Nutrition

"We are what we eat"...there has never been a truer adage. It is the foundation of our health and the ultimate determinant of whether or not we will suffer from chronic disease in the future. The following words are an excerpt from the opening speech presented to the Alternative and Integrated Medicine Society Conference in Vancouver April 2005.

"The basic nutritional needs of the body - the core of what it takes to stay alive - are protein and fat; carbohydrates, at least in the form of grains or cereals, are optional. As well, we require a steady supply of vitamins, minerals and trace elements from fresh fruit and vegetables, and plenty of clean water.

The controversy arises over what the optimum amounts are and how to obtain them. Low fat diets have completely failed to stop the rise of heart disease, and diabetes has risen by 500% since the American Diabetes Association began promoting the high complex carbohydrate diet. America has the dubious distinction of being the first country in the world where over half (55%) of the population is officially overweight according to standard life insurance tables. We may have conquered many infectious epidemic diseases such as cholera and typhoid, but the morbidity and mortality from chronic degenerative diseases like cardio-vascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer, has risen inexorably over the last couple of hundred years. What is going on here? Why aren't people responding well to the diets promulgated by the establishment?

The problem is actually quite simple. Our diet has evolved faster than the rate that our bodies are capable of adapting to, and our physiology and biochemistry is becoming profoundly disturbed as a consequence. We have been suddenly eating a totally new diet and the rate of evolution is inadequate to manage the change. This is the so-called "evolutionary discordance theory" that suggests that an organism will be adversely affected by sudden changes in the environment and that its subsequent survival will depend upon the ability to adapt rapidly and appropriately."

People often ask me what is most important when eating healthy. The short answer I feel is summed up nicely by nutritional advocate and author Michael Pollan:

Eat real food - Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Avoid those not so real food products even when they come bearing health claims.

Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are:

unfamiliar
unpronounceable
more than five in number

Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.

Pay more, eat less.

Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.

Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.

Cook. And if you can, plant a garden.

Eat like an omnivore.

For more on nutrition and its impact on your health please refer to our newsletter and articles section of the website to find answers to specific questions.