Why we really don't know what to eat

Why can I eat 3,800 calories a day, workout 4 times a week for 30 minutes each and not gain any weight? And then turn around and train for a marathon, eating less calories and working out more and not lose any weight. Why am I always between 205 and 210 lbs no matter what? For years I have been trying to understand how to eat and how it will effect me.

The most important book you can read this year is Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food". But you don't even have to read the whole thing. Pick it up and turn right to the chapter entitled Bad Science (part 1, chapter 9). (The link will take you to the chapter available on Google books.) These 10 pages succinctly sum up the problems with the science of nutrition in a way I have been trying to articulate for several years.

The fundamental issue according to Pollan is that nutrition science, and all science for that matter, must isolate a variable to determine how changes to that variable impact the subject of the research. Nutritional scientists isolate the nutrient. Unfortunately, that approach "takes the nutrient out of the context of the food, the food out of the context of the diet, and the diet out of the context of the lifestyle."

Isolating the nutrient ignores its interplay with other nutrients, chemical compounds, and the human body that is processing it. All of which can create subtle or not so subtle changes in the nutrient's behavior.

Are you familiar with the glycemic index? Many popular diets are based on the principle that some foods have high impact on blood sugar levels than others. In isolation, that is true. A banana will spike your blood sugar level higher than a carrot. But when we start to combine foods (after all, we rarely eat one food at a time) some of the glycemic index science gets blurry. Eat a bagel by itself and those carbs will be processed quickly. Spread some peanut butter on that bagel and the absorption of carbs slows dramatically. The bagels glycemic index number has been altered by the peanut butter.

The supplement industry regularly claims they have "isolated" the enzyme or anti-oxidant responsible for preventing this or that disease. The problem is when the chemical or compound is extracted from the FOOD it rarely has the same impact has when it is left in the food. The reason, the interplay of all the elements of the food is erased when the chemical is processed into a supplement, AND THE INTERPLAY MATTERS. In a test tube, the science works. Beta-carotene in its native food source eats up free radicals. When beta is extracted and placed in a supplement, it just doesn't act the same way.

We don't understand these food interactions very well because our nutrition science doesn't look at food as a whole and doesn't address the uniqueness of our bodies. Eat a steak and you will absorb its iron. Drink coffee when you eat that steak and you won't get much of the iron.

What we do know is that eating real foods in their whole form will provide us with nutrients that help our body function. Continue to eat fruits, vegetables, meats, poultry. Choose organic if you so desire. But be ware of claims about how some part of that food will make you bigger, smaller, taller or smarter. Food is way more than the sum of its parts.

Be well,

Paul

Paul Dziewisz

Active Personal Fitness

www.ActivePersonalFitness.com

267.626.7478

"You give us the effort...we'll get you the results."