Wednesday, 21 May 2008

How crucial is your diet to your health?



Question 1: Do we know enough about diet?




Question 2 Is diet all we should be worrying about?



Scott Kustes said...

Great post Colin. It's funny that the more we learn about the body, the less we seem to know about nutrition. While I opt for a low-carb Paleo diet, civilizations have thrived on high-carb, low-fat, low-carb, etc...the key is always unprocessed foods. All of the food science in the world can't overcome our need for fresh, unprocessed foods.

You are definitely right about social cohesion, stress, exercise, etc all being important in health. I'm nearly finished reading a book right now called "Last Child In The Woods" which discusses our need for nature and how our indoor lifestyles are hindering us and our children. I'll review it once I'm done.

Good stuff
Scott Kustes
Modern Forager

Unknown said...

Thanks Scott,

I agree I feel we often get too focused on what exactly we should be eating and forget that our bodies are designed to search out the right foods as long as we learn to listen to them correctly.

I feel that processed foods are part of life today and so I've jsut been looking at how bad they really ara and what you can do to minimise the effects.

I term it 'taking out the trash'. Basically even unprocessed foods have bad parts to them especailly if they stay in the gut or digestive tract for too long. Bowel cancer is linked to a lack of fibre simply because it encourages waste products to hang around in the body. And just like rubbish left in the street that attracts rats, food waste left in our bodies attract microbes that we don't want.

Some will kill the microbes we do want. Others will jsut produce bad things and this can leach through the colon or intestinal walls into our bloodstream in the same way we get vitamin k from bacteria in the colon and it gets into our blood stream. (I haven't had a chance to completely check these 'facts' so any comments please post but I'm pretty certain the theory is sound)

so basically I make sure I've got enough in my diet that encourages waster to be taken out. that's just fibre or sugar that's not starch and plenty of water. Once you do this and get a bit active too to help your internal muscles push all this food pulp around the digestive tract (technically it's called peristalsis) then atleast you're doing what you can to make sure that bad things don't stay in your system.

At least that way I can eat less desirable things when I have a craving or two and know I'm doing what I can to minimise the bad effects.

Unknown said...

oh yes and I look forward to reading your review. The book definitely sounds interesting.