A Joosr Guide to... the Diet Myth by Tim Spector

THE DIET MYTH
BY TIM SPECTOR

The Real Science Behind What We Eat

Whats it about?

Obesity is an epidemic that is on the rise all around the world. People try extreme diets, intense exercise regimens, and even surgery, but there doesnt seem to be any single method that works well for everyone. Truth be told, the reason we have such a challenge fighting obesity is that we dont fully understand its cause. But thanks to intensive and ongoing studies into the secrets of the human gut, a better answer may be just around the corner.

The quality of the food we eat has been steadily deteriorating for decades. This is because our food has become more and more processed, with addictive sugars and other undesirable ingredients being added. There are millions of microscopic organisms sharing our bodies and our food, and growing evidence supports the fact that these organisms play a big role in our health. By consuming processed food that lacks essential nutrients, we are killing off healthy microbes and cultivating bad ones, which make us fat and sick.

All the while, the health industry has been making incorrect assumptions about the foods that make us fat and has been influencing our diets accordingly in an attempt to stave off obesity. Healthy, natural food has been cast as the villain for containing fat, carbs, and animal protein, while labs churn out yet more processed food designed to be artificially tasty, and marketed as conducive to weight loss and good health.

The truth is that the less natural a food is, the worse it probably is for your health. And basing a diet on the exclusion of certain food groups that have been wrongly accused of being unhealthy can actually make things worse. The Diet Myth is a look at some of the current misconceptions about whats good and bad for you, and how you can adjust your dietary approach to have happier microbes and a healthier body.

Microbes may be the real secret to health and weight management

Every living thing in this world is teeming with microbes. If you are like most people, then you probably dont think much about microbes. If you do, you are probably worrying about harmful germs that will make you sick. Of course, there are some microbes that are bad for your health. However, when you consider the millions of microbe species that exist, only a tiny portion of them are bad. In fact, a great many more are essential to our health and happily live inside of our bodies.

We are born microbe free, but almost immediately we are swarming with these microscopic creatures. They come from the people around us, the air we breathe, our food and drink, and pretty much everything else you can think of. Once they take up residence in our bodies, they get straight to work keeping us healthy. They help us digest our food, absorb calories properly, provide the enzymes and vitamins we need, and boost our immune system to keep us from getting sick. Without microbes, we wouldnt grow, develop, or function properly.

The more diverse the microbes in your body are, the healthier you will be. And one of the ways we diversify our microbes is to eat a wide variety of natural foods that come packed with microbes. About a century ago this wasnt a challenge, but the modern diet and approaches to food production are gradually destroying this process. Most of us dont have the great variety in our diet that our ancestors had, and much of the food we do consume is heavily processed in ways that remove all the essential nutrients and microbes.

Its no wonder then that diseases and obesity have been on the rise in recent decades. The more we stray from a natural and balanced diet, the more damage we do to ourselves and our microbes. We end up killing off healthy microbes with the processed food we eat, depriving our bodies of essential nutrients by eating an unbalanced diet, and harming our own health as a result. The real secret to a healthy diet is to remember that you have a body full of microbes that need to be sustained with nutritious and natural food. If you feed them properly, they will help keep you slimmer and healthier.

The only truly bad food is the processed stuff packed with added sugar

There are so many differing opinions on what food is healthy for us to eat that it is easy to become confused. Some people regard fat as the root of all evil, while others blame carbohydrates. There are diets out there that say meat is terrible for you, and still others that say fruit is bad. The truth is that all of this advice is wrong. The only food that can honestly be called bad for you is the processed type that doesnt occur naturally and is full of added sugar.

Sugar is okay in small doses where it occurs naturally, like in fruit, but unfortunately today sugar is in a frightening number of things we eat. If you look at the labels in the grocery stores, you might see numerous instances of added sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. And if you dont see it, that doesnt mean the added sugar isnt there. It can be disguised under a variety of names, or replaced by other artificial sweeteners to create that addictive, sweet flavor that humans have begun to crave like a drug.

Items such as soda, fruit juices, and sugar-packed cereals and snacks have all become very popular today, and are destroying healthy diets everywhere. Along with all the added sugar found in so many products today, there are chemical additives and artificially added nutrients that are supposed to make them good choices. But these additives can mess with our hormones and wreak havoc on our microbes.

All of the tampering that goes on with the popular processed foods of today make them incredibly dangerous to our health. Studies have shown that people with diets full of processed foods, who lack more natural and diverse options, have very unhealthy microbes. They share many microbe species with people suffering from severe allergies and immune system problems, and they lack the healthy microbes of people who are thinner and in better health.

If you want a truly healthy diet, the first thing that has to go is the processed food that is taking over our grocery aisles. Get rid of anything that has added sugar, or artificial sweeteners and additives. At first it may seem like there is nothing left to eat; but when you look beyond the processed food that is so popular today, you will find great options that more closely resemble the natural and healthy diets of our ancestors.

The best way to get vitamins is through food, not supplements

The problem with processed foods is that virtually every nutrient that might have made them good or healthy was removed in making them. So to counteract this, nutrients are replaced artificially to make them healthier. Many people then take vitamin supplements, too, hoping to replace whatever their diet might lack. In theory, this should solve the problem, but obesity and dietary issues are still abundant, so clearly something must be going wrong.

Vitamins and nutrients may be artificially added to processed food, but that doesnt mean that they positively impact our health. People who mainly subsist on a diet of processed foods often have vitamin and nutrient deficiencies in spite of added nutrients or the supplements they take. Thats because these essential nutrients are only really any good to us when they occur naturally in foods. When they are added artificially, they often end up going to waste because our microbes are unable to properly extract them.

Our bodies are incredibly adept at extracting vitamins from the food we eat every day because thats what theywith the help of microbesare built to do. It is a process fuelled by natural food. We are not, on the other hand, built to withstand an onslaught of chemicals and nutrients artificially introduced into foods where they dont belong. In most cases, the nutrients wont be extracted at all because they are packaged in a manner foreign to our bodies, and if they are extracted, we are likely to get far too much because they are added into every processed food we eat and drink.