Nutrition Austerity Part II: Eat Real Food

You are ALL sexy beasts. Source

Among the core tenets of a good eating plan, the most important (in my opinion), is food quality. It is the basis of a sound eating plan or diet. Improving how you eat by WHAT you eat should top the list of things you have to do if you want to get healthy, fit, and strong. Eat sexy beasts and become sexy beasts. But in a discussion about eating for any particular goal, the question of 'how much' you should eat will inevitably come up. This will be addressed in more detail in Part III when I discuss eating for your activity levels, but in general you want calories to coincide with goals. If you are trying to get stronger and bigger then you eat more. If you want to get leaner then you want to eat less. It's simple yet not so simple. Before getting into the topic of real food, I want to talk about some stuff regarding caloric intake that leads into the discussion.

Short-term, you will lose weight by eating less. This is almost irrefutable. Studies done in diet wards where subjects are locked in rooms and they eat under continuous supervision has shown time and time again that those who eat less lose weight. People who eat less in general live longer, think more clearly, and improve health markers (1, 2, 3)

On the flip side, we know, but not with absolute certainty, that those who eat more gain weight--there are certain conditions that allow do not allow weight-loss despite caloric restriction, such as thyroid disorders and genetic defects. Three-hundred pound bodybuilders did not get to their massive proportions by eating like squirrels; they eat like bears.

Despite the evidence that eating less helps people lose weight, there exists a threshold. Like everything else in life, there is a point of diminishing returns and that is especially true for fitness and nutrition. You cannot eat yourself into oblivion nor should you. Once you get to a certain point, eating less does not work. To help illustrate this, I want to play out a hypothetical scenario based on a professor's self-experiment on calorie restriction. This audacious fellow cast out to refute one of Gary Taubes' theory that calories do not matter. He survived on a paltry 800-calorie diet of Twinkies, candy bars, and chips and lost 26% of his bodyweight. Mind you, he was overweight to begin with, but his n=1 experiment showed that calories do matter. The burning question is: did he keep it off? I have no idea. But riddle me this: how good is a weight-loss program if you lose weight in 8-weeks, but at week 10 you can it all back and then some? It's a leading question, I know, but research has shown that those who undergo severe calorie restriction gain back all of the weight they lost at an average of 2-years post-diet, but many dieters end up weighing MORE than when they started their diet (4). That's friggin' disheartening.

Nevermind the appearance: the candy diet. Source

Here is one point that people fail to realize when undergoing diets: health. There is a difference between being healthy and healthier. You can become healthier by losing weight if you are morbidly obese. In fact, research shows that losing 10% of your bodyweight leads to drastic reductions in heart disease risk. If you are 400 pounds and your blood pressure is 200/100, losing 40 pounds and dropping blood pressure to 185/90 means you are healthier, but still not healthy. But where is the line? If you can become healthier by losing weight, doesn't it stand to reason that losing weight irrespective of method should make one healthy as long as you lose enough? Yes and no. If you are morbidly obese and have amazingly high risks for heart disease, then rapidly losing weight eating an 800-calorie candy diet may reduce those risks. This is you becoming healthier. Chances are, however, you cannot keep it up. You will keep eating candy, and if you're lucky, you will gain back all that weight back before your teeth rot to hell. As frosting on the cake, your health will be MUCH WORSE than it was before. And that is the difference between healthier and healthy. Whereas healthier is a relative term, healthy is a more absolute one.

My point? Eat for health. If you focus on health by eating real food, you won't have to worry about whether the weight will come back, because it won't. On top of that, you will not be sacrificing your health for weight-loss.

So how do you change your lifestyle habits to emphasize life-long health and wellness? Scrap the idea of going on a diet and change your behavior. First step, start focusing on FOOD and not CALORIES (but remember to eat for your activity levels; more on that later).

EAT REAL FOOD

No matter what your goal is, you should always center your diet around real food. What is real food? Food that could have been found in your great-great-great grandmother's pantry. Food that does not contain ingredients that a 3rd grader cannot pronounce. 80% of the time, you should eat real food. The 20% is known as the moderate rule in which you could eat other crap. However, I do not recommend this because it is basically a ticket to eat junk every day.

Simplicity

Just... no. Nice way to Desecrate the chicken and bacon. Source

Cheez-Its is not food and I don't give a flying donkey's anus what you think. Yes, it may taste good, but taste alone does not determine its stance as true sustenance. Though you should limit overly processed foods (OPF) as much as possible, I realize it is damn impossible to completely eliminate them. Unless you live on a mountain and live with goats, you probably go to the grocery store like every other civilized human being. To give you an idea of what an OPFs food label looks like, take a gander:

Ritz crackers. Crack yourself over the head if you eat this. Source

I don't expect anyone to avoid OPFs completely (unless you have a disease, allergies, malabsorption issues or just feel like it) because doing so is very unrealistic. If you can read this blog, you probably eat OPFs. Just keep it to a minimum, 20% per day at the most and fill in the rest of your day with real food.

If you need help determining what real food is, take a look at the ingredient label. All real food have one ingredient. Here is an example:

Guess. And no, it is not a Cadbury's vanilla egg candy. Source

Some real foods have a few ingredients. Here is an example:

Bloody claws from a salvaged hyena. Or kimchi. Source

Kimchi has a handful of ingredients, but it traditionally contains only things you can find in a natural state. Garlic, scallions, cabbage, red pepper powder (questionable, sure, but I give it the benefit of the doubt), salt. Beware of impostor kimchi that uses monosodium glutamate and Buddha knows what else, which brings me to my next point.

Quality

Not all chickens are created equal nor do they taste the same after cooked. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that chickens treated inhumanely scores lower across the board compared to a naturally raised chicken, unless you are on terrible budget that prevents you from eating natural chickens. If this is the case, then stop making it rain in the strip club.

Less chicken, more feces. Source

The source of the above picture, University of Colorado, states that the " primary environmental concerns at concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) arise from the generation of large amounts of animal waste and as a result of the large scale of operations.    In general, animal waste is collected and stored in lagoons.
The concentration of the waste and the lack of treatment typically results in powerful odors and air pollution." Population of these CAFOs can exceed 1,000 units. Wait, units? Yes, animals are just seen as disposable pieces of meat. They get no love. Do you want your food to wade around in their own feces? Or better yet, in their neighbors'? Trust me, if you care about your health, you care about how your food is treated. Thus, you care about the quality of your food. 

Here is another reason why you should care about where your food comes from: pesticides and insecticides are preferably stored in adipose (fat) tissue of animals. Even after slaughter, harmful chemicals are still found in adipose tissue (5). Some known harmful chemicals, like dioxin and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), selectively stay in poultry livers. Not that you should eat chicken livers, but since the liver is the processing plant of the body, it could be theorized that if high amounts of toxins are found in conventionally raised chicken livers, then they could be found in adipose tissue (6). So if you are not catching my drift, I am basically saying that pesticides/insecticides are not something you should eat. The last thing you want topping your bacon is Round-up. 

Let's use me as an example of how food quality can affect the body. Ever since I was young, I was terribly intolerant to lactose, the sugar found in milk. Asians are known for being lactose intolerance, and in this regard, I did not disappoint my heritage. One sip of milk from a $3/gallon container of milk sent me rushing to the john and kept me there for a good half decade. Then on one fateful day, I drank an unlabeled jar of milk that was sitting in my mom's fridge. I was in quite the pickle since the only other thing my mom had in her fridge was Kraft's sliced american cheese, orange juice, and carrots. I bite the bullet and drank the milk. I fully expected an onslaught, but the war never came. Later I found out the milk was grass-fed, organic, and local. The farm that produced the milk was a 10 minute drive from the house and I bought a few gallons by putting cash in a community drop box and grabbing the milk from the fridge that was in the barn. So if you were ever wondering how I started my career in nutrition, this is the story. 

Vegetables work in pretty much similar fashion as animal food. The biggest difference is that plants are the liaison between the earth and larger organisms, meaning that no matter where you are on the food chain, plants are the first thing you eat. Even if you are a pure carnivore, the animals you eat ate grass or weeds. In the case of conventional farming, plants are also subject to intense irrigation using pesticides. As a result, many conventionally raised produce may not be as robust as their naturally-grown counter-parts, leading them to spoil quicker. To offset this, manufacturers have to add artificial additives to prolong shelf-life. Going back to the kimchi example: kimchi is an amazing food if created using traditional means. If you make kimchi by using fresh cabbage and then letting it age naturally in a jar for a couple of weeks, it will make both healthier and tastier kimchi than if you were to buy kimchi that was processed in a huge plant with additives to make it taste better. The later process only creates an illusion through taste, but not quality. Ditch the crap.

The list of Sexy Beasts

Let me provide you with a short and non-exhaustive list of food that I try to keep in stock at all times. I am an omnivore now and I center my diet around high-quality protein sources from animals. Despite that, I do not consume that much animal meat. The primary reason is because I am friggin' poor. Don't get me wrong, I love animals (I have two dogs) and I am cognizant about how they are treated before slaughtered, but I ultimately care more about myself than a cow. I will go into later how you can be healthy as a vegetarian/vegan, but I prefer to be healthy eating animal meat. Let it be known that I do not push vegetarianism on my blog nor do I admonish it. 

• Land animal meats, lean: bison, ground beef, chicken breast, pork tenderloin, turkey, duck, rabbit
• Land animal meats, fatty (make sure to get these organic): pork belly, bacon, chicken thighs, ground beef, beef chuck
• Sea animal meats: crab, shrimp, mussels, squid, octopus
• Organic eggs 
• Some dairy (make sure these are all grass-fed and organic): butter, ghee, cream, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, yogurt 
• Other animal products: chicken, beef and fish stock
• Cooking fats: butter, ghee, beef fat (tallow), organic lard, red palm oil
• Green leafy vegetables (land and sea): seaweed, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, asparagus, cauliflower, carrots, celery, kale, Swiss chard, collard greens, beet greens, etc.
• Some fruits (not all fruits are created equal): tomatoes, cucumbers, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, apricots, pears, etc.
• Other vegetables: onions, garlic, mushrooms, kimchi, sauerkraut 
• Starches: white rice, taro, potatoes of all varieties (yams being optimal), oats, quinoa
• Legumes: black beans, cannellini beans, lentils 
• Raw nuts and nut butters (eat sparingly): hazelnuts, brazil nuts, almonds, macadamia, pistachios, almond butter, peanut butter 
• Condiments and spices: parsley, cinnamon, dill, sea salt, ground black pepper, lemon lime, raw apple cider vinegar, ground mustard, Srirachi hot sauce, coconut aminos, gluten-free soy sauce, ginger, turmeric, thyme, rosemary

The above list has 99% real, unadulterated food. It is not an exhaustive list but one that you can use as a guideline. There will be foods that are not on the list that people enjoy eating; some of those foods are healthy, some are not. Also be aware that not all foods on this list are appropriate for all goals. Fret not for anything that gets you healthy and closer to your goals is a sexy beast. 

No matter what your goal is, emphasize real food. Good health supports good health.

Have a comment? Drop a line.

Sources

1. Xydakis AM, Case CC, Jones PH, et al. Adiponectin, Inflammation, and the Expression of the Metabolic Syndrome in Obese Individuals: The Impact of Rapid Weight Loss through Caloric Restriction. JCEM. 2004, 89(6). 

2. Imayama I, Ulrich CM, Alfano CM, et al. Effects of a Caloric Restriction Weight Loss Diet and Exercise on Inflammatory Biomarkers in Overweight/Obese Postmenopausal Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Cancer Res. 2012, 72.

3. Fabricatore AN, Waldden TA, Higginbotham AJ, et al. Intentional weight loss and changes in symptoms of depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Obesity. 2011, 35:1363-1376.

4. Curioni CC, Lourenco PM. Long-term weight loss after diet and exercise: a systematic review. International Journal of Obesity. 2005, 29:1168-1174.

5. Glynn AW, Wernroth L, Atuma S, et al. PCB and chlorinated pesticide concentrations in swine and bovine adipose tissue in Sweden 1991–1997: spatial and temporal trends. Science of the Total Environment. 2000, 246 (2-3):195-206.

6. Ghimpeteanu OM, Militaru M, Scippo ML. Dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls contamination in poultry liver related to food safety – A review. Food Control. 2014, 38:47-53.