The Most Important Principle of Healthy Eating
by Vin Miller
Due to the massive amount of confusing and conflicting nutritional information, many people find it practically impossible to implement a healthy diet. Fortunately, there’s one basic and foundational principle of healthy nutrition that clears the confusion and makes it much easier to eat well.
Unfortunately, the concept of a healthy diet has become very ambiguous and most people who think that they’re eating well are often mistaken. Despite making a significant effort, they fail to recognize this one simple, important, and effective principle of healthy eating.
Embrace the Power of Nature
Despite the conveniences that technological advancement has provided us with, it’s completely altered the way that we eat. In fact, according to the Food, Inc. documentary, our food has changed more in the past 50 years than it has in the preceding 10,000 years. In association with this change, many of today’s most debilitating diseases and conditions are much more prevalent now than they were just a century ago. As such, it’s painfully clear that our modernized dietary guidelines are seriously flawed.
Throughout millions of years of natural selection, we’ve evolved to thrive on the foods provided to us by nature. The work of Dr. Weston A. Price clearly shows this through the shocking contrast between the robust and vibrant health of primitive cultures living on such foods and the rapid degeneration that they experienced after their introduction to modern processed foods. Despite this, we continue to think that we can outsmart nature by inventing our own foods and are left suffering with the consequences.
Where Have We Gone Wrong?
Our current food system is not driven by the nutritional quality of food as it should be, but rather by it’s efficiency and profitability. The food industry is comprised of large corporations that reap tremendous benefits from processed foods that have a low production cost and a long shelf life. What’s good for them is rarely good for us.
The two most common types of food in the modern diet are grain and dairy which also happen to be the two most common food sensitivities. We’ve only been eating grains for less than 1% of our existence and it’s unlikely that we’ve been consuming dairy for much longer than that. As such, many of us are unable to digest these foods well and are susceptible to gluten sensitivity and many of the other problems that can result.
Some cultures, such as the isolated Swiss, have thrived on freshly milled whole grains and raw dairy for many years. However, the grain and dairy that we eat today is much different. Most grains are farmed with chemicals on depleted soil and most of their nutrition is removed during refinement. Dairy cattle are fed an unnatural and inappropriate diet along with antibiotics and sometimes hormones, and much of the nutrition in the milk they produce is destroyed through pasteurization and other processing methods.
The modern diet is largely based on processed foods that are stripped of nutrients, contain unnatural chemical additives that are potentially dangerous, and have an unhealthy amount of sugar and refined carbohydrates. Basically, we’re depriving our bodies of the nutrition we need to promote and sustain optimal health while also consuming an excessive amount of chemicals, sugar, and denatured nutrients. The combination of these factors can very easily lead to a significantly compromised quality of life and is a major reason why conditions such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, autoimmune disease, and obesity have become so prevalent.
Healthy Food is Natural and Whole
Healthy foods don’t come in packaging, don’t have an ingredients list, and aren’t manufactured. Instead, they’re natural and whole, and they come from plants and animals. For the most part, a truly healthy diet is based on meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables with the optional addition of nuts, oils, herbs, and spices.
In contrast to modern processed foods which are often high in carbohydrates and low in essential nutrients, natural whole foods are much more nutritious and are often much lower in carbohydrates, especially the refined variety. In fact, it would be quite difficult for most people to match their current carbohydrate intake with fruits and vegetables alone. This excessive consumption of carbohydrates often causes blood sugar fluctuation and is a major reason why so many people are overweight and suffering from diabetes.
Embracing natural whole foods as the true foundation of a healthy diet eliminates all of the guess work. Instead of obsessing over what foods you should or shouldn’t eat, you can use a few simple guidelines to help you decide. If a food comes in packaging, has an ingredients list, didn’t originate from a plant or animal, and wasn’t available 10,000 years ago, then you probably shouldn’t eat it. Of course there are exceptions to these rules, but in general, if you’re not obeying them the majority of the time, then you’re most likely not eating a healthy diet.
Not All Whole Foods are Created Equal
Unfortunately, the misguided practices of industrial farming which are well documented by Food, Inc. and Fresh the movie, make healthy eating a bit more complicated and difficult than it should be. Because most of the meat and produce that’s available in mainstream grocery stores is produced by industrial farmers, it’s typically less nutritious and often contains chemical residues. This practically defeats the purpose of eating whole foods.
Although it may be a bit more expensive and inconvenient, choosing pasture raised meat, wild fish from clean water, and organic produce is an important part of a healthy diet. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce the cost of high quality food, and by purchasing food from reputable sources, you’ll not only be contributing to your health, but you’ll also be protecting the environment by supporting sustainable farming methods.
Supplements are Secondary
Regardless of whether you’re looking to lose weight, build muscle, improve performance, or simply feel better, supplements are never more important than nutritious foods. Likewise, protein bars and powders are neither necessary nor comparable in quality to whole foods. Despite this, many people invest a lot of time and money in supplements without paying much attention to what they eat. Although supplements can often be beneficial, as their name suggests, they should never be anything more than a supplement to a healthy diet based on natural whole foods.
You Don’t Have to Be Perfect
Unfortunately, many people are discouraged by the prospect of healthy eating because they assume that they’ll never be able to eat good tasting food again. It’s big a mistake to assume that a healthy diet can’t be delicious because it absolutely can. As you eat healthy food more often, you’ll likely grow to appreciate it and prefer it’s natural taste. Even if you don’t, following the 80/20 rule of moderation will allow you to occasionally enjoy unhealthy foods without incurring much of an impact to your health. Without a doubt, it’s much better to eat healthy most of the time than hardly ever.
This article is part of Real Food Wednesdays.
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Once again, you speak the truth! I’ve been passing along your website to coworkers and friends and so far I’ve gotten 4 people to clean up their diets seriously. 2 of my coworkers and their spouses. So thanks for the insight Vin!
Hey Vin! I like your 80/20 advice. You can get a incredible amount of benefit without having to be perfect. I’ve been reading a lot lately, and it is shocking, about how the USDA itself has tracked the reduction in nutrients in modern whole foods. I can’t remember the exact numbers but even since the 70’s there has been a dramatic reduction in the nutrient content of such super foods as broccoli. What a shame.
Excellent advice, you can’t go wrong eating whole foods the way nature intended. Unfortunately many people are fooled by the marketing claims that processed foods are good for you. The new “Smart Choices” program where the American Dietietic Association says Fruit Loops are a smart choice doesn’t help any. Most people are not well enough informed to know what a truly smart choice is, there is just too much conflicting information out there. Kudos to you for pushing whole foods!
About 2 years ago my common sense told me that whole foods should not have an ingredients list, nutrition facts and heavy packaging.
Anyway this article fortified my common sense along with the previous ones!
Thank you all for your comments!
Andrea – Thank you for sharing my website and helping to spread awareness. I truly appreciate it and am happy to have assisted in your effort to help your friends.
Stephen – Yes, even organic food tends to be less nutritious than foods grown 50 to 100 years ago. It’s one of many reasons why modern agriculture needs to adapt more sustainable methods. I’m actually surprised that the USDA would publish such data. If you happen to remember where it was, I’d love to know and check it out.
meatlessmama – The “Smart Choice” program is an excellent example of the food industry’s influence and why it’s bad. The green check mark on the packaging of foods like Froot Loops that’s meant to symbolizes a “smart choice” just goes to show that you can’t trust labeling. Kellog’s has even gone as far as including Froot Loops as part of their “Fuel for School” program suggesting that it’s a good breakfast choice for school children. Ridiculous!
ægil – Common sense is often a beautiful thing.
Good for you Vin!! I agree 100%. I tell people:
If you can… grow as much as you can of your own food, freeze it, dry it, can it, whatever, and fill you bellies with good raw organic veggies all summer. Use lots of organic compost in your garden and grow it all organically, or support local organic farmers by buying directly from them, most of them are more than willing to sell to anyone.
Also, just because a person shops in the a health food stores does NOT mean you are getting healthy food. Since our local Wild Oats (which was bad enough) was bought out by Wholefoods, it seems you can’t buy anything without sugar in it. So read your labels. make your own soups from scratch. It only takes 10 minutes to chop veggies, throw some beans in and herbs and let the soup simmer while you do something else.
It you want to get healthy you have to get smart and be proactive about what you eat.
Great Job Vin.
Hi Vin,
I love this phrase, “Supplements are secondary” – what a simple way to help people understand that food is first and most important.
Thanks for joining in on Real Food Wednesday!
Kelly
Thanks for the comments!
Robin – I think gardening is a great way to get high quality food for less money, but more importantly, it’s a great way to connect with nature and understand the importance of sustainability. I really look forward to starting a vegetable and fruit garden when the time is right.
The natural health market is growing rapidly which is inspiring many large companies to get involved. As such, I totally agree that it’s still possible to make bad decisions in a health food store. I’ve been trying to explain to my wife for several years that organic sugar is still sugar.
Despite what you say about Whole Foods, be happy that you have one! We have nothing of the sort. Fortunately, there’s at least one small local health food store that’s pretty good.
Kelly – I’m glad you liked the phrase.
I hope it will help more people to realize that good health is about more than taking supplements, and that using them to chase symptoms is not much better than relying on prescription medications.
Informative comments. Imformative replies from Vin. Wow!
I found that the most of the big entities look directly on profit (reactive approach, short-sighted) and fail to look deeper (proactive, laser focus sight, sustainability).
I take Apple, Inc. as an example, by truly valuing the consumer most of the time and being passionate about what they should do to help consumers enjoy their products, they earned many fans. That is looking indirectly into profits. They sense the power of consumers. I feel I became creative as a side effect.
Compared to:
Microsoft which short-sightedly looks directly into profits, fail to make consumers truly enjoy their products. They forget the power of consumers, so they treat ordinary users like criminals: license keys galore for windows. They are just obsessed with controlling everything!
Here is blog you might enjoy:
RoughlyDrafted Magazine
I would like to add to Bill Maher’s quote:
The [reactive and obsessive approach to] profit [and control] motive poisons everything!
Hi ægil,
This is a pretty major tangent, but I’m not sure I agree with you about Apple. I think they are very proprietary in nature which is not putting the consumer first. It was only recently that they started selling music through Itunes in the standard MP3 format. Prior to that, they only sold it in their own proprietary M4A format which is very difficult to use in non Apple devices. Similarly, the memory in the iPhone is internal, so if you want to increase its capacity, you have to buy a new one. For this reason, I bought a G1 instead because it uses a removable SD card. I have a friend who had significant issues with the battery of an expensive high capacity iPod. Through his research, he found it to be a common problem and was told by Apple that the batteries, which are not meant to be replaceable, are only designed to last a few years. I think that’s pretty ridiculous considering the cost of their devices.
I do consider Apple to be a reputable company, but I don’t think that they’re values are any better than those of the companies that are pushing unhealthy processed foods on us. And for anyone who thinks that Apple’s products don’t affect our health, think again! According to the EWG’s report on cell phone radiation, the two most recent iPhone models are among the highest producers of radiation which makes them more of a risk for causing brain tumors.
On a more interesting and health related note, here’s a great video of Bill Maher talking about health and the pharmaceutical industry.
That shows [smiles] I truly need to expand my view of Apple from different angles! But I believe most of 50% the time at least they are on the interest of consumers, They produce interesting innovations on the software side I believe, like I enjoy Mac OS X very much!
I was very focused on the personal computers area. It is great I did not request yet for an iPhone from my dad! I do not really use cellphones!
Whatever it is, the less unneeded gadgets, the less stress on you and earth: you save a lot on e-waste! E-waste is a problem. Those who do not appreciate the value of not being materialistic will continually get enticed to Apple’s products!
If you can, write an article about e-waste. Fits Natural Bias! I do not know much about e-waste! How fast technology improves contributes to this problem.
Many people let their materialism take control of them, so in the end Apple only gets a very small amount of blame!
Bit by bit materialism is losing its grip on me.
I realized many businesses are very dependent on the behavior of consumers! They do everything they can to deceive to change the behavior.
A cousin of mine told me as a joke: ‘Maybe you can make a company better than Apple’ [laughs]
We can!
This another example of it is not always “all or nothing” as well…
They are mostly proprietary on the music side.
One thing I hate about apple with their personal computers: glossy screens, the glare is not good for eye health. They glossed their iMac offerings since August 2007.
Here is a site you might enjoy outlining the disadvantages of glossy screens.
I have commented on that site.
Bottom line: Despite all the shortcomings, at least they innovate. They can still do much much better!
As they said at the start of 2007, “the first 30 years is just the beginning”.
Hi ægil,
Yes, e-waste is definitely a concern, especially with how rapidly technology becomes outdated. However, waste in general is a problem as well. Too many people simply buy things that they don’t really need. Check out The Story of Stuff. There are some points to it that I think are flawed, but I think the overall concept is very real and it’s a powerful video. I definitely plan on writing about this topic in the future.
I didn’t know that glossy screens have the potential to be more dangerous. Thanks for sharing the link!
Starting in November I made radical changes in my family’s diet. All four of us are over weight and my younger son and I both fell into the obese category. After some research and common sense I realized that we needed to get rid of the pre-packed stuff altogether and start preparing meals from scratch as much as possible. It is more inconvenient but I have learned to make quick meals when pressed for time.
This was when I started to read labels and was horrified at the crap the food companies are putting in our food! Just one example is I switched to an organic peanut butter. The ingredients are organic peanuts, sea salt, and honey. The Jiff brand I had been buying contains (copy and pasted from the website): PEANUTS AND SUGAR. MOLASSES FULLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS (GRAPESEED AND SOYBEAN), MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, SALT. I don’t even know what a diglyceride is and I was feeding it to my kids. I don’t want to even go into what is in a box of hamburger helper. Certain brands of apple sauce and yogurt have high fructose corn syrup in it.
It’s a huge problem what we have been taught about nutrition. We have been taught to look at the labels for low fat snacks, never reading the ingredients. Margarine (with all of the processed crap) was better that butter. Avocados are full of fat. Red meat is unhealthy and we should eat chicken (loaded with pesticide residues, antibiotics and hormones of course).
My family has lost over 134 lbs combined and my youngest is now in the overweight category instead of obese. The ONLY change we have made is eliminating the processed foods.
Hi Michelle, thanks for sharing your experience! It’s a great story and I hope others will be inspired by it.
I completely agree that it’s simply a matter of common sense to avoid processed food, and as you mentioned, much of what we’ve been told about nutrition goes against this.
Congratulations on your weight loss and I hope your improved diet continues to serve you well! If you still find cooking to be inconvenient, consider cooking meals in bulk so that you don’t have to cook every day. It may be harder to do for a full family, but it can save a great deal of time and make it much easier to follow a healthy diet.
By the way, diglycerides are simply fat molecules with two fatty acids molecules attached to a single glycerol molecule. Monoglycerides have only one fatty acid molecule. The fat naturally found in food tends to be in the triglyceride form, but is broken down into diglycerides and monoglycerides during digestion. Monoglycerides and diglycerides are often used in processed foods to help incompatible ingredients such as oil and water blend together. They’re probably not much of a concern, but considering that they’re often synthetically made when used as food additives and that they generally don’t exist naturally in food, it’s probably best to avoid them.