Sometimes when I comment or otherwise give advice what I write may seem contradictory. My own dietary lifestyle is very very focused, and it needs to be. If I deviate from that then I risk both arthritic reactions and a slowdown in the healing process that my body needs - and will get because of my medical history.
That is different from what I might suggest others might do. If their personal health challenges are/have been as horrible then they may need to follow similar regimes. For most people, hopefully they can get away with picking some ideas and not others.
Where my body has been I want no-one else to go. That's why I post on the subject of healthy eating. You, and only you can be the judge, on how your health exists on the slide between a full life and another world.
So if you do not follow my advice to the letter, that's fine providing your health is improving. That's my measure
Healthy eating = improving health
Written by
andyswarbs
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Thanks for sharing your views, and I appreciate the Healthy eating forum for the opportunity to do so, too.
Zest
Thank you Andy and I appreciate your honesty. Some of us do have health challenges in life and have to deal with them the best way we can and that's exactly what I'm doing at the moment.
You're right that "healthy eating" may be uniquely different for unique people. Diabetics would be a typical example: what's healthy for everyone else would cause them serious problems.
Nevertheless, if you look at the broad mass of humanity - Mr or Ms Average - it's pretty easy to agree on what isn't healthy. Virtually anyone will get ill if they subsist on burgers, microwave meals, and manufactured rubbish, consumed while slumped in front of the TV.
It's less easy to agree on why those diets are unhealthy. The whole question is obfuscated by the poor quality of nutritional "science" and the fact that every politician and public intellectual thinks they're qualified to have an opinion about it. The modern mode of thought conflates opinion with fact to such a degree that it's no longer possible to have a sensible debate about it.
As for the quest for an "ideal diet" (one that's optimal for everyone), it's a fool's errand. Even though we're all human and have the same metabolic machinery inside, individual variations mean that what's optimal for one person will be somewhat less so for another. I do think it's possible, in theory, to offer some broad guidelines. But that's not going to happen until the quality of the science improves dramatically, and politicians stop putting their spoke in.
I think sometimes this is over emphasised. Yes, surely organic is better, however research shows that nutritionally it is only about 10% better. You can easily offset that by eating more vegetables, and making better vegetable choices.
(This advice excludes the "dirty dozen" - vegetables that should always be eaten organic whenever possible.)
Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. I suggested elsewhere that "organic" and "inorganic" are marketing terms. They don't describe what the farmer is doing in any meaningful sense.
There are plenty of farmers who care for their soil and have a good nutrient balance, but can't get Organic certification (the whole thing is mostly a huge scam to create employment for Men With Clipboards). There are also a lot of Organic farmers who've ticked all the right tickboxes but are basically doing standard monocultures without a proper soil-care program - which burns out the soil even faster than "conventional" practice.
As for research, it's rubbish. The reason is simple: we don't know what's important in our food and what isn't. Sure, we can measure vitamins and say this organic carrot has 10% more vitamin-whatever than the inorganic one, but so what? That doesn't describe the big picture. There is an iron law in agriculture called Liebig's law of the minimum, which basically says that crop growth is determined by the limiting factor - whichever nutrient is in shortest supply determines the outcome. What happens if the same is true in humans? What happens if the (additional) nutritional factors in organic carrots are factors we don't even know about, and therefore can't measure?
My own view is that "conventional" agriculture is pointless on several different levels: my main objection is that it's more expensive than natural agriculture [my preferred term], so governments have to pump money into it and make laws so that farmers can do things that would otherwise be illegal. Conventional also produces less output than natural (which is partly why governments have to subsidize it). If you're thinking "that can't be right" because organic products are more expensive in the shops: it boils down to the fact that organic farmers haven't figured out how to market their products to the masses. They're squeezed out by subsidized conventional products. So they just aim for the top end, and inflate their prices to a point that they know their target market will pay.
In this series of posts I am trying to be as uncontroversial as possible. And so I am totally avoiding advising whether specific foods are good or bad. I like your question and hope to return to that subject sooner rather than later in a separate post.
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