Side-Issue 04.3: Reconstructing Your Diet

Now I'm going to go off on a bit of a tangent. I was planning to take up some ascetic practices to develop self-control along a few different axes, hoping to have some actual results before these posts went live. But due to health reasons, I've had self-control thrust upon me in the form of a thirteen-week elimination diet. So this isn't about my faith reconstruction, but since we're talking about food and self-denial, it seems like a good time to interject what I'm learning in that realm.

The standard American diet is awful. American health outcomes are terrible, and deteriorating rapidly. Christians aren't doing any better in this domain than anyone else. Perhaps we can combine a renewed commitment to fasting and self-denial with a renewed commitment to healthy eating. Build self-control by denying yourself delicious poisons! What's not to love?

But what is healthy eating, anyway? Sadly, there's not much hard science behind any general theory of human nutrition. We've been told for decades that we should all avoid eating fats, especially saturated fats, and probably also salt. We grew up with the food pyramid, telling us we should eat an entire loaf of bread every day. This is, of course, horrible advice.

It's truly embarrassing that we have no real idea of how to feed humans in a healthy fashion. Of all the things that one could prioritize figuring out, shouldn't that be at the top of the list? But if science isn't there, what we're left with is an unending stream of pop culture books and diet fads, with relatively little theory or hard data behind them beyond "Do this, it's natural!" There's Atkins, and paleo, and keto, and intermittent fasting variants, all of which seem to have some impact, but none of which agree with each other!

Enter Deep Nutrition. Hardcore biochemistry almost all the way through. (You may have to slog through the early chapters that spend way too much time talking about beauty. Trust me, the back half of the book is worth it.) My layman's summary is this:

• Some oils high in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) tend to be extremely chemically reactive, decaying easily into free radicals that basically rip apart the chemical mechanisms of your body. This is especially true when heated for an extended period.
  
• What fats are high in PUFAs? Vegetable, corn, and canola oils, and a bunch of others, including margarine. Basically, anything that's completely artificial. You know, the healthy things we were all told to eat to avoid those animal fats! Remember how they banned transfats a couple decades ago? A bottle of canola oil is so reactive that by the time it reaches your shelf it's already 5% transfat. Imagine what happens when you put it in a deep fryer for a week at McDonald's!
• This doesn't even consider the chemical contaminants in these "healthy" oils, which are expressed by some really unpleasant means and aren't necessarily cleaned up all that well.
  
• Now check your convenience foods, cereals, breads, snacks. Almost all of them are made with vegetable oils! Once you start looking, you find that this poison is in almost everything we eat. There are exceptions, but you have to look pretty hard.
  
• We eat way too much omega-6 fatty acids, and not enough omega-3. This is largely related to our choices of fats, as well as our meat-raising practices.
• Good fixes include salmon and other seafood, spinach, flax seed, and chia seed. Grass-fed or pasture-raised meats or eggs may also be an improvement over conventional.
  
• Many other diets in the world do not have the bad health outcomes the American diet has. What are the healthy people eating that Americans are not?
• Meat cooked on the bone
• Organ meat
• Fermented and sprouted foods
• Raw foods

(Amusingly, perusing American fast food, the most likely place to get meat cooked on the bone or organ meat is KFC! If we could just talk them into using something besides vegetable oil to fry in, they might be the healthiest place around.)

Another widespread issue in the US is endocrine dysfunction. Diabetes is a form of this, and it's everywhere. Thyroid conditions are often undiagnosed, and may contribute to the increase in autism. Thyroid conditions can cause anxiety, body aches, low energy, depression, brain fog, PMS, and all sorts of other problems. I recommend reading more about this, or at least taking this quiz.

There's a reasonable argument that all these endocrine dysfunctions may be tied to autoimmune reactions to foods we eat. I understand that the hard scientific evidence is lacking, but that's okay. If you have these symptoms, first, go to a doctor to have your thyroid levels checked. Then, try an experiment: drop gluten for a couple weeks and just see if you feel better. If you do, great! If not, no harm done. If that doesn't help you, other foods that are generally recommended to drop experimentally include dairy, sugar, soy, alcohol, and caffeine. Caffeine in particular can be difficult, because many of us feel so bad we're dependent on the caffeine to function. So be gradual about it all and see if there are improvements.

And don't tell yourself any of this is a permanent lifestyle change. Consider it a temporary challenge. Do it for a day, then stop. Do it for two days, then stop. Have a final target of a few weeks. If the eliminated food is going to make you feel better, it's probably going to do it by then. If there aren't any improvements, and it's still a burden, give yourself permission to revert, at least partially.

So what can I actually eat that's free of these bad fats, also free of gluten, and aren't just giant piles of omega-6 acids? Here's a partial list of categories or specific products:

Snacks:

• Peanuts
• Pumpkin seeds
• Walnuts
  
• Cheese or cheese crisps
  
• Olives
• Bubbies fermented pickles
  
• Xochitl corn chips
  
• Boulder Canyon potato chips in olive or avocado oil 
• Sour cream makes an excellent dip 
• Siete grain-free chips
  
• Popcorn, homemade with peanut oil and real butter
• Asturi bruschettini
  

Drinks:

• Coffee with real cream, not fake creamer
• Whole milk, preferably organic grass-fed
  
• Matcha is an amazing coffee replacement if you're trying to cut down on caffeine
• Kombucha is excellent; bubbly, sweet, tart, probiotic
• If you don't like one version, try another, there are hundreds to pick from 
• Water, preferably spring water or reverse-osmosis filtered, with lemon
  
• Fluoride is a thyroid suppressant!
  

Breakfasts:

• Eggs with bacon or sausage
  
• Oatmeal
• Add chia, flax, coconut, peanut butter, preferably with sprouted oats
• Yogurt
• For single servings, Siggi's triple cream yogurt is amazing, texture like sour cream
• Any large tub of full-fat unflavored yogurt is a good choice too; add chia, flax, coconut, pomegranate, almonds, consider honey or jam to sweeten if needed
• Cereal is properly a dessert, but if you must eat it for breakfast...
  
• Regular Cheerios
• Qi'a is pretty fantastically healthy for a cereal
• If you don't care about gluten, most varieties of Special K lack dangerous oils and are quite tasty
  

Meals:

• It takes a lot of prep, but roasting a whole chicken, then throwing the bones in the slow cooker to make broth, is a great way to plan ahead. With that broth and chicken on hand you can throw together an amazing soup in under five minutes with whatever vegetables you've got in the fridge. And the best part: you get to eat fresh crispy chicken skin right out of the oven.
• Salmon is not cheap, but it's a great thing to include in your diet if you can.
• Sprouts are an excellent addition to salads, sandwiches, or anything else you can throw them on.
• California Pizza Kitchen frozen gluten-free Sicilian pizza is the best GF oil-free convenience pizza commonly available.
• Life Cuisine's frozen pizza-style cauliflower bowls are better than they have any right to be. Seriously.
• You can replace breads with corn tortillas, which are dirt cheap and very nice when heated in an oven or toaster
• Or you can just do without bread entirely. Really, did that peanut butter and jelly need to be on bread, or could you have just eaten it mixed in a bowl? Make that sandwich into something you eat with a fork or spoon, take the extra five minutes, and just sit down to eat it!
  

Dessert:

• The best dessert I've found is some very dark chocolate with Redi Whip and almonds. When I say dark, forget that Hershey dark chocolate, I mean at least 72% dark, preferably more like 90%. Dove Deepest Dark dark. It's very low sugar, high in fiber and antioxidants, and pairs wonderfully with the cream and almonds. Some coffee finishes it off beautifully.
  

Also, one thing that's sometimes tricky to work around is mayonnaise. Most commercial mayo is made with bad oils, even the stuff labeled "olive oil" is still mostly vegetable oil. The few brands of mayo we've found made with coconut or avocado oil are literally inedible; don't even bother. Making your own mayo with peanut oil takes some work, and can be tricky, but it's certainly doable. There's also a simple aoli that can be made with garlic and olive oil, but I haven't mastered that yet.

Salad dressing is another source of problem oils, but it's easier to work around. Olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice or vinegar makes an excellent dressing, better than anything I've had from a bottle. If you're looking for ranch dressing, just get the packet of mix, and follow the directions, but replace the mayo with full-fat unflavored yogurt, as much fat as you can get. Again, it's better than anything bottled.