When I use the term ‘diet’ I’m not talking about a short term, low-calorie, low-fat, meal-skipping restrictive plan.
I use the term diet as it’s used in the animal kingdom. For example, the diet of a blue whale is krill, fish and crustaceans. The diet of a mountain lion is deer, elk and small animals.
The diet of a human being is fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and a small amount of animal foods when available. Oops! I just let the cat out of the bag!
My point is, human beings are ultimately animals. We evolved to eat foods that as a species, we could easily catch, prepare, digest and metabolise.
This makes our best diet mostly plant based, high in herbs, grasses, vegetables, nuts, seeds and grains, with a little ‘prize’ foods here and there. Prize foods are harder to catch or keep fresh; the animal foods. That’s the ultimate human diet. Whole foods. Mostly plant-based.
Now a few things vital things to know about our diet:
The human diet differs depending on environment. For example, coastal dwelling humans are more likely to have a diet rich in seafood as well as plant life. Ice dwellers have far less plant foods and much more seafood. Inland dwellers, depending on the continent, may eat more plants, grasses and small animals or even insects. You get the picture.
Allowing for environmental differences, the human diet has pretty much been the same since the evolution of our species. Ditto for how bodies digest and use the food we eat. Until now...
In the last 100 years, the human diet has changed more than it did in the preceeding several thousand. Industrialisation, refrigeration, transport, mass and mono-crop farming has dramatically altered our diet. It’s also dramatically altered our environment and our health.
Until industrialisation, the human diet had evolved to support optimal physical function and survival of the species. Now the human diet supports convenience, shelf lives, shipping and shareholders.
When we talk about physical function, it’s literally every biochemical action in your body:
Growth and development: Bone, tissue, muscle - including your heart muscle, blood vessels, teeth, hair nails etc.
Thought and cognition: Reaction times, learning, logic, stress response, nervous system health.
Physical movement: How you move, your strength, agility and physical structure, digestive motility, bowel movements, heart pumping, lymph flow and so on.
Immunity: Your ability to resist or fight infections, make antibodies, heal wounds and recover from illness.
Reproductive health: Libido, fertility, foetal development etc.
A whole food, mostly plant based diet delivers all the nutrients you need for optimal physical function, with very few substances that reduce or impair it.
Substances that impair physical function are foods our bodies don’t need and can’t easily metabolise. Sometimes substances as well as processing changes food's structure so significantly it can’t really be called food any more. This includes:
Processed food
Additives
Artificial colours, flavours and preservatives
Artificial sweeteners
Pesticides
Environmental toxins
Heavy metals
Trans fats
Some of these are hard to avoid. Even our ancestors couldn’t avoid environmental toxins in some circumstances. But there weren’t as many back then...
A whole food diet of foods in their most natural form, high in fresh plant based produce, preferably organic and locally sourced, is the best diet you can choose for yourself or your family.
In my whole food programs, I take the basis of a whole food diet to the next level, to remove or minimise foods that outweigh plant foods in the modern diet and are known to cause disturbance to body function.
Those include processed meats, saturated fats, excessive and processed sugar, excessive animal proteins and chemically altered foods.
Then I add specific foods, herbs, spices in combinations and quantities that actively support optimal physical function.
The result is a whole food diet that’s nutrient-rich, toxin low and abundantly healthy. It’s
Easy to digest and metabolise
Low in saturated and trans fats
High in vitamins, minerals and fibre
Has a low glycaemic load
Is anti-inflammatory
Rich in antioxidants and other healthy phyto-nutrients
Eating in this pattern not only supports healthy physical function, it can also re-balance and stabilise where imbalances have occurred. A whole food mostly plant based diet is associated with:
Lower blood sugars
Lower risk and rates of heart disease
Lower risk and rates of Type II Diabetes
Lower Body Mass Index
Healthier cholesterol profiles
Lower waist circumference
Better hormonal balance
Improved gut bacteria
Improved depression/ anxiety response
It sounds pretty amazing, right?
But it doesn’t come in a packet. You’ll never find it on a supermarket shelf, and to be honest, it’s even tricky to find it in a recipe book.
You can learn to make healthier wholefood diet choices. You can adapt your food and diet choices to become more like your body was designed to deal with. When you do, you’ll find yourself naturally tending toward better health.
Do you need to make healthy diet change?
My entire site is dedicated to help you make these changes. Try a program, a membership or just jump online and book a chat to see if I can help.
*REFERENCES ARE AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
I have over 50 scientific research papers dated between 2015-2021 supporting the beneficial impact of whole foods and their nutrients with the claims noted. If you would like one on any specific item noted, please reach out.
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