Do you like healthy food ideas? Do you start your morning with a salt-free protein omelette and end the day with boiled chicken breast? We have bad news for you.
In February 2015, the US updated the official dietary guidelines. It turned out that much of what has been called “healthy eating” for 50 years leads to obesity and diabetes. That is, all those who like to eat breakfast without salt, dine with boiled chicken and buy only low-fat foods are now facing obesity, diabetes and heart disease much more than lovers of coffee with cream and good steaks.
«Good» and «bad» food
In our culture, food is extremely loaded with different meanings, its consumption can cause not only pleasure, but also pride (“I eat right”), guilt, shame (“I ate harmful, forbidden, bad food”).
One of the most common ideas about food in our culture is the division of food into «healthy» and «unhealthy». This approach generates tremendous nutritional anxiety, increases fixation on the subject of food, assigns a person the status of «bad» or «good» depending on what he ate.
Cholesterol in food has nothing to do with blood cholesterol
The intuitive eating approach teaches us not to divide food into healthy and unhealthy, but to choose food according to our inner desire, based on the needs of the body. Often this idea causes surprise, resistance, and even shock — how come, isn’t there healthy and unhealthy food? How, then, to choose the “right”, useful, good for my body and improves health?
The answer to this question in terms of intuitive eating is simple: choose what your body wants right now. If only because ideas about healthy food in nutrition are constantly changing.
«The Great Deception»
Thus, clinical studies have not confirmed the effectiveness of the dietary recommendations, in accordance with which Americans have been eating for two generations.
In particular, the recommendation to eat foods low in fat did not justify itself. The new version states that the cholesterol contained in food has nothing to do with blood cholesterol. That is, the Americans, and after them the whole world, completely in vain avoided egg yolks and liver for decades.
The fact that we have limited fat in our menu for years could cause serious damage to our health.
How is it that we were fooled into eating protein omelettes and cutting out fatty meats? The food industry lobby plays a big part in this: low-fat foods have sold well for decades.
But the main reason is that these recommendations were based on very weak scientific evidence: studies have not shown a causal relationship between phenomena. And scientists overestimated their significance.
In addition, most of the dietary recommendations were based on research from Harvard Medical School, however in 2011 the principal of the school acknowledged that the results of their research could not be replicated.
consequences of delusions
The fact that we have limited fat in our menu for years could cause serious damage to our health. Cutting fat means increasing carbohydrate intake — grains and cereals, vegetables and fruits, what we thought was “healthy.”
Over the past 50 years, fat intake has decreased by 25%, while carbohydrate intake has increased by 30%. Which, according to recent data, significantly increases the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
It is worth returning to the good old diet of our ancestors: less cereals, less sugar, more animal food.
Can meat-free diets be healthy? They can. And they may not be. We still don’t really know this. There is no solid research data that includes adult vegetarians and describes children.
In fact, ever since the «healthy diet» guidelines were issued in 1961, Americans have been involved in an irresponsible, uncontrolled dietary experiment. It’s time to rebuild your nutrition strategy from the ground up.
And until that happens, it’s worth going back to the good old diet of our ancestors: less grains, less sugar, more animal foods — meat, butter, full-fat dairy products. And more trust in your own body, which knows better what it needs.