Good health does not come naturally. We need to work on it by having a genetically appropriate lifestyle. That includes a proper diet and supplements that complement that diet and regular physical activity. By emphasizing this interplay of three elements, we can resist the tendency to look for magic bullets that are presented as tea solution for good health. Life is too complicated for a single factor to be of paramount importance.
The term genetically appropriate refers to the fact that our body chemistry reached its current form tens of thousands of years ago, when our ancestors lived in the grasslands and temperate forests of Africa. That was long before humans migrated to the various environments of Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Australia. They had no grains, sugar or dairy products, foods that now account for more than 70 percent of the world’s caloric intake.
As a nation we are overfed and undernourished. An exaggeration? Hardly. Only 30 percent of Americans are from normal weight. The rest have 10 or more pounds of excess body fat, and about one person in 20 struggles with a hundred or more. The trend began shortly after the mid-20th century, when processed foods, televised diners, fast-food restaurants, and eventually super-sized restaurants appeared.
Three ingredients make food taste good: sugar, fat, and salt. The latter doesn’t lead to weight gain, but it does contribute to high blood pressure in some unfortunate people. That’s made worse by the fact that calories concentrated in sugar and fat lead to excess body fat, which also increases blood pressure.
Sugar is totally devoid of nutrients, but in its various forms it comprises nearly 25 percent of the caloric intake of the average American.
The fats in our diet are no longer the ones that contribute to health. Natural foods contain small amounts of trans fat, but they are chemically different from modern synthetic versions and do not damage blood vessels. Omega-6 fats found primarily in vegetable oils play a role in how our bodies handle inflammation, but excessive amounts in our diets are associated with various chronic diseases such as lupus.
Even saturated fats are different in grain-fed animals than those that are grass-fed or free-range. Wild game has only about a fifth of the fat as the corn-fed confined animals we raise for food and much of it is healthy. polyunsaturated and monounsaturated versions.
Wild salmon eat other fish and a wide variety of creatures found in their natural habitat. Farmed salmon eat grain, spend their lives in tight pens, and receive antibiotics and additives. Healthy omega-3 fats are lower in farmed salmon, except for those that are actually fed fishmeal.
Modern farming practices have improved crop yields, but they haven’t improved the nutrient content of that bounty to the same extent. In fact, the opposite has happened. The US Department of Agriculture and numerous university-based agricultural programs have documented that key nutrients such as protein, iron, and zinc have decreased as yields per acre increase. This is especially true of fruits and vegetables that have been farmed for size, sweetness, and starch content at the expense of valuable vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.
The food industry has been enormously successful in getting us to eat refined flour and sugar to the exclusion of whole grains, vegetables and fresh fruits from the garden. To be sure, many packaged foods are now “enriched” with vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Designer additives like calcium, omega-3 fats, and isolated antioxidants appear in every grocery store, but only in natural foods are they found in the variety and ratio we require for optimal health.
It’s been several years since the American Medical Association reversed its anti-vitamin stance and declared that most Americans need a multivitamin/multimineral supplement. Supplements always come second to natural foods, but as a nation we resist the recommendation to eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables every day. Barely one in five Americans eat that much consistently, and even fewer eat the optimal 10 servings.
The end of World War II ushered in the era of the two-car family and a dramatic decline in physical activity. Sophisticated machinery in the workplace and labor-saving devices in the home replaced muscle power. By the turn of the century, kids had traded in their baseball gloves and bikes for Nintendo and computer games. Few people realize that daily moderately intense physical activity is not only desirable, but absolutely necessary for the human body to avoid the diseases that now threaten to blight our health care system: heart disease, stroke, diabetes. type 2, dementia and osteoporosis. At the beginning of the 20th century, all of these diseases were uncommon, if not rare.
Today’s hunter-gatherers are free from these diseases even in old age. “They didn’t live long enough” to contract these diseases is a delusion that has been disproved by well-documented observations that about 20 percent of hunter-gatherers, even those who have been pushed into marginal food-producing areas, live more than 70 years. Okinawans, whose lifestyle is not that dissimilar to their Stone Age ancestors, are vigorous and disease-free well into their 90s. People in Western societies who adopt a genetically appropriate lifestyle that resembles that of these “primitive” peoples can lose fat, reverse heart disease, and strengthen weakened bones.
The rewards of a genetically appropriate lifestyle go beyond avoiding crippling chronic diseases. It can be seen in the vigor of the septuagenarians who compete in the Senior Olympics, the octogenarians who spin on the dance floor and the centenarians who are able to remember the names of their great-great-grandchildren and blow out the symbolic candle on their cake. birthday. We should all live as long and as well.
