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Diet Wars

In recent months we have gone on a little bit of a food/diet/health documentary bender. The obvious battle raging currently is the low carb vs. low fat battle royale. It appears the battle originally emerged between McDougal and Adkins, and now, the torch is carried on via social media and streaming platforms by folks like Vinnie Tortorich and Michael Gregor. Documentaries and books like How Not To Die, and Fat 1 & 2 offer anecdotal and objective points for both sides, but they all (except In Defense Of Food) seem to be predicated on one improbable concept: There is a best diet for the physiology of the entire human species.


All sides make compelling points for their case, but no one (that I've been exposed to) concedes that this works well for a portion of the population, but that others may require a different protocol for best results. The fact is we all have different genetic predispositions and physiological variables that create a need for a diet nutrition profile unique to our situation. Mark Haub of KSU makes the case that everyone is off base, and that calories are really the only thing that matters- regardless of nutrition profile. He illustrated his point with his diet of Oreos, Doritos, and Twinkies on which he lost 27 pounds and reduced his LDL by 20%.


At the end of the day, none of these thesis are without caveat. My observation, after reading and viewing a bunch of the most popular of this content are these 2 parameters:

  1. Most healthy foods don't care about the way they taste. Unprocessed meats, vegetables, and fruit do not grow hoping to appeal to the consumer. They just occur naturally and they're indifferent to whether you like them or not. Did the food you're considering consuming come to exist in the interest of appealing to your palate, or did it just grow and get harvested?

  2. Most foods that fall into the 'healthy' category as defined in item 1 do not come in bags or boxes. Staying away from foods that come factory packaged in bags or boxes also seems to be a solid general rule for dietary improvement and filtering what one should or should not consume.

The unfortunate reality is that, by virtue of the fact that they are natural, whole foods have precious little marketing horsepower, and they are indifferent to the level of convenience processed foods leverage to appeal to the pace of life in 2022. Lettuce, as a species does not care if we eat salads, nor does it have any desire for us to buy it. Cows do nothing in their day to day in the interest of creating the perfectly marbled ribeye. These are naturally occurring things. When we build a plant to make food, construction of the plant costs money. When we finish construction of the plant, staffing and operation of the plant cost money. If selling the wares of the plant are the only way to pay for the construction, or continuous operation of the plant, we need to assure that the product produced by the plant is welcomed with open wallets by the market. History tells us that the best way to make that happen is by appealing to the tastes of the market, not to their lab values. And so we find ourselves where we are today.

This isn't a dietary recommendation, or a comprehensive review of the topic. It's simply an observation, and a couple of quick and dirty guidelines we're trying to follow at home to improve our grocery/diet game. I am in no way a fitness or nutrition expert- just sharing the meaning I derive from some of what I see in the media on the topic currently.


Happy gardening/cooking/eating!

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