Eat Better Food Trends

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EAT BETTER FOOD TRENDS

 

Holistic pioneers offer alternative ways to health

Trailblazing innovators tout dietary solutions to what ails us.

Lori Oliwenstein and Jay Dixit

Psychology Today

 

April 24, 2007

 

Americans consult alternative health practitioners some 600 million

times a year -- more often than they visit family doctors. In that

spirit, Psychology Today sought out these books by three natural

health pioneers, holistic innovators who specialize in dietary

solutions.

 

'Plan of the Caveman'

 

By Loren Cordain, Ph.D.

 

Home base: Fort Collins, Colo.

 

Claim: Eating as your ancestors did will keep you lean, healthy and

young.

 

Claim to fame: Wrote The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by

Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat (Wiley, 2002).

 

Argument: " We're Stone Agers living in the Space Age. " Human

nutritional needs are genetically determined, and our genes are

shaped by natural selection. People gain weight from foods introduced

since the agricultural revolution. The result is heart disease,

diabetes and obesity in epidemic proportions. The solution is to

return to the pre-agricultural diet of Paleolithic people.

 

His regimen: Like the South Beach Diet except with no grains, salt or

sugar. Eats only fresh fruits, vegetables, lean meats, nuts and

seafood. Does not eat any sugars, saturated or trans fats, salt,

bread, legumes, potatoes, pasta, processed foods, dairy or grains.

Even whole grains are disallowed.

 

Must-do recommendation: Eat only foods our hunter-gatherer ancestors

could have eaten. Because the dominant food source for hunter-

gatherers was animals, lean meats compose 55 percent to 65 percent of

Cordain's ideal diet. He recommends exercising 90 minutes a day,

seven days a week, noting that hunter-gatherers probably did three

times that. Cordain concedes that nobody living in the modern age can

follow every one of these proscriptions all the time. Most of the

beneficial health effects of eating a modern-day Paleo diet can be

achieved with about 85 percent or 90 percent compliance.

 

Research nuts and bolts: Using remains of Stone Age people from

around the world, Cordain calculated the energy expenditures of our

prehistoric ancestors. A thigh bone, for instance, can tell us

roughly how tall and how heavy its owner was. Once he knew the

weight, Cordain could calculate how much energy it took that person

to move around -- the same way treadmills use your weight to figure

the calories you burn during a workout.

 

By strapping GPS systems onto male Paraguayans while they're out

foraging in the jungle, Cordain and his colleagues determined that

cavemen probably ran 10 miles a day carrying 25 pounds. Cavewomen

worked as hard, carrying children, setting up shelter, foraging for

fruits and vegetables, and curing animal skins.

 

Critics point out that the lives of hunter-gatherers were nasty,

brutish and short, with a life expectancy in the 20s. Why emulate

that? Cordain's response is, sure, Stone Age people had it rough, but

most died when they walked into tar pits, got clubbed in the head by

enemy tribesmen, or were swallowed by saber-toothed tigers -- not

from disease. Today's hunter-gatherers live well into their 60s, free

of " diseases of civilization, " such as obesity, high blood pressure

and high cholesterol.

 

Inspiration: When Cordain became a college athlete in the late 1960s,

he sought food that would improve his athletic performance. The

article that changed his life was " Paleolithic Nutrition, " a now-

famous paper published in 1985 in the New England Journal of

Medicine. It made the case that human beings could be most healthy by

emulating the diet and exercise patterns of the Stone Age. Cordain

was sold. He speculated that modern health problems didn't start with

packaged snack foods but with the advent of agriculture. People began

eating more and more -- including more high-carbohydrate, fatty

foods -- all the while stuck in the bodies of Stone Agers. So to

maximize our health and fitness, Cordain concluded, we should emulate

Paleolithic man.

 

'Raw Power'

 

By Natalia Rose

 

Home base: New York City

 

Claim to fame: Author of The Raw Food Detox Diet (Regan Books, 2005).

 

Claim: A careful transition to a diet high in raw foods will detoxify

your body, increase your energy levels and help you lose weight.

 

Argument: Cooking food destroys many of the very vitamins and enzymes

that we most need for optimal health and energy. Raw foods -- plant

foods that have not been heated above 118 F -- have all the

beneficial, health-promoting components intact, giving much-needed

rest to the digestive system so the body can heal.

 

Her regimen: Starts each day with vegetable juice or fresh fruit.

Lunch is at least half raw-vegetable-based. If she cheats and eats

cooked food, she does so at dinner.

 

Must-do recommendation: Foods should go from light to heavy in the

course of the day. " We don't want anything interrupting our energy

flow, " Rose explains. " And if your body is busy digesting food all

day, that's where all the energy will go. "

 

Research nuts and bolts: Rose doesn't conduct research but points to

work by Francis Marion Pottenger Jr., who studied the effects of diet

on cats in the 1930s. Some cats got cooked meat and others, raw. The

raw-food cats were more fertile and freer of disease. Though no

studies have been conducted to show similar benefits in humans, says

Rose, " You don't need a study to know you're losing weight and

feeling great. "

 

Inspiration: When Rose was in her 20s, she was dissatisfied with her

body. Studying nutrition at the Natural Healing Institute of

Naturopathy in San Diego, she battled depression, anxiety,

exhaustion, nagging physical ailments, a belief she was overweight

and an ever-present discomfort in her own skin. She knew she needed

help. Dieting made matters worse. Then she picked up a book about a

raw-food regimen. " This wasn't just a diet, it was a lifestyle, " she

says. " My energy improved and any inclinations towards depression

dissolved. "

 

'Food As Medicine'

 

By Tieraona Low Dog, M.D.

 

Home base: Tucson, Ariz.

 

Claim: The use of plants and herbs as both food and medicine can

enhance our health and well-being.

 

Claim to fame: Appointed to President Clinton's commission on

alternative medicine; advises the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

 

Argument: A diet based on plants and whole foods is in itself

medicinal, as are dietary herbs and spices, which not only promote

wellness but can cure disease. If you're healthy, such a diet will

render supplements and extracts generally unnecessary.

 

Her regimen: " Predominantly plant-based, " with meals made almost

exclusively from scratch. Recipes take advantage of a wide variety of

spices and herbs. In addition, she takes a multivitamin and omega-3

and exercises daily.

 

Must-do recommendation: Low Dog's regimen for the healthy is based on

a simple but powerful lifestyle makeover. Not only should you eat a

whole-food diet, says Low Dog, but " You should also sit down at a

table at least once a day and eat with a fork. " For people who are

ill, there is an entirely different set of recommendations. Physical

activity is also a must. " Thirty minutes every day, no exceptions, "

says Low Dog, a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do. " Think of it

the way you think of washing your hair. "

 

What she's most interested in now: Low Dog is exploring the roles

patient beliefs and cultures play in the treatment of disease. " I'm

looking at how to work within someone's beliefs, " she says. " How do

you talk to patients when their culture and beliefs directly collide

with your own? "

 

Inspiration: In Low Dog's family, which is part American

Indian, " folk remedies were definitely 'it,' " she says. " You had to

have a hemorrhage or broken bones to go to the doctor. " But as she

points out, though her heritage inspired her interest in integrative

medicine, she has gone far beyond the confines of any one culture.

Her approach to healing draws not only on remedies from American

Indian cultures, but also from the traditions of Mexican-Americans

and African-Americans, Appalachian midwives, and Vietnamese and

Korean healers, as well as mainstream medicine. Her herbal expertise

predates her M.D. by several decades.

 

" I was an herbalist, a massage therapist, a martial-arts instructor

and a midwife, " she says. She even opened a shop, Tieraona's Herbals

in Las Cruces, N.M. Ultimately, she decided she needed the training

to diagnose disease and prescribe stronger medicines.

 

Blissed be, Annie

bodybybliss.com