Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es. (Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are)
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1826
Nutrition
Written on: March 2023
Last edited: July 2024
Takeaways
To remain healthy, our body needs continually "raw material" that it can use to keep rebuilding its cells. This raw material is provided in the food that we ingest. If we do not feel well, we need to review the total set of substances that we are ingesting, eliminate those that do not provide material that the body can use to rebuilt its cells, and increase or add substances that the body can use to rebuilt its cells. For examples, if we start bruising easily, we need to increase the food in our diet that contains vitamin C.
Our Evolutionary Past
We live in a world of millions of other large and small organisms all competing with each other for survival. If an organism is not able to compete successfully, that is defend itself from other organisms and reproduce, it will not survive. As a result we, as well as all other organisms that exist on our planet, have evolved over millions of years physical and biological mechanisms that enable us to compete successfully and survive. For these survival mechanisms to work best, we need to ingest food items that are optimally suited for our body to obtain the raw material and energy to fuel the trillions of biological reactions continually going on in our bodies to keep us in optimal health. Let us refer to the food items optimally suited for our body as the "Optimal Diet" which confers to our body "Optimal Health". Over the millions of years of our evolutionary past, the set of foods ideally suited for the Optimal Diet have not been available all the time. And so we have evolved nutritional coping mechanisms that allow us to keep surviving on foods other than those ideally suited for Optimal Health. As a consequence, we have had to evolve the ability to survive ingestion of substances harmful to our health (poisons) such as plant toxins. It stands to reason that if these nutritional coping mechanisms have to be relied on for too long, our body's capability to take care of itself diminishes and we will tend to get sick more often and end up suffering more and dying earlier than we would have if we had been on the Optimal Diet.
So, our evolutionary past has given our bodies the capability to survive on several different diets, even though they all differ from the Optimal Diet and even though they all contain substances harmful to our optimal health such as plant toxins. But when we ingest a diet which is sub-optimal, our body is surviving by relying on nutritional coping mechanisms. If we keep ingesting sub-optimal diets for too long, although we survive in the short term, in the long term we develop a host of diseases such as obesity, diabetes, dementia, gout, heart disease, cancers, and susceptibility to infections from viruses, bacteria, and fungi.
One example of the consequences of survival on a diet which is sub-optimal is cardiovascular disease (heart disease) which results from diets deficient in vitamin C (30,31,49). Reference 49 calls cardiovascular disease "Arterial Scurvy". The body needs vitamin C for a number of biological functions essential for good health and to maintain our vascular system healthy. One of these functions is the repair mechanism for vascular (veins and arteries) lesions that can occur for a number of different reasons. If vitamin C is not present in sufficient amounts to catalyze healing of the lesions without causing blood flow blockages, the body synthesizes Lp(a) lipoproteins which are used, along with other substances such as fibrin, to create "plugs" (plaque) to prevent hemorrhage through the lesions. With time, the "plugs" get bigger to the point that they start to block blood flow. If the "plugs" are needed in the Coronary Arteries, this results in Heart Disease and in Heart Attacks as the blockages become more severe. Needless to say, blood flow blockages are not good anywhere else in the body. Depending on the location of the blockages, it will result in serious other health issues such as strokes.
It follows that survival on suboptimal diets results in more suffering, less enjoyable and productive lives, and shorter life spans. Diseases results from deficiencies in one or more of the food items needed for Optimal Health. Diets causes and effects of some disease can be quickly established over a matter of days because the diseases are cured quickly when the food deficiencies are corrected. Examples of these are Scurvy which is cured quickly by ingesting more vitamin C, Beriberi which is cured quickly by ingesting more vitamin B1, and Pellagra which is cured quickly by ingesting more vitamin B3.
However, diet related causes and effects for many other diseases, such as obesity, dementia, heart disease, and cancer, just to name a few, are more difficult to establish because the effects of changes in the diet will requires months and even years to be established. Because of the difficulty of establishing food related "causes and effects", these diseases have become "fertile ground" for the growth of multibillion dollars health industries such as Pharmaceutical industries, Heart Disease industries, Cancer industries, and Diabetes industries, just to name some prominent ones. And, as our evolutionary past has given our bodies capabilities to survive poisons, this has made it possible for these industries to promote treatments of diseases with drugs that deliver sub-lethal doses of various poisons. These drugs have proven to be "miraculous" to keep us alive in emergencies, but these drugs are very dangerous to our health if taken daily "as a way of life". It is worthy noticing as well that these drugs have proven to be a very successful "job creation program" for the health industries because they all cause other diseases (side effects) which leads to prescription of more drugs with the result that today the vast majority of people are taking many drugs every day and are in their doctor's office or hospital often ... managing but never getting cured.
In passing, the concept of using poisons in medicine (toxycology) is that diseases can be cured by giving the patient controlled amounts of suitable poisons. Paracelsus (1493-1541) is considered the father of toxicolology, although its use in medicine can be traced back to several centuries before. In Paracelsus' view, items such as mercury, lead, arsenic and antimony, all well known poisons, were cures for several diseases. Modern medicine is largely based on toxicology. Even the humble Aspirin is a "poison" which kills several people every year due to accidental overdoses and due to suicides (24). Even the modest dosage of 81 mg daily, which was touted to be a life saver for everybody, is now officially discouraged because it has been linked to several case of strokes and intercranial bleeding (22). The travesty is that this reference (22) still finds it okay to prescribe Aspirin for "people at risk", namely for sick people. Now, please indulge me, how can a drug that is bad for a healthy person be good for a sick one?
Our evolutionary past has given us the capability to survive many different diets other than the Optimal Diet. As all want to be in Optimal Health, there has been a strong motivation to find the Optimal Diet. The difficulty of establishing "causes and effects" between diets and health, has provided a fertile grounds for the growth of many nutrition experts and of many diet books and products by these nutrition experts. Diets such as Pritkin, Atkin, Vegetarian, Ketogenic, Carnivore, and more, have been promoted by several books, nutritionists, dietitian, and companies. And several pills are being advertised every day, all promising you optimal health. From this plethora of books, diets, and pills, it is clear that not even the experts can agree on which diet is optimal. The reality is that nutrition today has become a multibillion dollar business and the many nutritionist, dietitians, companies producing food to support the various diets, and book authors, are more interested in making money rather than find out what diet is best for us. Also, some people think that there is a more sinister truth, namely, that sick people make a lot more money for the health institutions and industries than healthy people. It does not take a "rocket scientist" to arrive at the conclusion that without sick people all health institutions and industries would collapse. So when we reach out there for advice related to our health, we must always remember that the people that we are talking to are biased towards keeping their "paychecks" coming and thus biased towards keeping us sickly rather than healthy ( Human Instincts , Need Imperative , Shoemaker Principle ).
So when it comes to decide which diet is best for us, we are on our own !!!
My Parent's Legacy
Today, unless one grew up in a well organized and informed household, picking up a nutritious diet is not easy. As attested by the many fast food joints and restaurants that people crowd in, and the many processed food items and drinks that crowd store shelves, and the massive amount of sugar that everybody is consuming, it is clear that nowadays people have forgot, or never learned, what good food is.
Although I grew up in the 1940s in a rather poor peasant family, I was lucky that my parents paid a lot of attention to nutrition. I still can hear my Mother saying "You are what you eat!". And every morning she would not let me out of the door unless I had drunk one raw egg! My Mother believed that eggs are the best food that you can eat, raw or cooked. And modern science has proven her right because, after much debate, the egg has regained its status as a super-food. Thanks to her, in the rush to get on the road to school or to work, when time was precious, I always managed to start the day with a healthy breakfast because to drink one or two raw eggs takes less than a minute!
During the low fat diet craze period (1961- 1999) the egg was demonized. But finally an article in the September 6, 1999 issue of Time magazine, announced that the egg had been re-instated as a super food ... and my mother was vindicated! The current American and Canadian Dietary Guidelines now officially recognize the egg as an essential food for children and grown ups. Is it better to eat eggs cooked or raw? However consumed, eggs are very nutritious and should be in everybody's diet. Because heat destroys some of the vitamins and other nutrients, raw eggs are more nutritious. The benefit of cooking eggs is that it eliminates the worry of potential bacterial infections such as Salmonella, and the heat neutralizes Avidin that binds to Biotin and might cause a Biotin deficiency. For me, raw eggs rule! I have drunk an average of two to three raw eggs a day as far as I can remember (about 84 years now ... and counting) with no issues ever. Today we know that two eggs a day provide 20 percent of vitamins and proteins daily requirements (Except Vitamin C which is absent from eggs because unlike humans, chickens are able to synthesize their own vitamin C needs) and also provide several other nutrients. My Mother used to say that it is obvious that eggs are good for you because one egg contains all the "nutritional material" needed to "build" one chick. Not too bad for a lady that never went to school and could not write or read!
Growing up, my parents emphasized simple but nutritious food all of which came from our own fields. Bread, past, eggs, fruit, vegetables, olive oil, meat, sausages, prosciutto, and lard ... all from our own fields, from our own animals, and from our own kitchen. None of our food was refined or genetically modified, we used no pesticides, used only natural fertilizers, and used no preservative for our cured meats and canned fruits and vegetables. And there was hardly any sugar in our diets! My mother used to say often that sugar is bad and that rich people were sick (Diseases of the Rich) because they ate too much sugar and they were always sitting down. We could have used a fair bit of more food, especially the meats, but what we got was very good. My mother was adamant against using any pesticides and any processed or refined food when these products started becoming available just after the end of the second world war (1945). She was clearly ahead of her times ... and it appears that she still is ahead of our times.
So, thanks to my parents, I always seem to have known the importance of good nutrition and for me remedying the ailments that I encountered in life simply by changing my diet, always felt second nature. But I must confess that I lost my ways when access to organized medicine, processed food, sugar products, and junk drinks became easier to access when I immigrated to Canada, and when I still believed that doctors could be trusted blindly. Because of this trust, and because of the lure of processed food, sugar products, and junk drinks, I became prey to some extent to some of our modern diseases such as my heart attack and, now, my Leukemia (My Doctors Encounters).
Biochemical Individuality
What is not mentioned by anyone in the nutrition business is that good nutrition is a "tricky business". There is no "one size fits all" nutrition formula that is good for everybody! This is because each one of us is biochemically different (3,4). As an example, we all know that some people can eat peanuts and enjoy them, while some others get severily sick even if the consume small amounts. Unfortunately organized medicine has totally neglected research in this hugely important area of biochemical individuality. So, we are on our own when deciding what food is good for each one of us individually, and what food is not. All that we can do today to identify foods that are good for us and foods that are not good for us, is to "listen" to our body and adjust the diet accordingly. We all start from some generally applicable knowledge of what we should be eating. But we need to refine this initial diet continually by paying close attention to foods that we feel good with, and keep them in our diet, and pay attention to foods that we do not feel good with, and eliminate them from our diet. Why continually? Because our bodies nutritional needs keep changing as we age and as we get exposed to various new environmental factors and new ways of growing food which are introducing new toxins in our food.
As a diet refers to all the items ingested, it must be emphasized that consumption of sugar, junk food, junk drinks, recreational drugs, lifestyle drugs, and doctor prescribed drugs have no place in the diet consumed daily, and must be eliminated or reduced to an absolute minimum. We know also that our body will ingest anything that we put on our skin, such as the toxic substances in creams, hair dies, nail polish, artificial nails, cosmetics, and tattoos. These are all toxic and must be avoided. Vibrant good looks flows from good health which flows from good food and lifestyle, and not from medicine or cosmetics!!!
Vitamins and Minerals Supplementation
We are fortunate today because we have plenty of food available. So, if we put our mind to it, we are able to tune our diet to include only the foods that we feel well with and still have the necessary nutrition. We must not forget that all plant based food contains Toxins, poisons that plant use to defend themselves to survive. Because of this, plant based food must be limited to "in season" produce. I know that this is difficult nowadays, but as in all of life endeavours "You must be tough to be tops" as proclaimed in one of our many commercials. We must always remember that health is our first wealth! This "in season" regimen gives our body a chance to recover from the different toxins ingested.
But we are not so fortunate today because food is not as nutritious as it used to be. This is due to modern growing practices that favour quantity over quality, and due to increased amount of pollution in our environment (17,18). And if this was not enough, we now have genetically modified plants such as Plant-Incorporated Protectants (PIP) plants (45,46) that produce their own pesticide and herbicides! And even our meats are tainted because of the use of antibiotics, hormones, and fattening practices in crowded "feed lots" before slaughter. And last, but not the least, we are inundated with all kinds of super processed food aggressively promoted by strong vested interests. These super processed foods, along with other factors such as Sugar and prescription drugs, are destroying our health!
However, we are fortunate today because we have Vitamins and Minerals supplements, and their nutritional power is well understood ... even if dismissed by our medical professionals (1,2,3,23). And so we are able to supplement our food with vitamins and minerals to ensure that these nutrients in our diet are sufficient to keep us healthy and diminish the health impacts of pollution and contaminants (31). Based on my experience I would be remiss if I were not to state here that Linus Pauling (Chemistry Nobel prize, 1954), who strongly advocated the "new nutrition" (1,2,3) using vitamins, especially vitamin C, was correct in all respects ! My experience so far is ample proof of it (Body Changes).
In the case of vitamin C, it is of interest to note that of all animals, only humans, guinea pigs, some monkeys, and some birds, are not able to synthesize vitamin C and, therefore, they must get it from what they eat (1,2,3). It is also of interest that we humans also share similar diseases with all the animals which are also not able to synthesize vitamin C. This is one of the main reasons why guinea pigs are often used in medical experiments. It is also worth noting that the animals that are able to synthesize their own Vitamin C, do not get several of the diseases that afflict humans such as Scurvy and Atherosclerosis. Imagine! Your dog, who synthesizes daily about 18 mg of vitamin C per pound of body weight, will never get Scurvy or Atherosclerosis (the dominant contributor to heart attacks and strokes) simply because he can make its own vitamin C as needed!
What Is a Good Starting Diet
A good nutritious diet must contain adequate amounts of the macro-nutrients (protein, fat, carbohydrates, water, and fiber) and adequate amounts of the micro-nutrients (vitamins , minerals, essential fatty acids , and essential amino acids). The word "essential" here is used to point out that our body is not able to synthesize (produce inside our body) the essential micro-nutrients. This use of the word "essential" is consistent with current terminology, but this should not distract us from the fact that all the nutrients mentioned above, macro and micro, are all "essential" as they all cannot be synthesized by our body and must all be provided in what we eat.
The essence of a good diet is: Absolutely no carbohydrates in the form of sugar except for rare celebrations; Less of all other carbohydrates; More meats and fish; In season vegetables only; In season fruit only; And vitamin supplementation especially vitamin C.
And we must remember that fruit juices are not the same as fruits: always eat fruit instead of drinking fruit juices. If on your chosen diet you are gaining weight, all you need to do is reduce sufficiently your intake of carbohydrates. Based directly on my experience, I guarantee that elimination of carbohydrates will permit eating as much as wanted and still have the undesirable weight and bulges melt away without any negative health impacts! I am currectly on a Carnivore diet (Diet) and I have never felt better before since I have been in Canada.
Why the above "in season" vegetable and fruit restriction? All plant foods contain toxins. These are "poisons" that plants have evolved to defend themselves from being eaten. And to make matter worse, genetic modification (e.g. PIP plants (45,46)) are introducing more powerful and new toxins. The "in season" restriction makes sure that you give your body a chance to recover from the different toxins by forcing you to consume different plants over different time periods. In the case of fruit, the in season restriction is for similar reasons. But in addition, as fruit contains fructose the metabolism of which results in precursors for a number of obnoxious unhealthy substances (1), the "in season" restriction tends to limit the amount of fruit that is available to eat.
The diet that I used to start my journey to determine what diet is optimal for me is shown in Table D1 on the "Diet" page. I stayed on this diet over the period March to August 2023, during which I eliminated some food items such as most nuts and seeds which I found were causing abdominal discomforts. Not serious but bothersome. I also found that some of the vegetables, such as cabbage and rapini, were also contributing to my abdominal discomforts. In sum, with this diet, my energy levels, my sense of well being, and my motivation for doing all kind of things (working-out every day, my work for a USA company, and working on other projects such as building this website) were all very good. But the fact that my blood counts were not improving, and the fact that I was experiencing some of abdominal discomforts, motivated me to alter my diet.
During the March to August 2023 period, I read some books related to the Warburg Effect (7,9,10) and this influenced me to change to a Ketogenic diet. According to Warburg's discovery, cancer cells are not able to get energy from ketones and thus on this diet, according to Warburg, Cancer cells will starve and die. So, on Aug 16, 2023 I changed to the Ketogenic diet shown in Table D2 on the "Diet" page. I stayed on this diet until April 2024. During this period I still kept feeling good, my blood counts trend improved, my abdominal discomforts improved but did not go away ... maybe because I was stll consuming plant food. At the beginning of this period, I also increased the vitamin C to 10.18 grams and towards the end of this period, I increased it again from 10.18 grams to 12.18 grams. At the end of this period my blood test showed an improvement in my blood counts trend. But because of the change in vitamin C supplementation, I could not be sure of the extent to which I owed my improvements to the ketogenic diet versus the increased vitamin C. In the mean time, I came across books on the use of the Carnivore diet to manage cancer and other diseases (41,42,43) . And this diet also promised to correct my abdominal discomforts because it eliminates plant food. So, on April 11, 2023 I decided to switch to the Carnivore diet in Table D3 on the "Diet" page.
As of this writing, I am still on the Carnivore diet in Table D3 on the "Diet" page. This diet has been the best so far. I have kept feeling well and full of energy. I have kept a good appetite but I no longer feel that I am hungry all the time. And my abdominal discomforts have gone away, although I had to re-introduce about 3 grams of Whole Psyllium Husk (daily at the end of the day) to facilitate bowl movements which had always been more difficult since my ill advised hemorrhoids surgery (My Doctors Encounters). Will my blood counts improve on this diet? ... We will find out soon.