The Last Conversation You’ll Ever Need to Have About Eating Right

Hope you will find it much much important for you...Mark Bittman and doctor David L. Katz patiently answer pretty much every question we could think of about healthy food.

By MARK BITTMAN and DAVID L. KATZ

It’s beyond strange that so many humans are clueless about how they should feed themselves. Every wild species on the planet knows how to do it; presumably ours did, too, before our oversized brains found new ways to complicate things. Now, we’re the only species that can be baffled about the “right” way to eat.

Really, we know how we should eat, but that understanding is continually undermined by hyperbolic headlines, internet echo chambers, and predatory profiteers all too happy to peddle purposefully addictive junk food and nutrition-limiting fad diets. Eating well remains difficult not because it’s complicated but because the choices are hard even when they’re clear.

With that in mind, we offered friends, readers, and anyone else we encountered one simple request: Ask us anything at all about diet and nutrition and we will give you an answer that is grounded in real scientific consensus, with no “healthy-ish” chit-chat, nary a mention of “wellness,” and no goal other than to cut through all the noise and help everyone see how simple it is to eat well.

Here, then, are the exhaustively assembled, thoroughly researched, meticulously detailed answers to any and all of your dietary questions.

Just tell me. Ethical concerns aside, which diet is the best: vegan, vegetarian, or omnivorous?

?We don’t know, because the study to prove that any one diet is “best” for human health hasn’t been done, and probably can’t be. So, for our health, the “best” diet is a theme: an emphasis on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, and plain water for thirst. That can be with or without seafood; with or without dairy; with or without eggs; with or without some meat; high or low in total fat.

Okay, well what about the “diets” I keep trying? I just started the paleo diet. Will it change my life?

?A genuine paleo diet is almost certainly good for human health, since it’s a diet to which we are adapted. But what is a true paleo diet?

It’s, you know, eating paleo. Like meat. And fruit. And eggs? And bacon!

?It is certainly not a blanket license to eat bacon. And it’s not a good reason to give up whole grains, either. Nor do you need to eat eggs, or even meat.

What about burgers or pepperoni? They’re paleo, right?

?There were no Paleolithic burgers, or pepperoni. There was also no paleolithic bacon.

So what can I eat?

?This is a good place to start because the real experts in Stone Age nutrition think our ancestors — who, by the way, were foragers — consumed a wide variety of ever-changing plant foods that gave them up to 100 grams of fiber daily. We, on the other hand, eat an average of 15 grams of daily fiber. Our forebears are thought to have eaten lots of insects, too. (Few people espousing the virtues of “Paleo” seem inclined to try that out.) They probably ate grains, with some evidence they did so 100,000 years or more ago. And, of course, they ate the meat of only wild animals, since there were no domesticated animals in the Stone Age, with the possible exception of the wolf-to-dog transition.

In any event, the diet to which we are adapted is almost certainly much better for health, and reversing illness, than the prevailing modern diet. There is abundant evidence of disease-reversal with diets of whole, minimally processed food; plant-predominant diets; and even plant-exclusive diets.

So plants are good. Maybe I’ll just do a juice cleanse instead. Wait — are juice cleanses dangerous?

Generally not, depending on your health at the start, but neither are they useful.

Don’t they cleanse your body?

?The general claim is that they actually do “cleanse” you — but of what?

Um, toxins?

?The body detoxifies itself daily; that’s a primary job of the liver and the kidneys, and they are really good at it. (The intestines, spleen, and immune system are in on it, too.) So, you want to take good care of your liver and kidneys, gut, and immune system. That’s a far better “cleanse” than any juice. How do you take good care of all your detoxifying organ systems? By taking good care of yourself, of course. That means eating well, not smoking, exercising, sleeping enough, managing your stress, and so on.

My friend is always talking about “inducing ketosis.” What is he babbling on about?

?A ketogenic diet is one diet that starves the body of glucose sources so that it’s forced to burn ketone bodies — products of fat metabolism — as fuel.

Is that … healthy?

?There is no evidence that such diets are conducive to good health in the long run, and no evidence they are better than other, more sustainable diets at health transformation or weight loss in the short run.

But he’s losing weight.

?Not everything that causes weight loss or apparent metabolic improvement in the short term is a good idea. Cholera, for instance, causes weight, blood sugar, and blood lipids to come down — that doesn’t mean you want it! The only use of a ketogenic diet that is clearly medically justified is to treat refractory seizures in select cases, mostly in children.

Which is better: a plant-based diet with carbs, or a low-carb diet with meat?

?The evidence of every variety overwhelmingly highlights the benefits of plant-predominant diets for the health outcomes that matter most: years in life, and life in years; longevity, and vitality. Forget about “carbs,” and think instead in terms of the foods that are best for you.