EFL Blog

You have all seen the stories on the news – eat desserts for breakfast and lose weight! Drink more wine for better health! And on and on it goes so I thought I’d use an equally subtle title for this blog post. We would naturally love to believe these things, and judging by the fact that 2/3rds of Americans are overweight or obese, many of us do.

And in some respect I don’t blame people. For decades now our society has been bombarded by misinformation sponsored by food corporations looking to increase profits by finding ways to get us to eat more food.  But they figured out long ago that by making processed food easier to buy and cheaper than real food, or “food” as your grandparents called it guaranteed bigger profits.

The problem is it has resulted in the aforementioned obesity epidemic.

This article on human diet development from Dr. Stephan Guyenet addresses the fundamental issues:

Over the last century, a period far too short for significant genetic adaptation, industrialization has changed radically the way we eat. Today, the majority of food that typical Americans eat is prepared commercially, either in packages or from restaurants, and refined sugars and fats are universal. These foods are designed to be extremely palatable — so palatable, in fact, they run roughshod over the body’s normal satiety signals and encourage overeating. The top six calorie sources in the U.S. diet today are grain-based desserts (cake, cookies, etc.), yeast breads, chicken-based dishes, sweetened beverages, pizza and alcoholic beverages. These are a far cry from the foods that sustained our ancestors.

He also cautions us to not get caught up in this or that diet, even the Paleo trend.

Should we all eat a hunter-gatherer diet? Not necessarily. Human evolution did not end with the Paleolithic era. Each person carries a particular set of genetic adaptations that result from the unique dietary environment of his own ancestors, so it’s important to emphasize that traditionally prepared grains, legumes and dairy can be healthy foods for many people.

I always enjoy talking with clients older than myself who often talk about how when they were growing up going out to eat was a rare treat, soda bottles were 1/3 the size we have now, nobody carried around bottles of water or worried about being dehydrated, and for the most part nobody ate snacks. Most everyone just ate three meals a day, the vast majority of them at home, the ingredients of which likely did not come out of a box, nor contain much sugar.

We all know that a diet consisting of vegetables, fruits, berries, and protein sources (meat or otherwise) is healthy, so why is it so hard for most of us to simply eat those foods? If I knew the answer I wouldn’t be writing this now but would be chilling on my private island, seeing as the fat loss and diet book industry is a multi-billion dollar business.  I guess my telling people to grow up, eat your veggies, and be an adult doesn’t cut it. Such is life.

So now that we’ve established I don’t have all the answers check out this TED talk full of details about ways in which what we eat can be the difference between a life of health and vitality and one full of disease and pain.  The really scary part is this is not hype. The REALLY cool part is it is completely in your control to change and feel better.

For a bonus source of information my friend Lou Schuler recently passed along this article on human diet development from Dr. Stephan Guyenet

Over the last century, a period far too short for significant genetic adaptation, industrialization has changed radically the way we eat. Today, the majority of food that typical Americans eat is prepared commercially, either in packages or from restaurants, and refined sugars and fats are universal. These foods are designed to be extremely palatable — so palatable, in fact, they run roughshod over the body’s normal satiety signals and encourage overeating. The top six calorie sources in the U.S. diet today are grain-based desserts (cake, cookies, etc.), yeast breads, chicken-based dishes, sweetened beverages, pizza and alcoholic beverages. These are a far cry from the foods that sustained our ancestors.