Everyone has unique nutritional needs so it makes sense that a single "diet" will not work universally. The problem with mainstream nutritional programs is they all believe in some sort of divine commandments that will benefit everyone equally. I'm drawing my line in the sand and saying this is the wrong way to go in most cases.
The problem as I see it, at least in the western diet, is access. We have far too much access to a wide diversity of digestible matter…not all of it is stuff I would call "food". The number of products you can buy in any supermarket today is actually enormous if you think about it. But a very large percentage of these food items are objectively crap, a huge percentage actually, I'd say about 25-40%. This percentage in restaurants is even higher. Compounding this problem is the food industry strategies: the aggressiveness by which a product is marketed is inversely proportional to the it's health benefit to you. And that makes sense, the worse a food is for you the harder they have to work to sell it so it's often cheaper, more accessible, etc. When is the last time you saw a Super Bowl commercial for spinach?
Bad food in a supermarket or restaurant would not be a problem if no one bought it, or at least if people bought it in proportion to their body's ability to deal with such nuisances. But this is not the case. The greater problem is actually the evolutionary psychology behind food itself. Food was historically scarce so given the opportunity we bought it, traded for it, fought for it, or ate it. But our advanced economy allows us to have an abundance of food, yet our instincts remain.
We need to narrow our definition of what "food" actually is and rethink the logic behind selecting food we put in our body. In simple terms, most diets consist of removing bad food and emphasizing good food. The fundamental error with this logic is that food in these sets of bad and good all exist within the context of all food you have access to. Just because you have access to food does not mean you should procure it. Instead, redefine your context of food as stuff your body needs and can properly synthesize into usable nutrition. Build up from there.
As a thought exercise-- discard all food. Then ask yourself "what food do I need to eat to be healthy?" Then go eat and emphasize that food. The result is a lot less mental clutter and more clarity than the arbitrary restrictions of conventional diets. Think about it like cleaning out a crowded and messy desk packed with years of documents and paraphernalia. Rather than selectively pulling out the things you do not need, it is far more effective and comprehensible to remove everything then only add on what is truly necessary. Do this for your mental inventories of food.
The problem as I see it, at least in the western diet, is access. We have far too much access to a wide diversity of digestible matter…not all of it is stuff I would call "food". The number of products you can buy in any supermarket today is actually enormous if you think about it. But a very large percentage of these food items are objectively crap, a huge percentage actually, I'd say about 25-40%. This percentage in restaurants is even higher. Compounding this problem is the food industry strategies: the aggressiveness by which a product is marketed is inversely proportional to the it's health benefit to you. And that makes sense, the worse a food is for you the harder they have to work to sell it so it's often cheaper, more accessible, etc. When is the last time you saw a Super Bowl commercial for spinach?
Bad food in a supermarket or restaurant would not be a problem if no one bought it, or at least if people bought it in proportion to their body's ability to deal with such nuisances. But this is not the case. The greater problem is actually the evolutionary psychology behind food itself. Food was historically scarce so given the opportunity we bought it, traded for it, fought for it, or ate it. But our advanced economy allows us to have an abundance of food, yet our instincts remain.
We need to narrow our definition of what "food" actually is and rethink the logic behind selecting food we put in our body. In simple terms, most diets consist of removing bad food and emphasizing good food. The fundamental error with this logic is that food in these sets of bad and good all exist within the context of all food you have access to. Just because you have access to food does not mean you should procure it. Instead, redefine your context of food as stuff your body needs and can properly synthesize into usable nutrition. Build up from there.
As a thought exercise-- discard all food. Then ask yourself "what food do I need to eat to be healthy?" Then go eat and emphasize that food. The result is a lot less mental clutter and more clarity than the arbitrary restrictions of conventional diets. Think about it like cleaning out a crowded and messy desk packed with years of documents and paraphernalia. Rather than selectively pulling out the things you do not need, it is far more effective and comprehensible to remove everything then only add on what is truly necessary. Do this for your mental inventories of food.
