why diet is so important?
What we eat (and just generally what we put into our bodies) is one of the most important things we do each day. Scrap that. It is one of the most important things we do. Period.
Food is our fuel. It keeps us going. Think of your body like your car: when it runs out of gas you top it up. But, if you put diesel into a petrol engine it’s going to fuck up, much like our bodies. As much as you might scream and shout about it, your car still won’t work unless you take it to a mechanic, get it sorted, and then feed it the correct fuel.
The thing is, our bodies are a little bit more complicated than just using petrol over diesel. Or even switching to electric. It’s just not that simple.
That’s probably one of the most important things I’ve learnt over the years since managing my health. I’ve been a ravenous meat eater, veggie, vegan, keto, FODmap (name the diet and I’ve probably done it - bar Atkins) and it’s taken me a long time to figure out what actually works for me and my body. No two bodies are the same. We’re all made up relatively the same way. But, we don’t all work the same, so we don’t all need the same things.
A good example of this is looking at calories.
A calorie is a measurement of energy. We use it to tell us how much energy we get from food or how much we need to keep going. But, a calorie is just an average. What I mean by this is: calories change from person to person (1). One person might eat a strawberry cheesecake and get 200 calories from it, another person might only get 150, but a third person might get 250 (variabilities not scientifically accurate - I just pulled them out my arse). This is because the rate that our bodies metabolise (use up) the energy we get from food is individual. So, if calories vary from person to person, so does pretty much everything else. From how much food we need, to what sorts of food we need.
I know it sounds boring, and long, and you’d rather just eat the fucking strawberry cheesecake without someone softly whispering the variabilities in calorie metabolism down the back of your neck. But, the reason this is so important is because what we eat doesn’t just make us put on a little bit more fat that we’d want to. Or, hinder us with shame and guilt after conspicuously yamming 30-chicken nuggets with a strawberry milkshake after claiming to be vegan (been there…).
What we eat has a massive impact on our mental health, as well as our physical health.
Our diets have changed exponentially in the west since the end of World War 2. Rationings, mass destruction, and mass trauma ignited this technological boom in food production which has led to the western diet that we know and love (or hate) today. Mass meat production, shelf-life foods, packaged, tinned and distributed worldwide. This has meant that we were able to get a lot more food for a lot less money. After 30 years of on-off rationing from both wars, this was a miracle invention. But, like pretty much everything in life, short-term gratification leads to long-term consequences.
Packaged and processed foods don’t contain anywhere near the nutritional value of whole foods (literally meaning: food that hasn’t been processed). Not only that, the additives used to keep your food “factory fresh” for so long are actually really harmful. Heart disease (from weight gain), cancer, and mental health issues are the top three trumps of health risks when fuelling your body with this type of food.
And a lot of these risk factors are down to one thing in particular: our microbiome.
The gut-brain link is something that has only relatively recently been discovered. Research shows that the microbes in our gut can affect our risk to cancer and disease, control our metabolism, influence our mental health, and pretty much any part of our general health, as our microbiome is also responsible for 80-90% of our immune system.
Processed and packaged foods contain additives that kill off the good bacteria in our gut, meaning that all we have left are the bad guys.
This is why nutrition can get pretty complicated and no two nutritionists can give you a straight-up answer. You can’t just pay 45 quid and get a full list of everything you (specifically) should and should not be eating to make you the best person you can be (I wish it was that simple).
Our microbiome is influenced by a whole load of different things throughout our entire life. Literally. The first little guys that colonise our guts come from our Mumma’s vaginal canal when giving birth. So, a lot of babies who are born via c-section are prone to getting more health issues later on in life, such as asthma, allergies and obesity (2). I’m not saying this to point blame at women who have c-sections as sometimes it’s completely necessary (also, freedom of choice). And, it doesn’t mean that your baby will definitely get these issues. In fact, some people now swipe their c-sectioned baby’s mouth with the bacteria from their canal to avoid it (which seems to work) (3), so there are ways around it. Another way around it (and one of the most important to note) is the food we eat.
What we’re exposed to from a young age, and what we eat throughout our lives, has a big impact (if not the biggest) on our microbiome.
So, through this blog I’m going to share some basic nutritional tips that I’ve picked up over the years. As I said, nutrition is complicated, because we’re complicated. So, I’m gunna make it simple for you. Because, as complicated we are, looking after ourselves is really quite simple.
references:
1. Spector, T. (2015) The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat,London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (accessed 25 August 2022)
2. Ríos-Covian, D.; Langella, P. and Martín, R. (2021). ‘From Short- to Long-Term Effects of C-Section Delivery on Microbiome Establishment and Host Health’, Microorganisms 9.10: 2122 (accessed 25 August 2022)
3. Collen, A. (2015) 10% Human: How Your Body’s Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness, London: William Collins (accessed 25 August 2022)