What is food? The Oxford dictionary describes it as,” any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth” while Merriam-Webster states, “material consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, and fat used in the body of an organism to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy”.
Humans are the only creatures that need a written definition.
Most of us know that we should avoid “fast food” and “eat better” or eat “clean” or think that our diet is “pretty good” but those are rather vague and distant concepts. What many of us don’t know, oddly enough, is what to actually consume. Cougars hunt prey that is suitable for a huge feline. Deer graze and nibble on grasses and plants. (or my tulips, roses, and entire garden) Birds look for seeds, insects, rodents, etc. But humans? We are the only animal that has to be told what to eat. That’s where the problem starts.
Granted, much of that isn’t our fault given the influence that the industrialized food industry has over our choices. We are taught in elementary school that “milk does a body good” but that didn’t come from our science class…it came courtesy of the National Dairy Council. The manipulation from industry is such a comprehensive topic that it would take an entire book to fully discuss it, so we are just going to acknowledge for today that there is a LOT of profit to be made in food and we are deliberately misled from a very young age.
In 2017, the latest year with complete data, typical US households spent $7729 on food, including $3365 that was for food “away from home” or dining out. That works out to about $21 a day for our food budget. Just for comparison, we spent $9576 on transportation costs including $4054 in vehicle purchases. In that light, it appears that we’d rather buy new cars than organic produce.
One of the influences that I see affecting human food choices is a form of ‘hard-wiring’ known as the Optimal Foraging Theory. Basically, it means that we (and all animals) instinctively look for foods that give us the most reward for the least amount of effort. We know that we expend more energy than we will receive walking five miles to pick one apple than to go half a mile to a large patch of berries or a tree laden with nuts. We also know when to leave that patch for the next or when to move to a new fishing hole and that if we have a chance to snag something large and nutrient dense, we need to jump on it. This was a beneficial trait before there was endless access to food.
Let’s combine that theory with our current fast food trends, industry altered foods that contain addictive substances, and frantic lifestyles.
So, I have $21 to spend on food. Am I going to drive through McDonald’s and grab a couple of things from the dollar menu and start chowing down in under 5 minutes….and probably even while driving… or go to the grocery store, park, shop, spend $10+, go back to my car, drive home, prepare and cook my food, and then finally eat it? This gets compounded by factors such as “food deserts” where healthy options aren’t available and by poverty, when you simply don’t have enough money to buy broccoli and chicken, so you opt for a couple of $.99 cheeseburgers for your kids.
For most of human history we were foragers and hunters. While we did start cultivating crops and farming about 10,000 years ago, even then, most humans still relied upon traditional methods for obtaining food. It wasn’t until a few hundred years ago that we really settled into cities on a broad scale and industrialized agriculture became the norm. Our bodies haven’t adapted to that change, much less the recent novelties of online shopping, food delivery, drive-thru, and endless apps that enable the process. Increasing numbers of us don’t even bother to hunt and gather at the grocery store or farmer’s market, much less in our own garden or the wild.
So…. if I’m sick from eating an inappropriate diet, I’m overweight, I’m spending an increasing proportion of my income on prescriptions, I’m heavily influenced by a handful of food industry conglomerates that don’t care about my health but only about their profits, and I’m exhausted from dealing with it all…. what am I going to do? Of course I’m going to pull up my Walmart app and have some mind-numbing, cheap, pseudo-foods loaded into my car while I wait curbside. I don’t even have to get out.
Fortunately, humans also have culture and it tells us what is acceptable and what is taboo in our groups. We have the ability to override innate foraging tendencies and make informed, conscious choices. We have the power to ensure quality food for all and to eliminate the approximately 40% of our food that gets wasted. Changing food policy will positively impact our health, our environment, and potentially our entire economy.
Diet is our cornerstone. Clearly, all areas of health overlap and influence each other but our dietary choices are the largest single factor and distinctly impact overall wellness. It has the power to make us sick or make us healthy and resilient. As we saw in the previous post, lifestyle….and largely our diet…is a massive contributor to chronic diseases and additional financial burdens.
It is imperative to get our diet and food into alignment. That doesn’t mean that we can’t be increasing our movement or working on improving sleep quality at the same time, but we start with getting our diet in order.
You cannot out exercise a poor diet.
You cannot out supplement it.
Your doctor cannot out medicate it.
You cannot escape it.
There are times that we are exposed to viruses, have an injury, or get an acute infection that impacts our health, but these occasions are somewhat rare, while most of us eat at least 3-4 times each day. You are choosing food multiple times daily. Each of these exposures is a chance to make your health better or worse. For most of us, what we eat is a choice. We didn’t accidentally eat two donuts at our company meeting. It wasn’t required that we gorge on pizza, wings, and chips because football was on TV. We didn’t need a Pepsi. It was a choice.
Humans require certain nutrients from dietary sources in order to be vibrant, happy, and avoid disease. As our consumption of processed foods has increased, our health has decreased dramatically. When we eat food fit for humans rather than chemically enhanced pseudo-food, we can fuel our physiological requirement for nutrition and avoid detrimental substances that damage our health.
So, what is food fit for human consumption? By its definition, it should be something that our body finds to be nourishing, providing vitamins, minerals, macronutrients like protein, carbohydrates, and fats and that doesn’t cause harm. Food is a language, a direct form of speaking to ourselves.
“Food does not merely represent calories. Rather, food represents information, signals that influence and interact with multiple complex biologic pathways in our bodies,” Dariush Mozaffarian, Dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts
Let’s look at this by examining two items of similar calorie counts. I love avocados so let’s choose one medium avocado and compare it to a small McDonald’s French fry. (as if anyone orders small….at least I’m admitting to eating the entire avocado). The fries have 230 calories and the avocado has 240. The fries have mostly fat and carbohydrates (29 grams) but they do have 3 grams of protein, 3 grams of fiber and a bit of vitamin C. The avocado is mostly healthy monounsaturated fat, 12 grams of carbs, 9 grams of fiber, and numerous vitamins and minerals including 750mg of potassium. So, what do they say to your body?
Let’s listen.
Well that avocado says,” Hi, I’m Avo… I’m full of nutrients but I’m only an avocado. My high levels of potassium can improve cardiovascular health and lower blood pressure and I’m full of fiber too, so you’ll feel satiated and have a happier colon.”
Those fries say, “Hi, we’re…. Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (Canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Natural Beef Flavor [Wheat and Milk Derivatives]*), Dextrose, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate (Maintain Color), Salt. *Natural beef flavor contains hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk as starting ingredients.”
Admittedly, I didn’t know what sodium acid pyrophosphate was and had to look it up. While it’s a common additive to baked goods and to “maintain color”, it’s so acidic that the FDA only declares it safe in small amounts and in a rodent study, high doses of it were hematotoxic and killed red blood cells. Doesn’t sound like food and why exactly are we putting in an agent to keep the potatoes white during extended storage so that we can deep fry them in a mixture of toxic and genetically modified oils to make them brown? I’m completely perplexed at why there is “natural beef flavor” in the vegetable oil and how they make “beef flavor” from wheat and milk. And dextrose…. which is sugar. Did you know there was sugar in your French fries? And finally, let’s not ignore the seemingly innocent potatoes which are known to have some of the highest pesticide residues in any produce.
What kind of language do those fries speak? Certainly not one that your body will understand. Let’s break down that “vegetable oil”. There is a very high ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 in the Standard American Diet which increases inflammation, a common denominator of many chronic illnesses and vegetable oil is chock full of Omega 6. Evidence also suggests that vegetable oils like corn and soy can increase colon cancer, IBS, and contribute to obesity. When heated, canola, corn, and soybean oils form trans-fats, a type of fat that is recognized as causing heart disease and is now banned in most foods but since it’s an ingredient before the fries are cooked…they can still use it because the bad fats aren’t created until the heat is added. Reusing fryer oil compounds the amount of trans-fats. And again, “natural beef flavor” which really seems like it ought to come from natural beef but instead, is created from wheat and milk. Since at least 75% of the adult population does not have the gene to adequately process dairy…. yeah, we should put milk derivatives in French fries?
And we haven’t even begun to delve into how these GMO and non-organic foods are impacting our microbiome….and therefore our overall health, including increasing anxiety and depression.
If we are spending about half of our food budget on “food away from home” and much of what we do eat at home is also “processed/convenience” ….is it any wonder that we have such rapidly increasing rates of mismatch disorders like diabetes and cardiovascular disease? We simply are not able to translate the language of industrialized food, of chemicals…both in the “food” and that leach in from packaging materials like plastic wrappers, can liners, or cooking methods.
Our bodies understand the language of nature. We can speak this by eating food that not only provides the proper nutrients but also avoiding foods that physically harm us. The American Heart Association states that cocaine is the “perfect heart attack drug” because of physiological changes that happen after using it including hardening of the arteries and increased blood pressure. That sounds pretty scary if we associate it with an illegal drug, but we seem to be perfectly fine with eating those fast food fries that have exactly the same effects.
We need to be mindful of what goes in our mouths but it’s going to take a bit of effort. We might have to get out of the car but hey, if we park in the outer spaces, we can get a bit of walking/movement in our day too and compound the positives.
As for me…. I’m going to go have a little talk with my friend Avo.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/small-french-fries.html
https://loveonetoday.com/nutrition/avocado-nutrition-facts-label/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1382668918301571
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27251151
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6356359/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27374582
https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/consumer-healthcare/illegal-drugs-and-heart-disease
https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/background”>Background photo created by dashu83 – http://www.freepik.com
Janice Penberth 