Nearly every day I see examples of just how destructive our current day ‘nutrition wars’ are on our physical, emotional and mental health.
People frozen in confusion and fear in supermarket aisles, farmers markets and their own kitchens as to the ‘right’ food to buy and cook has become a very real thing.
It is completely absurd and completely understandable.
Each way you turn you have someone telling you:
‘eat this’, ‘no don’t eat that, eat this’,
‘that food causes cancer’, ‘actually that food protects you from cancer’,
‘this food has magical superfood powers’, ‘no that superfood is actually toxic’…
Who do you believe?
Well for me it always comes back to ME.
I believe ME.
I listen to MY body.
My body’s only agenda is for ME to be well.
If you have been following this page for a while you will know that I don’t ascribe to any food being inherently toxic, bad or poisonous.
Depending on whose ‘tribe’ you are a member of (or bandwagon you have jumped on) you will have been warned off consuming certain foods for fear of all levels of poor health - gluten, dairy, meat and sugar seem to be the biggest targets today.
To me the only reason you would not consume any of these is if you didn’t feel good doing so. In most cases, looking at why that is the case can be helpful. Once dealt, those foods no longer causing you a problem. The reasons are commonly related to the way the food was produced and/or prepared and/or your state of digestive health. Less common is an inherent and unalterable genetic intolerance to a food.
Underpinning it all is our bio-individuality ie there is NO one size fits all way to eat, an irrefutable fact that is really not being respected by all these ‘tribes’ that say ‘everyone should consume this food’ and ‘no one should consume that food’.
One of my biggest irritations is the anti-dairy people.
For brevity, I’m not going to go into the pros and cons of dairy here suffice to say that I believe that quality dairy food is some of the most delicious, nutrient dense, healing food one can consume... OR it can be the most problematic.
I regularly see evidence of both sides of this clinically and it was made very clear to me on a personal level just recently.
As many of you are aware Bruce was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 18months ago. Long story short, by addressing his physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health he is shocking the doom sayers who gave him the prognosis of ‘crippled for life’ and ‘worse case I’ve seen’. By a process of trial and error we have discovered some foods that are pain triggers for him and dairy is one of them.
As a result I stopped buying it and thus inadvertently stopped consuming it myself.
Now all my life I have been a huge dairy consumer and all my life I have been extraordinarily healthy.
Anyway last week I felt a strong desire for dairy food - milk, yoghurt, cream, ice-cream, cheese. It suddenly struck me that I hadn’t consumed these foods for quite a while. As someone who believes in listening to my body I added them back into my diet and thoroughly enjoyed every mouthful. Obviously it was the best quality available to me as is all the food I consume. Within days I noticed that my whole disposition improved. I hadn’t realized just how flat I had been feeling which as it turned out coincided with reducing my dairy intake. Once the dairy was back I had energy and improved focus, my skin was clearer, weight dropped off me, I just all in all felt better and the only difference seemed to be the re-introduction of dairy food.
So here we have two people where a food exerts very different results.
Is anyone or anything right or wrong/bad?
No.
It just is what it is.
I cope with it. He doesn’t. Maybe for now. Maybe for ever.
Will this pass muster for a peer review, double blind, random, blah blah journal?
No way.
Why?
Because along with the increasing amount of bias tarnishing most accepted studies, they are ultimately based on one size fits all thinking and that just isn’t the case with us humans.
Our experience would be condescendingly referred to as n=1 or anecdotal. Well as someone who works with actual people everyday I have arrived at anecdotal being extremely reliable.
Who am I to refute a person’s real life experience?
Increasingly and surreptitiously we have been trained to do life, especially our health, from outside ourselves.
Gradually, trust in ourselves and our instincts has been eroded to the point where we are all sooo confused and jumping from one tribe/bandwagon to the next looking for answers, the magic pill, formula or diet plan, when actually our bodies have all the answers we need.
Enough with the fear mongering.
Your body’s only agenda is for YOU to be well.
Trust YOUR body.
Your Body Knows Best, Not the Nutrition Tribes