3042: [Part 1] Exactly How To Figure Out What Diet Is Right for You by Ben Greenfield on Weston Price Diet Research

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[00:01:00] This is Optimal Health Daily. Exactly how to figure out what diet is right for you. Part 1 by Ben Greenfield of bengreenfieldlife.com. And I'm your host and narrator, Dr. Neil. Hey there, happy middle of the week Wednesday and welcome to another edition of Optimal Health Daily, where I read some of the best blogs covering health and fitness, just like an audiobook, and always with a bit of my commentary at the end.

[00:01:25] Now, today is Wednesday and like I do every Wednesday, I like to share a little bit of inspiration with you. So with that, here we go. Quote, You are the only one who can limit your greatness. End quote. Author unknown. Now, today's post is a bit longer than what I typically narrate. So whenever that happens, I'll read the first half today and then finish it up for you tomorrow. So, with that, let's get right to part 1 as we optimize your life.

[00:01:58] Exactly how to figure out what diet is right for you. Part 1 by Ben Greenfield of bengreenfieldlife.com. We've all been there. A giddy chat with your neighbor who dropped 15 pounds by nixing starches and sugar. Or a shadow of his former self-co-worker who's raving about the plant-based diet he's been on since June.

[00:02:19] Or an email from your olive oil evangelizing sister who swears she feels 10 years younger after switching to a Mediterranean diet. Internet buzz around the fat-busting potential of whole grains right next to more buzz about wheat's nefarious role in obesity. Then there's dozens of diet books claiming they're the last one you'll ever need and each one preaching something wildly, irreconcilably different from the next.

[00:02:45] Is it any wonder so many people give up learning about this diet stuff almost as soon as they begin? My own story was the same. Cutting through confusion. There's no one-size-fits-all diet. And here's proof. After spending a decade sliding from vegetarianism to veganism to raw veganism, I witnessed a fair bit of miraculous success within the plant-based community.

[00:03:09] Though the journey left my own body tooth decayed, deficient, and voluntarily swaddled in ski jackets in weather below 70 degrees. When I finally forayed beyond the plant kingdom to save my own health and regain some semblance of body heat, I was greeted with more of the same. Glowing successes on paleo mixed with folks unable to shed a pound. Starch-based diets boosting health for some while stranding others on a blood sugar roller coaster.

[00:03:37] Experts wagging a finger at fat, grains, carbs, sugar, fructose, dairy, animal protein, and any other villain du jour in attempt to explain our modern health woes. None of it made sense. How could people embark on such wildly different diets and achieve similar success or similar failure for that matter? How could one person feel better cutting out meat and another feeling fabulous eating it with every meal?

[00:04:04] Why couldn't the experts even agree on what we should be putting in our mouths? Answering those questions has fueled my own research adventures over the years, both to satisfy my curiosity and to save my sanity. Maybe you're in the same boat. And if that's the case, I'd like to help navigate this crazy ship to shore. Believe it or not, there's a reason confusion reigns supreme. And it's not because we still need to figure out the precise number of daily blueberries and spinach leaves it take to reach immortality.

[00:04:34] Rather, it's because the dietary holy grail that creature so many authors, health gurus, and nutritional self-experimenters are vying to capture, the single diet that would give all of us rockin' bodies and a centenarian lifespan, is a mythical beast, a unicorn of sorts, prancing through our imaginations, but not through reality. As great as it would be to find a human species diet perfect for everyone on the planet,

[00:05:02] it's a futile quest, and here's why. A legacy of diversity. If anything defines our 2 million year long diet history, it's adaptability. The power to make food out of whatever our environment spits out at us, or rather, whatever we manage to wrestle from its grasp. We've infiltrated every corner of the globe, trekked through the most inhospitable of climes, devised hacks for turning any life form into something edible,

[00:05:31] and for the most part, lived to tell about it. That's pretty awesome. Go us! But more than just surviving, we've also managed to thrive on a wide spectrum of diets. And one of the most fascinating portals into that reality comes from the work of Weston Price, an early 1900s dentist who scoured the globe in search of isolated populations still eating their traditional cuisines, untouched by Western foods and Western ways.

[00:05:58] Though his focus was often tooth-centric, seeking out communities free from the dental decay ravaging Americans, and trying to find out what made the healthiest-mouthed folks immune, his findings reached far beyond the realm of dentistry. In an expedition that'd be all but impossible to repeat today, Price encountered humans at their absolute prime, free from chronic disease, straight-toothed without braces, cavity-free without floss and crest toothpaste,

[00:06:28] strong, sturdy, happy, and healthy. And it wasn't just genetic luck of the draw either. But Price also observed that as soon as those isolated populations switched over to nutrition of commerce, meaning refined flours, sugars, jams, canned goods, and so on, their health tanked just like the rest of the Western world. Through generations of trial and error, each community had found a combination of foods to build the healthiest bodies possible. Intrigued?

[00:06:58] Here's a snapshot of what some of the healthiest communities ate as mainstays, summarized from Price's book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. The Swiss of the Luchental Valley. Fresh, hand-milled rye bread. Raw cheese, butter, and milk from cows eating fast-growing alpine grass, which supercharged the dairy with vitamins. And local vegetables, both fresh and preserved. The Native Americans of the Rocky Mountains.

[00:07:26] The organs and bones of wild game, particularly moose and caribou, muscle meat was typically fed to the dogs rather than used as human food. Bark, tree buds, and other vegetation, particularly in the summertime. The Gaelics in the Outer and Inner Hebrides. Oats at every meal, mostly in the form of oat porridge and oat cakes. Local seafood including fish, lobsters, crabs, oysters, and clams. Cod liver was particularly revered. And fresh vegetables in the summer

[00:07:56] and stored vegetables in the winter. The tribes in Eastern and Central Africa. Starchy foods like sweet potatoes, beans, corn, and millet. Fish, shellfish, and water plants. Wild game or domesticated goats and cattle used for meat and dairy. And insects like ants and locusts, which were used in pies, puddings, or dried and ground into flour. The Inuit of Alaska. Sea animals, particularly the organ meats, oils, and skin.

[00:08:25] Fish and fish eggs. Caribou and other land mammals. And vegetation collected in the summer and saved for the winter, including cranberries, kelp, watergrasses, bulbs, ground nuts, and flower blossoms preserved in seal oil. So there you have it. No one counted carbs or fat. No macronutrient ratio was a universal sweet spot. The rye-eating Swiss hardly shied away from gluten. Nor did the aborigines get the memo

[00:08:55] that they were tragically deficient in healthy whole grains. The Gaelic's oats with every meal habit flew in the face of paleo diet wisdom, while the Inuits' meaty menu should have doomed them to disease, according to plant-based diet proponents. Cholesterol-rich organ meats and shellfish were prized rather than feared. Successful diets ranged from high starch to starch devoid, from meat-based to meat scarce, from high grain to no grain. In other words,

[00:09:23] those traditional diets ran the gamut, yet in every instance, they produced remarkably, enviously healthy groups of humans. Go figure. So, what can we take away from that? Hear that on tomorrow's episode. You just listened to part one of the post titled Exactly How to Figure Out What Diet is Right for You by Ben Greenfield of bengreenfieldlife.com and I'll be right back with my commentary.

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[00:10:23] Dr. Neil here for my commentary. Going back to Ben Greenfield's example of the Inuit of Alaska surviving on mostly organ meats and very little else, how is it possible that they didn't experience all kinds of health problems? Well, newer studies have found that those with Inuit ancestry actually have a specific genetic adaptation that allows their bodies to eat a very high-fat diet with no side effects. Now, if those without this familial ancestry

[00:10:51] tried to follow a diet like this for months and years, we'd probably experience all sorts of potential health issues. In fact, something that researchers have found is that when we tend to eat a diet that's really high in fat, like say a ketogenic type diet, it can actually change the health of the gut microbiome and not in a good way. Others have found that a high-fat diet like this can lead to the body creating something called lipid peroxides. These lipid peroxides actually increase disease risk,

[00:11:21] like heart attack, stroke, cancer, and even Alzheimer's disease. So, as today's author, Ben Greenfield, said, maybe it's not finding the one diet that works for every human, but finding what works for you. But before I steal Ben's thunder and start talking about the things we'll hear on tomorrow's show in part two, I'm going to stop there. So, that'll do it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And of course, I'm going to be back here tomorrow to finish up the rest of this post. So, I'll see you there

[00:11:50] where your optimal life awaits. and most of the minutes. Let's get started.