Healthy eating a matter of choice
John Potter ,chief science adviser to New Zealand’s Ministry of Health and a public health researcher, has recently released a book examining the latest research on what causes cancer and other chronic diseases. In this extract, he looks at steps people can take with their diet to improve their health.
IF we want to capture the essence of something like our original diet in the setting of 21stcentury highincome countries, there are some obvious things we cannot do but also some obvious choices we can make.
It is clear we cannot go back to the savannah or seacoast of our African roots or the caves of our European or Asian ancestors. Most of us have neither the skills to recognise all the kinds of wild foods we would need to find, nor the resilience to survive the rigours of the associated living conditions. We are not used to being hunted and in regular danger; and we no longer have the skills to clothe, house and care for ourselves in conditions where we are reliant on unmodified nature for all our needs and resources.
What we can do is implement some principles that get us close to the optimal human diet. We can begin with the key observation that humans in the wild would have eaten small amounts of as many different foods as they could harvest, collect, pluck, dig out, net, scavenge, hunt, steal and sometimes store. Further, despite the Tarzan fantasies of some — particularly the paleo diet enthusiasts and the meat industry — most of the energy among both presentday gathererhunters and our ancestors is and was derived from plant foods, not animal foods.
How does that translate into action in the present day? Well, like this:
Walk the aisles of your farmers’ market, grocery store or supermarket and choose a wide variety of fresh plant foods — vegetables, fruit, grains, nuts, legumes and seeds.
Don’t think of a meal as ‘‘meat and three vegetables’’, at least not every day.
Think of our ancestors having a little of this and a little of that and sometimes going without altogether.
Think of the rich variety of a stirfry or an adventurous vegetable stew.
Don’t overcook.
Don’t use lots of added fat. Use herbs and spices for flavour and because they add important micronutrients and phytochemicals.
Eat slowly with awareness; don’t wolf down food; learn or relearn the feeling of being full.
At least once a week, try new foods — a bean or another legume you have not previously eaten, a grain you have not tried.
Consult cookbooks, friends, experts and the internet (our substitute for the shaman and the wise woman who had all the tribe’s knowledge of plants and foods) about how to prepare these new dishes or foods or new variants on old recipes by using, say, chickpeas, quinoa or spelt.
Again, it is a wide variety that we should aim at — not putting our faith in super foods and magic foods.