The basics of healthy diet choices: Eat close to the ground.

Some subjects are just plain contentious; rife with conflict, prone to disagreement and likely to result in argument. Religion, and politics for example are two things you tend to try to steer away from at the Thanksgiving table. I'd add a third to that list: diet. There are many different approaches to diet: low fat, high fat, low carb, vegetarian, paleo, high protein, vegan, macrobiotic and so on. The proponents of each pontificate on the virtues of their diet, and hold firm that theirs is the one true healthy diet, and all the rest are sure to result in ruinous disastrous health.

The idea that there is any one true and only healthy diet is an obviously ridiculous concept. It is pretty clearly disproved by looking around the world at our few remaining indigenous cultures. Groups of isolated peoples that continue to eat their traditional foods remain free of the sort of disease that are becoming rampant in today's society. Yet each of these cultures eat wildly different diets. Some, like the Masai tribe of Eastern Africa consume more than 50% of their calories from saturated fat, yet are rail thin and have much lower rates of heart disease than we do. Other indigenous cultures, such as the Kitavans in the Pacific islands consume more than 70% of their calories from carbohydrates, yet have no problem with diabetes or obesity. As we go through the list of remaining authentic indigenous cultures we see diets all over the board, with varying amounts of carbohydrates, protein and fat, yet despite their differences, they all have similarly low levels of disease and low BMIs.

All of these cultures do have one thing in common: the fact that their foods are procured and prepared without the tools of industrialized society. A phrase I have adopted to describe this is that they eat "close to the ground." When we walk into the store in our country and examine our food options many of them are several steps removed from their initial sources. They may have many ingredients and each of those ingredients likely passed through numerous steps of processing before finally being combined together into a "food product." The more removed from its natural state a food is the more of a mismatch it is with our physiology and ultimately the more problematic it is for our health.

This model of evaluating food choices takes a more realistic view of the health value of different food choices. For a lot of diets, food choices are very black and white. For instance with the paleo diet a food is either allowed or it isn't. With vegetarian diets the division is even more black and white. But few things in life, and even fewer things in biology are that black and white. Rather foods exist on a spectrum from healthy to unhealthy. When you evaluate a food choice, consider how far from the ground it is, ie, how many steps removed it is from it's natural state and you can take that into consideration as you prepare your meals. A few grains, or bread products within an otherwise unprocessed diet can be acceptable. On the other hand, eating a strict diet based on dogmatic following of a fad diet is not only unnecessary, in some cases it may even result in poorer health outcomes.

Our diet guide, "The Essential Health Diet*," is built on this premise that foods can be placed on a spectrum from healthy to not so healthy. It offers three basic tiers for addressing different levels of health or goals. You can choose a level that is right for you and your current health state. This becomes your core diet. In addition to those foods, additional food recommendations may be added to personalize the diet for your personal health goals or challenges. But the plan itself is very flexible, there are no calorie restrictions and you don't need to count calories. Rather foods are grouped into different levels of health value and servings are chosen in amounts based on the health of those foods. It keeps you accountable to eating in moderation, without chaining you to a strict dogmatic diet that is impossible to stick to, or too difficult to cook for.


*The Essential Health Diet is available to current patients at no additional charge and includes a 30 minute nutritional counseling session.