Eat This, Not That: A Treatise On Food
What you eat matters.
But not really.
The realm of food and nutrition is an absolute jungle: beliefs ranging from what exactly every person should eat to what is killing you slowly when you eat it to only eating this one thing.
It’s a jungle. A thick, dense, dark jungle.
And truthfully, it isn’t going anywhere. Ever.
Humans are obsessed with health, food, and nutrition.
Why?
Understanding Health Advice Is, Well, a Jungle
Because we are terrified of death, whether we know it or not. And trying to be healthy and worrying about eating the right food gives us a sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, we are evading the Reaper. Or at least delaying the meeting.
I recently walked my way into that jungle that is food and nutrition, willingly and hopeful, actually.
But it’s a jungle that you don’t really realize is such a seedy, vicious, and ferocious jungle until you walk in a few miles. From the outside, it looks like a beautiful jungle: big, expansive, and a bit confusing to navigate on your own, but gorgeous nonetheless.
But inside, well, inside the jungle, it is different. Very different.
There are creatures that want to eat you and creatures that want you to be a creature just like them. Creatures that screech and those that whisper. Creatures that try to scare you and those that try to help you. And creatures that have no idea how they even got there in the first place, but have never left.
Ironically, it’s this creature-laden environment that makes it so intoxicating once you enter. It’s the confusion that keeps you there, digging through the brush just a little bit more thinking that what you’re looking for lies just beyond.
But what lies beyond the next gigantic patch of brush blocking your path is, well, another even thicker patch of tangled brush.
And beyond that, well, you really don’t want to know.
Better to stay on the outside looking in, I’d say.
But that’s not to say the jungle is “bad”. It’s just…a jungle.
Misleading Health Advice
The food and nutrition space has existed since, presumably, the moment humans began to eat. Of course, they weren’t bickering over what animal carcass provided lower saturated fat content and better amino acid profiles and instead were probably just trying not to die. But from the moment humans began to eat, the wheels were in motion for where we are now. Why? Because everyone, everywhere, forever has had the experience of eating.
There is nothing truer than one’s own subjective experience.
And I’ve seen no other saying play out more convincingly than in the food and nutrition jungle.
Everyone has an experience, therefore, maybe not so awesomely, everyone also has an opinion about it.
One thing that has been plaguing me is this: Since everyone must eat food or die and more and more people seem to have the luxury to worry about organic versus conventional or processed versus unprocessed and so on, how are they making their decisions?
The Truth About Nutrition Advice
My conclusion has been this: you either believe in the science and evidence or you don’t.
Here’s an example: pesticides. We know there are pesticides sprayed on crops. They eventually make their way to us. Countries decide acceptable limits allowed that will not negatively impact human health. That’s science. Then there are people that feel that pesticides are harmful and should be avoided at all costs and go so far as to say that we should all grow our own food. My question is, how are they coming to this conclusion? They can’t be doing thorough research on the matter, because the research says otherwise, plus they don’t believe in the research anyways. So that just leaves a gut feeling or opinion. Right?
Again, not saying that either side is “right” or “wrong”. This is simply an observation: one side takes a view from the evidence and the other takes it from feeling. Or so it seems.
The one argument I’ve seen about not trusting the science is cigarettes, and that they used to be considered “healthy”. But for me, that is so easy to dismiss: that was almost 100 years ago! Again, if you believe in the science and technology that is currently in front of you and you use it daily and in a myriad of ways, then it is easy to see how far we’ve come in that dimension. We learn more about the human body at breakneck speed.
But that could also be where the problem lies. The more we learn, the more we learn that we don’t know.
The jungle: you walk further in and realize, Shit, this was a bad idea and each step farther in I just hear more ridiculous creatures screaming hysterically from the treetops, and looking back doesn’t help, nor does looking left or right. There is only straight ahead. And that looks like an absolute mess up there.
But there are rays of sunshine poking through the trees. If, as Yuval Noah Harari claims, death is just a technical problem and therefore needs a technical solution. So, perhaps, we are on our way there: toward immortality.
Maybe It’s Not Essential to Focus on the Tiny Nutrition Details
And this is where I currently stand—standing still for just a moment and looking around this beautiful, majestic jungle—prolonging life will only, if ever, come from something far superior to worrying about each and every single little pesticide or nutrient or supplement or GMO or ingredient or timing or how many times you chew or how close to bedtime or my genes or environment or organic or convention or how to wash my food or how to cook it or how much oil to use or which kind or the refining process or corn or gluten or…holy shit, it is exhausting.
The most mind-boggling part is that that paragraph could have continued for a very. long. time.
The point is, what we are actually seeking, actually trying to avoid death, by worrying about every little chemical or ingredient, can’t be found there – it must be found in something far, far greater. Evading death will come from science. The technology. And nothing less. And maybe someday, soon, we will get there.
Is that to say that we shouldn’t be aware of what we are eating and not try to eat a well-rounded and healthy bunch of foods?
Absolutely not.
We should, 100%, try our best to do that: to eat a healthy set of foods, more fruits and vegetables, wash them, cook at home, eat slowly and with people, have sugar on occasion, relax on the junk food and processed food, drink water, have some greens, try to stick to whole foods, eat some fish every once in a while for fuck sakes…you know, stuff that is actually good for you.
But the tiny, tiny details. And the worry. The anxiety. You can leave those in the jungle, with the creatures. They won’t mind.
In fact, there is a trail up ahead where the creatures aren’t allowed.
Not even me.
It’s a place you just get to walk, in peace, and enjoy the real beauty of the jungle: food.
So relax.
Take a deep breath.
Remove yourself from the claws of the lions and tigers and bears not so secretly lurking alongside the trail. Forget them. Forget me. And forget you ever read this. Just eat.1 Self-experiment. Explore. Play. Learn to love food again. Not fear it.2
You are unique. Yes, that unique one-of-a-kind unicorn that everyone always told you that you were, and what you eat should reflect that.
Maybe someday soon we will be able to hone in on that very unique genetic code that you are running on and devise a “perfect” eating plan that fits just you. But we aren’t there just yet. And that’s okay because you don’t need that right now.
The truth is, you already know what is good for you and what is bad for you, and really, that is good enough.
Trust yourself.
You’ll be glad you did.
- https://peterattiamd.com/my-nutritional-framework/ ↩︎
- https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/what-should-you-eat/ ↩︎
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