Yes, you’ll experience some intense cravings at first but taste bud rehabilitation takes just about a month. The end result is a lifetime of benefit for you and all the family.
BOTTOM LINE: THERE IS A BETTER WAY!
- As John Maynard Keynes said a century ago, people of our time ought to be largely independent of our employers for our income – unfortunately, due to “mindless consumerism”, we are not.
- Mindless consumerism is the underlying reason leading to the rise of chronic disease for 3 major reasons:
- It ties us to dependence on our employers and modern day employment is a health hazard for most (in part due to the sedentary nature of most jobs).
- It has led to environmental changes toxic to our wellbeing:
- (a). We evolved in and are best suited to natural environments and instead we live in increasingly artificial environments.
- (b). Overconsumption has lead us to engineer out the need for meaningful use of our legs for ambulation.
- Finally, it transforms workers to work with blinders on – instead of working for the product or service and receiving money as a side effect, workers focus on making money and the product or service is instead the side effect. The results (with respect to health) is that “food” is no longer food but changed to maximize pleasure and extract profit in spite of the toxicity to our health.
- Based on the science of wellbeing one can derive the philosophy that once basic needs are met, “The best things in life are free” therefore —>
- Most people can live far below their means without sacrificing happiness AND by investing the rest, they can become financially independent of their employers enabling them to be —>
- Happier. Healthier. Wealthier. More engaged. Simply better.
