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Article Title: Nutrition has Everything to do with Health
Article Author: Judith Schwader
Article Copyright: 2004

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Nutrition has Everything to do with Health
Copyright © 2004 Judith Schwader
Q and A Health
http://QandAHealth.com



Nutrition has everything to do with health. This isn't news,
exactly, but looking around at the crazy information on the
market, one wonders if anyone actually makes the connection:
what you eat affects how you feel. It's that simple. Your
health depends on the food choices you make in both the short
and long term.

Take a pill, and all you've done is treat a symptom. Change
your eating habits, and create a lasting change in your
well-being. There are so many approaches to eating, however,
and so much conflicting information that it's come down to
this simple question: does whatever you're eating right now
make sense?

Well, sense isn't common, and it does depend on some good
information. So here is something to consider: what kind of
foods are humans evolved to eat? Cheetos? Don't think so.
That's a no-brainer, but what about some others that we counted
as healthy staples until recently, like bread and pasta. Go
way back in your imagination, to hunter gatherer days - before
agriculture and the obesity which followed for the first time
among humans - and consider what would be part of our ancestors'
normal diet. If you're about to pop something into your mouth
that wasn't around before agriculture, (a relatively recent
development in human history), then eat it knowing it's not
considered a 'normal' food by your body. Foods your body
considers 'normal' contribute to your health, other foods are
either neutral or harmful. How simple is that?

A well-known exploration of this concept that certain foods
help our bodies thrive is Dr. Peter D'Adamo's book, "Eat Right
4 Your Type," in which he bases his lists of what to eat and
avoid on blood type. D'Adamo asserts that type O is the oldest
type, and the newer A type didn't show up on the scene until
agriculture. So, Os should eat lots of meat and veg because
that blood type doesn't know how to handle too much grain.
Type As can eat grain, but not dairy. Dairy is a category
reserved as a 'normal' food only for the yet more recent human
blood type, AB. (Maybe we'll evolve a new type that can handle
Cheetos and red licorice, my personal favorite abnormal foods).

D'Adamo supports his blood-type theory with all kinds of careful
research, and so what? Does it make sense that humans should
rely primarily on foods that occur naturally? Absolutely. If
you're going to eat a grain like wheat then, eat it whole, or
don't eat it at all, and don't eat much of it anyway because
humans pretty much made wheat up! I'm not going to take the,
"Does it occur naturally?" debate too far, because it's time
to look at another researcher's take on the food and evolution
connection.

Dr. Phillip Lipetz wrote "The Good Calorie Diet," a book for
the weight loss market, but he also has supported his theories
with all kinds of careful research. His describes how the human
response to starvation that was developed during the ice age
carries on today. Ironic, isn't it, that the food available
to us today - rich and sweet and abundant - causes our bodies
to behave as though starvation is at hand.

The short story for how this works is that up until the ice age,
humans ate whatever was readily available, like roots, plants,
fruit, and a little tasty carrion now and then. Along came the
ice ages, and those foods became scarce. Now humans were forced
to hunt, but it was dicey and the weapons were primitive, so
spans of time occured between kills. The result: our ancestors
evolved ways to make the most of the conversion of excess blood
sugar into stored nutrition in the form of body fat. When they
starved, they lived off stored fat.

Today's diet mimics the ice age diet: high fat and high protein,
and our genetic programming says, "Uh oh, we're facing starvation
again. Better store up some fat." Lipetz goes into convincing
detail about food combinations in his book. He describes some
that cause the creation of excess fat, such as butter on bread.
More useful are his combinations that actually inhibit fat
formation, like lean meat with most vegetables. In a society
where obesity and its attendant health issues are rampant, these
food combinations are helpful places to focus our attention.
Yet the single most useful bit to remember from his research is
that foods which cause our bodies to create excess fat all have
one thing in common: they weren't part of our ancestors' normal
diet.

Armed with this overview, next time you're about to pop
something in your mouth - whether your focus is health or weight
- you don't need to have a bunch of rules and whacky information
in mind. Just use common sense. Ask whether it's a food that
was around before the advent of agriculture. If it was, go for
it. If it wasn't, then consider that your body won't consider
the food 'normal,' and in both the long and short run, that's
got health consequences.


© 2004 Judith Schwader



Resource Box:
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Judith Schwader has written extensively on health. She has a
background in social science and addressing chronic health
conditions through nutrition and life style.
Judith's articles appear in: http://QandAHealth.com
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Posted: Tue Sep 14 03:26:50 EDT 2004


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