NEW-TRITION PART 2
In the second part of Buzz Mag’s delve into diet, Jon Sutton looks at the movements which make up today’s modern thinking around nutrition and the broader thought processes behind the most successful food plans.
THE VEGETABLE MOVEMENT
Veganism is the consumption of only foodstuffs which are not derived in any way from an animal, whereas a vegetarian (see distinctions such as lacto-vegetarian etc) will avoid the actual meat of animals, but will consume and use some animal by-products. This distinction perhaps suggests that veganism is less a diet and more an ethical lifestyle choice.
Neither veganism nor vegetarianism, however, will guarantee a healthy diet and both should be carried out with the right checks in place. After all, a bag of sugar and a pint of vegetable oil could be considered vegan friendly. But since there has been a huge lack of vegetables in our diets over the last 50 years, this may be the right way to go for people looking to feel healthier. The high vitamin content of vegetables helps millions of people to stay out of the doctor’s office and the lack of hard-to-digest meat can help to keep a healthy gut.
Vegan converts with high protein needs, however, may need to find a supplement in order to avoid a deficiency. Compared to whey protein (which is dairy), vegan protein (pea/hemp) can come at a considerable cost to the wallet, if not the body. But if you stop spending your salary on steaks, that wallet might soon become more full than you’d ever imagined.
THE MEAT MOVEMENT:
Diets such as Atkins, and more recently Keto, rely on an increase of protein and fats over carbohydrates. Using healthy, naturally-occurring fats – meat fat, coconut oil, olive oil or butter, which don’t become toxic through the extraction process as vegetable oils can – as an energy source will teach the body to become a fat-burning machine, with all the benefits of weight loss and high-energy and none of the carb-crashes associated with more sugary foods. So the science goes.
Even seemingly healthy fruits are off limits to the serious Keto dieter, since they are now engineered to contain so much more sugar than fibre or vitamins – the average apricot now has seven times more sugar than it did 40 years ago.
Taking this a step further is the carnivore diet, which restricts the dieter’s intake to meat alone (Keto practitioners do consume nuts, greens and berries for their anti-oxidising benefits). After a few uncomfortable weeks in ‘ketosis’, Keto-dieters claim massive health benefits alongside their energy levels.
Studies show that these diets can dramatically reduce risks of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer and diabetes, but since other diets can claim similar results, it’s possible that the simple reduction of calories and a wider focus on healthy living, could be the common factor.
PALEO, ORGANIC, NATURAL ETC:
The thought process behind Paleo is that we should eat the same diet as the people of the Paleolithic era, but it can be read to mean anything “pre-agriculture”. This is because post-agricultural products – dairy, bread etc – are so much tougher to digest than natural food that they can cause inflammation issues (whether you’re technically gluten/dairy intolerant or not) which may go on to trigger more serious disease. Followers of the wider organic movement believe the same about products and processes used to spray or bulk up their food.
The focus with both organic and paleo is on natural. Our paleo-predecessors were (it is presumed) hunter-gatherers that relied on meat, fish, nuts, leaves and berries since that was the food available and digestible by the body alone.
The natural/paleo movement can be combined with veganism, meat-only or any variation inbetween. Michael Pollan, author of In Defense Of Food, suggests that going natural is the only real path to perfect physical health, arguing that we eat far too many processed foods in the wider West. “Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting,” he argues. And that may well be the way to go.
(Before starting any diet, please consult your GP.)