Experimenting with diet
I'm not sure why, but as a child I was eager to learn to eat right. Not that I did it very well, I had an odd approach. I stopped having sugar in my tea, because I heard or read that it was healthier not to, but I happily continued to eat sweets and lollipops. I stopped drinking coke because I heard the caffeine wasn't good for you, no, I didn't realise at the time that tea still had caffeine in it.
I was vegetarian for about a year and wanted to look at turning vegan, because animal welfare was important to me and my best friend at the time was vegetarian, turning vegan. I was talked back into eating fish and chicken by my grandfather, yet it wasn't until years later I realised just how ill I often was on a vegetarian diet. I still didn't touch red meat for years, because there was so much being said about how unhealthy it was. However, it wasn't until I started eating a bit of red meat occasionally that I stopped getting ill so often.
It was common for me to yoyo between 7 and 8 stone in weight in my late teens and early 20s (not great when you're 5' 6”). Just as I'd regain some health and weight I'd get ill again and my weight would plummet straight back down. Yet I was trying to be healthy and eat the right foods that health sources promoted and avoid the ones that were said to be bad. These days my weight stays steady around the 8 stone mark and I rarely get ill.
Over the years and with information now more available on the internet, I've slowly started learning why certain healthy promoted diets may actually not necessarily be right for my body. In fact, apart from the advice to consume less or no refined sugar, I don't think any advice can be 100% accurate for all people.
Investigating to find the right information
When we look at how we've evolved over the millennia to different climates, it makes perfect sense that our digestive systems would have evolved to cope best with the types of foods available to us where we lived. Then if we realise that much of the modern western world is a complete mixture of ethnicities from all the invasions and migrations over the last centuries, we can understand that even within close families we might all have different food requirements and intolerances. So why do so many insist on one diet being the only healthy way we should all eat?
For the last few years I've been trying to figure out how my own digestive system works. I’m still learning, but some things have started to slot into place. The first epiphany I had was that I have the physical appearance of a typical Viking, or North Man. Yes, I'm a red head and in order for that gene to display itself, both of my parents had to carry it. Judging by the surnames and research I did on ancestry, the Scandinavian genes on both my father and mother's side came through France, then at some point over to England.
My sister and mother tend to put on weight easily and are more Mediterranean in appearance. My father and I have the opposite issue and struggle to gain weight, as did my paternal grandmother. My father has a distinctive condition with the tendons in his hand hardening and tightening as he ages which is traced back to Viking ancestry. So if we are physically displaying attributes of a people who evolved to live in cold climates where few plants grow for a large part of the year, then it starts to make sense why we might struggle to digest a plant only diet well enough to thrive on.
While it's a fact that plants contain all the nutrients we need, our digestive system also needs to be able to extract and convert those nutrients into forms our bodies can use. A good example here could be an anecdote I heard about someone's mother being low on vitamin A despite eating plenty of carrots. When she had blood tests done her beta carotene levels showed as high, but her vitamin A levels were incredibly low. So while carrots contain vitamin A in the form of beta carotene, if your body can't convert that into usable vitamin A (retinol), then you're just going to have it flowing through your bloodstream as beta carotene doing nothing at all for you. It seems that those who argue for a carnivore diet do so because meat and eggs have nutrients that are readily available for the human body to use without the need for conversion.
A large amount of plants also have what are known as anti nutrients, in varying forms. Gluten is a well known one, phytates is another problematic one which can inhibit your absorption of minerals. Given this, it shouldn't be surprising that different people might have issues with different plant foods. With so much advice out there on the health benefits of vegetables and the campaigns to eat your fruit and vegetables, I'm coming across more stories than ever of people trying to heal chronic health issues and allergies with plant based diets or by increasing their veggies, only to discover that they have issues with a particular group of vegetables. It's not that the advice to eat plenty of vegetables is bad, it's more that we still aren't taking into account we are not all alike, so not all vegetables are equal for us. We often hear that leafy greens are pretty much a super food, but if you're someone who can't tolerate them, then they are a super toxin.
I think the science is still trying to explain exactly what it is in our bodies which allows us to digest or not digest certain foods well, but enzymes seems to be a plausible explanation. If we lack the right enzyme production, then certain foods just won't be digestible to us. An obvious example here is dairy, which can cause a lot of people discomfort as they don't produce the lactase to digest the lactose in it. Hence, lactose intolerance, particularly in certain ethnicities.
Re-arranging my food pyramid
As I look at the evolution of the food pyramid over the years it’s good to see that it's changed as we learn more about how diet affects us. Thank heavens the bulk is no longer recommend as carbohydrates like bread, however there does still seem to be an equal importance placed on them to vegetables in some countries (although Australia now places vegetables at the base of the pyramid, with carbs in the smaller section higher up). For my husband, and indeed for many of us, bread was a staple growing up. Yet I now know that any wheat based products I should only eat sparingly. I probably shouldn't be eating them at all, but I can generally tolerate them in small amounts occasionally. I also struggle to digest legumes properly. Thankfully these foods don't cause immediate issues for me as long as I don't eat them regularly.
So here I have two foods, often touted as healthy, that are apparently not healthy for me. Then on the other end of the spectrum there's that unhealthy seasoning known as salt that we should apparently limit our intake of. This is something I'm discovering I actually need to increase my intake of. Who'd have thought that a move away from junk food could cause a nutrient deficiency? This is something else I cut back on as a child when told that it was unhealthy to have too much salt. I used to love adding this liberally to my roast potatoes.
Another thing that usually sits at the tip of the pyramid is fats. Yet here again is something I'm finding I probably need more of, the healthy fats that is, definitely not trans fats. It was my husband who alerted me to this when he was telling me off for not eating properly because I was struggling with my energy levels at the climbing gym one day. I was arguing that I had eaten and he reeled of a list of nutrients; did my meal include:
Protein? Yes!
Carbs,? Yes!
Fats?…oh…it hadn't included any fats...
Maybe that's why I get my avocado cravings…
I'm still learning what my body needs, but now I'm moving forward with an open mind instead of just believing what the loudest voices are saying. My first steps are decreasing my glutinous grains and legumes and increasing good fats.
This is written in response to the latest @naturalmedicine challenge, What's your healthy eating pyramid?
Originally posted here: https://hive.blog/hive-120078/@minismallholding/taking-ownership-of-my-own-nutritional-needs
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