Humans Can Thrive On Any Diet?

[thisoldtown1978]

Every now and again, my mental model of nutrition and wellbeing completely falls apart. This is one of those days.

I mean “any diet” within reason - any diet that’s considered “normal” by a certain group of people.

I see so many people thriving around me, who seem to eat whatever they like with no ill effects. Wheat, dairy, high-carb, low-carb, high-PUFA, low-PUFA. People with beautiful complexions and thick hair, muscular physiques and terrific energy, eating stuff that would confine me to the couch for days.

I still feel as though there are defining health factors that we’re yet to fully realise. Maybe it’s social inclusion & well-being, outlook on life, proportion of abstract thinking to concrete activity, familial pressure, posture, proximity to plant life... No idea.

Has anyone out there come to a definitive conclusion (in their own head) that health a still a mystery and you just have to roll with the punches?

 

[thisoldtown1978]

Every now and again, my mental model of nutrition and wellbeing completely falls apart. This is one of those days.

I mean “any diet” within reason - any diet that’s considered “normal” by a certain group of people.

I see so many people thriving around me, who seem to eat whatever they like with no ill effects. Wheat, dairy, high-carb, low-carb, high-PUFA, low-PUFA. People with beautiful complexions and thick hair, muscular physiques and terrific energy, eating stuff that would confine me to the couch for days.

I still feel as though there are defining health factors that we’re yet to fully realise. Maybe it’s social inclusion & well-being, outlook on life, proportion of abstract thinking to concrete activity, familial pressure, posture, proximity to plant life... No idea.

Has anyone out there come to a definitive conclusion (in their own head) that health a still a mystery and you just have to roll with the punches?

I should add - I don’t mean to suggest we can’t learn anything about our own bodies and human physiology, but there are things that have worked for me for a time that then seemed to harm my health, and vice versa. It seems there are other things at play than just diet and other popular Peat ideas.

 

[theLaw]

Every now and again, my mental model of nutrition and wellbeing completely falls apart. This is one of those days.

I mean “any diet” within reason - any diet that’s considered “normal” by a certain group of people.

I see so many people thriving around me, who seem to eat whatever they like with no ill effects. Wheat, dairy, high-carb, low-carb, high-PUFA, low-PUFA. People with beautiful complexions and thick hair, muscular physiques and terrific energy, eating stuff that would confine me to the couch for days.

I still feel as though there are defining health factors that we’re yet to fully realise. Maybe it’s social inclusion & well-being, outlook on life, proportion of abstract thinking to concrete activity, familial pressure, posture, proximity to plant life... No idea.

Has anyone out there come to a definitive conclusion (in their own head) that health a still a mystery and you just have to roll with the punches?

Unfortunately, the statistics don't back up your personal experience overall. Basically everyone over 40 is on prescription medication.

Having said that, I do think there's something to be said for intuitive eating for some individuals, but not the population as a whole.

Also, as humans, we depend largely on optics to judge the world around us, but that only provides part of the picture.

Crossfit is a good example of people eating basically anything (within reason) and still looking great naked. But how many of these people are going to drop dead at 65?

On a personal note, I have found that my tastes changed over time as I integrated Peat's ideas in my life, which have allowed me to have a better balance overall with less stress about a particular food or meal.

 

[Herbie]

I see so many people thriving around me, who seem to eat whatever they like with no ill effects.

What age group are you referring too?

 

[DaveFoster]

Humans can thrive on no diet for a couple months.

 

[fradon]

survive yes...thrive no

eventually it all catches up to you. when you are young you can eat anything but as you get older... forget about it.

 

[InChristAlone]

Look to thee nervous system. It has the answers you are seeking. Trauma causes dysregulation (because humans have trouble moving through trauma, animals do it easier) and if you are dysregulated you will struggle your entire life, you will use food as medicine because you feel so junky only the best diet works a little you will also require hormones because your body in shutdown won't produce them. The healthy people of the world were given the gift of a regulated nervous system (it starts in utero). And even if they went through a war, they could come back home and process it without severe stress disorder.

 

[Nicole W.]

Every now and again, my mental model of nutrition and wellbeing completely falls apart. This is one of those days.

I mean “any diet” within reason - any diet that’s considered “normal” by a certain group of people.

I see so many people thriving around me, who seem to eat whatever they like with no ill effects. Wheat, dairy, high-carb, low-carb, high-PUFA, low-PUFA. People with beautiful complexions and thick hair, muscular physiques and terrific energy, eating stuff that would confine me to the couch for days.

I still feel as though there are defining health factors that we’re yet to fully realise. Maybe it’s social inclusion & well-being, outlook on life, proportion of abstract thinking to concrete activity, familial pressure, posture, proximity to plant life... No idea.

Has anyone out there come to a definitive conclusion (in their own head) that health a still a mystery and you just have to roll with the punches?

No. I think there is an explanation for every question. There’s always an answer even if you haven’t found it yet.

As far as the diversity of seemingly healthy diets: I only have my own personal experience to go by and of course, my observations of others, but it seems to me that adhering to the cultural diet traditions you were raised with seems to offer better results for most people. For example, I was raised with a French culinary tradition which included dairy in all forms daily for the most part. I love dairy and it gives me no problems. My girl friend who is Peruvian was never really raised with dairy and has trouble digesting it. Intuitively she avoids it because it doesn’t benefit her in anyway. She does much better on different foods than me and yet she is healthy and beautiful. I have another friend who’s Irish and she consumes A LOT of oatmeal, she’s convinced it’s the original superfood. For me, oatmeal is the dietary/gut equivalent to quik-crete, so that would be a disaster for my constitution. I personally have never met an Asian person who could not tolerate rice, or any other food that is ubiquitous in a “typical” Asian diet, yet you often hear that dairy can be problematic for Asians as well. These are major generalizations and there are always exceptions, of course.

Setting aside the reality that there is a lot of crap in our food supply which cause health problems—I think another challenge of our modern world is, specifically, we are no longer relegated to only what our ancestors ate. I’m French, but I can eat sushi, Mexican and Thai all in one week. If you think of diet as part of your environment it would make sense that we have evolved and adapted to certain foods through generations of ancestors that came before us. Just as some ethnicities have better resistance to certain diseases and pathogens, I think there is an argument to be made that we have evolved to tolerate and optimize certain foods better than others. More isolated cultures, the Blue Zone groups come to mind, seem to be healthier exactly because they eat what they’ve eaten for hundreds of years without much interference from other foreign foods. Again, these are just my observations, but time and again they seem to ring true.

 

[GutFeeling]

Epigenetic inheritance, social class and paradigms have a great influence. I felt good on low carb but I feel better on high carb low PUFA, now looking back I realize that what I really felt with low carb was horrible, but I only realized it when I saw something better. A pig thinks the sty is the best place in the world, but changes its mind when it discovers an orchard. I think if he was human, had low serotonin, and a high / good amount of androgens and progesterone he would not think the sty was good, even if in his entire life he had only seen the sty. Inescapable traumas injure the thyroid, I think this has a great importance too, freedom, knowing that tomorrow's day is guaranteed, knowing that will never have to suffer, to have to do something hard in life is comforting, have an almost inescapable disappointment would be like a punch in the neck, but if the metabolism is strong it will not impact much, because there is hope, the force of being able to change anything bad, comfort the mind too. Serotonin makes you see the world in a different way, depressive. Look the mass assassinations and suicides caused by SSRI drugs, imagine this person being traumatized, now imagine a person with the ability to conquer the world, do something incredible or change people's heads, it would not fall too much. Some say the key to happiness is content with what you have, i agree in part, but having the best ensures a better happiness. When I was in low carb I thought of living as young as possible, my idea was that at 90 years i would look 50 or 60, today I think that as long as i do not stop growing old and have a life without any stress, i will not be content and stay inert.

Every now and again, my mental model of nutrition and wellbeing completely falls apart. This is one of those days.

I mean “any diet” within reason - any diet that’s considered “normal” by a certain group of people.

I see so many people thriving around me, who seem to eat whatever they like with no ill effects. Wheat, dairy, high-carb, low-carb, high-PUFA, low-PUFA. People with beautiful complexions and thick hair, muscular physiques and terrific energy, eating stuff that would confine me to the couch for days.

I still feel as though there are defining health factors that we’re yet to fully realise. Maybe it’s social inclusion & well-being, outlook on life, proportion of abstract thinking to concrete activity, familial pressure, posture, proximity to plant life... No idea.

Has anyone out there come to a definitive conclusion (in their own head) that health a still a mystery and you just have to roll with the punches?

 

[lampofred]

What I get from Peat's work is that depleting PUFA only matters if you're under stress. If you don't experience stress/have low estrogen and low prolactin, then PUFA will not be liberated from storage and you will not experience its damaging effects. The people you see with great hair and great energy levels even with a PUFA-heavy diet are probably mentally very stress-resilient. With the way modern society and environment is structured though, stress is a norm and not the exception so having low PUFA in our tissues is the next best way to prevent metabolic damage if we are not able to avoid stress and estrogen.