Those of us in the boomer generation have been subject to a series of changing dietary guidelines and recommendations. Every few years there needs to be new information, and what considered good for you is now bad, and vice versa. In one somewhat recent reversal, medical professionals are now saying that vegetable oils may not be all that helpful for the heart after all.
It’s getting to the point that my patients no longer have any faith in medical dietary recommendations, and many are just throwing up their hands and going with whatever tastes good.
You can’t blame them. Medical dietary guidelines have constantly changed over the years, and, frankly, they are a big contributor to many of the chronic diseases that are so common in our society. For instance, the big culprit for heart disease, we were told, was too much cholesterol in the diet. This has since been disproven, and the FDA no longer lists cholesterol as a “nutrient of concern.”
We were told the problem was saturated fats, such as those in meats and dairy. That led to a huge market for fat-free foods, which also were described as “heart healthy.” We also are told we should be eating less of the saturated fats and more of the unsaturated ones, such as those found in vegetable oils.
Healthy eating does not have to be this difficult. There really is a set of guidelines to use when choosing your foods, and they are not that complicated. They are, however, contrary to a lot of current medical advice and require some changes in thinking.
The wellness approach to nutrition is very simple: Foods tend to be healthiest in their least processed state and when raised naturally.
The latest dietary hero is polyunsaturated fats, such as those in “vegetable oils,” which I put in quotes because they are not from veggies — they are from seeds. Once they were decreed heart healthy by medical nutritionists, we started consuming them in large quantities.
What’s the problem with these oils? Plenty, it turns out. Unlike olive oil, they are a relatively new food and have not been eaten in the past in anywhere near the quantity they are now. This alone should give us pause and is a main reason my teachers advised against them. Many of them are produced not by squeezing out the oil, such as olive oil, but by chemical extraction. Perhaps most importantly, it turns out they have a poor fatty acid balance that tends to fuel chronic inflammation in our bodies.
The alternative? Stick to traditional diets. It has been known for some time that people who eat traditional diets have much lower rates of chronic diseases, including heart disease. What is interesting is that it matters little what the traditional diet is. Dr. Weston Price, a dentist who studied the connection between nutrition and health, found dozens of examples of tribes and villages who ate only local foods, yet were very healthy. He documented his observations in the textbook, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.
From tribes who ate almost exclusively animal products, to those who had little animal products available and ate mostly a plant based diet, to those who lived on the coast and consumed mostly fish — all were largely free of the “diseases of civilization” including heart disease. That is, until they adopted the modern diet.
The difference in these native diets from how we eat today is not what they ate; it is the amount of processing their foods goes through (very little) and the fact that their foods are grown or raised naturally. They also tend to eat fewer grains, such as wheat and corn.
My advice is to avoid all medical “fad” diets. This includes the low-cholesterol diet, eating oatmeal to lower cholesterol, the low-fat diet, the food pyramid, etc., etc. None of them are based on good scientific evidence and likely will change again over time.
Instead, eat more like your great-grandparents ate. Lots of local, fresh foods, cooked at home. Choose beef, fish and chicken that are allowed to eat their natural foods, instead of grains. And limit your grains, especially breads, pastas and pastries, which are high in calories, low in nutrients and contribute to inflammation.
The most difficult thing about this type of eating is the fact that it goes against our modern ideas that foods themselves are good or bad. For most foods the processing is the problem.
Dr. Michael Noonan practices chiropractic, chiropractic acupuncture and other wellness therapies in Old Town. He can be reached at noonanchiropractic@gmail.com.