Nutrition has been at the forefront of my fitness thinking lately. I've learned a lot in the last month and made some very positive changes to my nutrition as a result. There are some easy steps you can take as well to improve the quality of the food you eat.
Last month, I had the opportunity to travel to Scottsdale, Arizona and attend a Tony Horton Fitness Camp. From the 22nd to the 24th of January, I got the chance to work out with the man who created P90X, and to hear seminars on a variety of topics. Most of the seminars were given by Tony himself, but one was given by Melissa Costello. Melissa is Tony's personal chef and the owner of KarmaChow. She spoke, not surprisingly, about nutrition and its impact on health. While Melissa is a vegan, she isn't militant about it. She acknowledges that everyone makes their own personal choices, and the focus of her presentation was to give the audience information about options that are available to them.
I can say at the outset that I have no intention of becoming a vegan, or even a vegetarian for that matter. Having said that, my eyes have been opened to a great degree about the benefits of a diet that is more plant-based than animal-based (what some people call a "flexitarian" diet). In addition to Melissa's presentation, I've recently seen the movie "Food Inc." and I'm reading Michael Pollan's book, "In Defence of Eating". Each has changed the way I look at supermarkets, restaurants, and really, food in general.
The main things I've started thinking about are where, exactly, the food on my plate comes from, and how it got there. These questions touch on different areas.
I wouldn't call myself an environmentalist, but do I really need to buy tropical fruit in the middle of winter that flew thousands of kilometres to get to me? Or fish that was caught in southeast Asia? I admit that sometimes our options are limited and we have to choose from what's available, but when the opportunity to buy local (or at least from the same continent) arises, shouldn't we take advantage? When you live in a place like Canada, it's a lot easier to think this way in the summer. Still, there are choices we can make year-round that will lead us to fresher, more nutritious food that isn't grown on the other side of the planet. Locally-grown apples and tomatoes can be found just about 12 months a year. Greenhouses still grow fruits and vegetables even when it's too cold for outdoor growing...there are choices available to us if we take the time to look.
Another issue concerns animal products. After watching "Food Inc." and seeing what commercial/industrial food production really looks like, I have to admit that my feelings on eating meat changed. As I said earlier, I'm not looking to become a vegetarian, but seeing chickens that have grown so big so fast because of hormones that they can barely walk, and when they do it's in a pen filled with feces, has made me think about where the chicken on my plate comes from. Seeing cows too sick to walk being pushed towards slaughter by a forklift has made me wonder exactly what we as a society are doing. If, for some reason, this was the only possible way to raise animals for consumption, then there wouldn't be much that could be done. The thing is, it isn't. There ARE ways to raise animals that 1) treats them more humanely and 2) actually creates healthier meat. Unfortunately, those ways are not the most economically efficient. In the race to maximze profits, the animal processing companies have focused solely on the bottom line. How has this impacted on the people who buy the end products at the grocery store? Well, can you recall a time when you heard about foodborne illness in the news so frequently? I can't.
Here's one example: Cows are meant to eat grass. If you introduce corn into their diet (commercial cattle's main food source), two things happen: they get fatter faster, and the risk of infection from e.coli goes up. Higher profits at the cost of higher risk.
Feed a cow grass, however, and it will be a healthier (albeit slimmer) animal who likely won't need antibiotics. It's stomach will process the grass properly, and the end product will be beef that is healthier to eat. The problem is that feeding grass to cattle requires open space, which means fewer cows per acre of farmland, which means lower profits.
The same goes for pigs, poultry, and all other commercially-raised animals. More space and better treatment equals healthier products. I like my food to be affordable as much as the next person, but how "cheap" is it if we're paying the price in increased risk of disease?
My advice to you is this: if you can afford it, and if you can find it, think hard about switching to organic meat. I have found that, in addition to the health benefits, it actually tastes better too.
Another step I've taken personally is to become a "restaurant vegetarian". When I eat meat at home, I can control what it is and where it comes from. In a restaurant, I don't have that luxury. So, when I eat out, I now stick to vegetarian dishes. I feel better for having made this choice, and vegetarian items are usually healthier and a few bucks cheaper as well. It's an easy way to immediately improve the overall quality of your diet.
The other facet to the question of where my food comes from relates not to geography but to science. I've mentioned elsewhere on the site that at a grocery store, you're best advised to stick to the outer edges. There, you'll find produce, the baker, the butcher, dairy, items that are (generally) still in the form they took in nature. In the aisles, on the other hand, is where you'll find foods that have often been so processed and altered that they really aren't "food" anymore. Rather, they are what Michael Pollan calls "edible foodlike substances". While I won't try to summarize all of Pollan's points in his book (which I highly recommend reading), I will mention that his claims regarding food science seem hard to refute. In the grocery aisles, we now have literally thousands of items whose main ingredients include three items: corn (in the form of high fructose corn syrup, or simply "glucose-fructose" in Canada), wheat (white flour), and soy (soybean oil, soy lecithin, etc). This is because governments have historically subsidized the growing of these crops, making them cheap and plentiful for commercial food processors. The problem is, all three carry health risks: high fructose corn syrup is linked to obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes complications; white flour got that way because almost all nutritional value has been refined out of it, leaving largely empty calories behind; and soy contains phytoestrogens that can affect hormone balances in humans and potentially increase tumor growth in breast cancer patients.
Chemical preservatives, flavours, colours, and texture enhancers are all often found in packaged, processed foods. With every unpronounceable chemical ingredient, these products move farther and farther away from the foods they are supposed to represent. Pollan gave an example ingredient list in his book. It came from a loaf of Sara Lee whole grain bread. Rather than the yeast, sugar, salt, flour and water you might expect to find on the ingredient list, it boasted a total of 41 different components. All to make bread. These included a subset called "dough conditioners", whose sole purpose was to soften the bread so that it would break down in the mouth with less need for active chewing. The notion that commercial food companies are actively trying to create foods that require less effort on the part of the eater is explored by Dr. David Kessler in his book, "The End of Overeating". The addition of extra fats, for example, increases the melt-in-your-mouth quality of foods, allowing the eater to swallow them down and reach for more that much sooner.
To counter this ever-increasing trend towards foodlike substances and away from foods, staying on the edge of the grocery store is a good tactic. So is staying out of the grocery store altogether and using seasonal farmers' markets. When you do buy packaged food, and I admit that we all have to buy at least some of it, take a moment to read the ingredients. If a product contains ingredients you can't define or pronounce, do you really need it in your body? Probably not. Pollan's urging of his readers to "Eat Food" sounds absurdly simple, but the thing is, more and more of what's on grocery store shelves comes out of a laboratory, not a farm.
I hope this post has made you think about your own food choices. I'm not here to convert anyone to anything. The whole purpose of this site is to pass along useful information I find in my own wellness journey. If it inspires conversation, that's great. If it inspires you to make some different, healthier choices the next time you go food shopping, even better.
If you have any questions about anything I've said, or are looking for more information, or think I'm completely wrong about all of this, I encourage you to leave a comment and open up some discussion about this fascinating topic.
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