Nutrition Advice Gone Awry
| July 28, 2010 | Posted by Issa under Kitchen |
It can be hard to follow along with all the nutrition advice out there. Eggs good or bad? How many glasses of wine? This fish or that fish? And that’s not even counting the moral choices of free-range, free trade, etc.
Even if you know that diets don’t work and have long given up calorie counting or fat-restricting (or better yet, never even started), it’s still hard to ignore advice telling you that this food or that food is better or worse for you. Maybe it does make sense to limit HFCS in your food, for example, or maybe you’d feel better if you drank more water. Fine. I can understand tweaking your food here and there when you get new information.
Then I ran across this in a magazine the other day:
In case you can’t read it clearly, the mini-article talks about research involving produce diets high or low in antioxidants and the benefits of eating foods high in antioxidants. Then in goes on to categorize fruits and veggies into either “eat less of these” or “more of these”.
What should you supposedly be eating less of? Apples, bananas, melons, pears, white grapes, carrots, celery, cucumbers, eggplant, french beans, leeks, lettuce, potatoes, radishes, and zucchini.
Um. What. The. Fuck. Antioxidants or no antioxidants, anyone who tells you to eat fewer carrots and apples is just making shit up. You want to cut down on your soda intake or watch the baked goods? Great. Leave the fruits and veggies alone, though. Good grief.
Tags: Dieting, Diets, Food, HFCS, Vegetables
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I’ve learned to take studies like this with a shot of whiskey and a bucket of salt. Besides, I’ve been bombarded with so many “studies” that downright contradict each other that it’s difficult to trust any of them anymore. I’ll stick with “eating healthy” as being defined as not eating a ton of fast or processed food and getting a healthy spread of fruits, veggies, grains, etc.
Studies like this also anger the hell out of the scientist lurking within me. The details of these studies are almost never included in these magazine articles, nor to most people care to investigate. For all we know, the study could simply be pointing out a correlation which, by itself, is meaningless. The key to trying to determine whether A affects B is the ability to completely isolate the two effects. With the human body there’s almost no way to do such a thing. For me to be confident in such a conclusion, I’d have to see years of independent studies conducted on a large sample size of people including the entire spectrum of human differences.
/rant off
There is a famous author who wrote one of those famous books (maybe The Omnivore’s Dilemma? or something along those lines) and he said there is a seven-word thesis on how to live:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables.
He said that the “Eat Food” is the hardest part because so much of what is around is frankenfood. So just finding REAL food is the hardest part of that equation, sadly.
That is from Michael Pollan, who wrote Omnivore’s Dilemma, although I think that advice is from In Defense of Food. I prefer the words of Michelle, The Fat Nutritionist: “Eat food. Stuff you like. As much as you want.” I like that the “food” part is there (although I don’t think Michelle gives it the same meaning as Pollan). I definitely think about whether the stuff I eat is food or imitation food inventions. I love Pollan and wholeheartedly recommend his books. However, I sometimes think his message veers away from pointing out the ills of our current system and veers into creating more (different) problems, by adding a lot of rules into an already fucked up culture of food.
I have not read either of his books, but I plan to. I will check out the Fat Nutritionist too. My sister will love her… she’s been a fat activist since before it was cool. LOL I’m only a new convert. I’m madly in love with what Joshua wrote the other day about blinking 20% less. I think I’ve already used it five times in conversation. LOL
I’m a new fat activist, too. I can recommend to you a bunch of fat acceptance blogs, if you’re interested. I just said, “Fuck it”, and vowed to stop worrying about weight a couple of years ago, since *I* like how I look. Then the internet helped me discover that there are actually very good reasons to not try to lose weight, and I felt very vindicated. I’ve been reading all I can, and I’m just now starting to talk to other people about the idea.
Years ago, I read Fat?So! and a few of the blogs linked within. I made the mistake of once saying on their discussion board that diets work (because they do, techincally, in the short term) and I was raked over the coals and never went back. LOL!!! Now, my fat acceptance is more organic, and I just get that it’s possible to be healthy no matter what weight you are, just like it’s possible to be unhealthy when you are thin. When I was 125 lbs, I lived on sickarettes and white rice. Ahem.
Anyhow, I, too, like how I look now, and sometimes I think it’s my personal mission to live as example to people how it is ENTIRELY possible to be fat, hairy, single, crooked teeth, big nose, the WHOLE NINE YARDS and be happy anyway in this skin, and celebrate life and this body. I love the reactions of people who seem to think I should be ashamed of myself, as if shame is the default, and I’m screwing with their paradigm by not participating in my own oppression. HA! Fuck that noise. I think I will dance, instead!!!
HA! Fuck that noise. I think I will dance, instead!!! I think this is probably a good philosophy for nearly everything. :-)