Healthy?

If you haven’t worked it out yet, I’m a big fan of simple. An even bigger fan of thinking for yourself. And a huge fan of evidence-based activity.

Today, there are so many “diets” that it’s enough to drive you completely bonkers. And most of them are – please pardon my French – complete bullshit! If people actually stepped back a moment and thought for themselves they’d soon discover that pills, potions and quick fixes don’t work and are not sustainable.

Worse still, our government agencies have got the heads planted firmly in the sand (perhaps an upgrade from where they normally plant them). Take a look at the so called Healthy Food Pyramid from Nutrition Australia. Does anything look wrong to you?

Please tell me that I’m not the only one looking at this diagram and thinking “what the…?” It’s all over the place like a mad woman’s shopping. Let’s take a quick step back…

Mmm, fresh!

Consider the humble human being – Homo sapiens – as a species we have existed for about 200,000 years. Not long in the scheme of things. We lived as hunters and gatherers until about 10,000 years ago then we start to get civilised. Soon, we domesticated animals and developed agriculture.

So, have a think about it. We lived for almost 200,000 years as hunter-gatherers and for under 10,000 years we’ve been moving to an agriculture-based diet. In this time do you think our genetic make-up has changed? If our genetics have in fact altered in the last 200,000 years, the change would be infinitesimal.

As the situation stands we are eating foods that we are simply not designed for.

What you eat matters! There is no use concerning yourself with portions, combinations, meal timings, Glycaemic index values…blah…blah…blah…if you are eating crap! It can’t get any simpler than that.

What to do? Go Paleo, baby! It’s not pseudo-science. It’s been proven over hundreds of thousands of years. Eating from a can or a box is not good for you. Eat fresh, eat real whole foods and you will be healthier than ever. Visit Dr Loren Cordains’s site for all the Paleo info you need.

Need a simple nutritional guide? Here’s CrossFit’s maxim:

Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.

Dead simple!

Selected references:

• Wikipedia
• CrossFit
• Robb Wolf