Some Fundamentals Of Modern Health

Believe it or not, I care about your well-being, and my silence when I know better doesn’t do anyone any good. So, let my first Medium article this year be a useful modern-diet lesson for those who never learned the fundamentals of health. It’s not as though childhood schooling or mainstream media teaches this stuff, and I’ve been lucky enough to have parents and long-term partners who were extremely interested in it, so as far as I’m concerned, passing this knowledge on is my civic duty at this point. My lesson might be slightly rough around the edges, but it’s still generally factual, and is a simple, comprehensive premise.

There are only two major types of foods to take note of in our post-industrial age. Those two are:

1. — Whole

2. — Processed

Whole food — any type of food in its original, full, natural state (I.E. a potato before it becomes gnocchi [or anything else], corn before it becomes a tortilla [or anything else], an egg from it’s shell before it becomes a crepe [or anything else]).

Processed food — is the opposite side of that (also exemplified above), which is an edible substance that was created by significantly altering food from it’s whole state (I.E. gnocchi from a potato, etc.).

To put it even more simply: A plain potato is whole. An altered potato is processed.

What this means: Processed food is typically not as nutritious as that same food in its original form. Just like all life on earth, our biologic origins thrived on the consumption of whole organisms, not processed organisms. We all come from a time when we used to tear vegetation right from a tree or bush and eat it in that exact state, so this is what our bodies consider nutrition. Basically, the more a food is processed, the less healthy it becomes.

Even when you start chopping food up, even healthy food, this is the beginning of a process. The nutritional difference that chopping food makes is insignificant, but it is still a process. Chopping food is actually what our teeth are for, so the more we break food down before consumption, the more we are bypassing our digestive process and thus lessening that food’s nutritional value. Now imagine what more processing does and even what cooking in general does. I know, that might sound weird, but it really is just biology and nutritional science (even though still somewhat debated and explored in those fields of study).

The process of cooking isn’t nearly as bad as the process of industrial production for commercial markets, but it’s still somewhat of a reduction in nutritional value. Cooking is a beautiful concept and an endless world of imaginative possibilities, and we all love it, but this won’t change how it is still not food in it’s most nutritional form. We prepare food that way and eat it that way because we love that world, culturally and artistically, but that’s pretty much it. We can cook in a way that minimizes nutritional loss and even heighten certain levels of things, but most of it will never achieve maximum nutritional value compared to these same foods in their whole, raw state. There are indeed some foods with nutritional value that can actually be heightened when they are cooked, but they are much less common. Cooking is also vital for rendering specific organic substances edible at all, such as killing certain types of bacteria that might prove fatal to ingest otherwise. So, in regards to some food, perhaps cooking and/or preparation is just survival, but it still typically reduces the nutritional value to some degree, one way or another. The fact that we need to cook certain types of food is merely an indication that our bodies will continue to deviate from their natural origins, and not necessarily in a good way, if we aren’t more careful.

I’m sorry if any of this is disappointing to think about or accept. If so, it’s still okay, because even if you choose not to change anything as a result, trust that having the knowledge is valuable in-and-of itself. Whether or not you ever act on this information, you may end up educating someone else who might be helped by it, or perhaps it might eventually show up minimally and effortlessly in your own lifestyle to some degree, which is still plenty.

Also, cooking really isn’t the type of food that has proven to be the antithesis of whole nutrition. The real culprit and the only true enemy here, if there actually is one, is commercial-industry processed food. Not only does commercial industry often put re-processed food ingredients through wild and unnatural preparation phases, but they sometimes add virtually synthetic substances to preserve it on the shelves and/or heighten it’s flavor and/or heighten it’s color. Cooking with fresh and wholesome ingredients is totally healthy by comparison. Processed food of any kind is less nutritious than whole food to some degree, fair enough, but industrially processed food is far less nutritious and far more altered than everything else, typically, often to the point of alarming toxicity levels. Commercial food that’s whole is still typically healthier than commercial food that’s not (i.e. a jar of pickles is usually healthier than a jar of pickle relish), but there are usually still preservatives and other agents involved with both. Even the lack of freshness in whole food is a factor.

We homo sapiens basically evolved over many thousands of years to survive and thrive off of substances that are in their whole form and at least fresh enough to consume. All of a sudden, only a century or so ago, you have big industry cranking out processed food and preservatives and synthetic drugs as though all of those thousands, even millions of years mean nothing. I promise you, they really do mean everything when it comes to our well being. Regardless of how much innovation goes into these products, our bodies simply can’t fully adapt to that sudden a change without some resulting deficiencies and problems. Human beings are amazing innovators, but we still can’t hold a candle to the rest of the universe or to nature. That’s just the deal. We got noth’n by comparison, still literally surrounded by that universe and living off of it, so it’s best to always be wary of how much we let our bodies deviate from such an inevitability.

The food that we likely evolved from the most, proving the most healthy/nutritional as a result, is leafy greens of a darker color than lighter. This is primarily what our biological ancestors lived on. But we can still live very healthy, full and thriving lives by eating any other type of whole food as a primary focus in our diet (especially plant-based). Also, living in a post nuclear age means that, unfortunately, even whole food is somewhat depleted (even plant-based), so for those who want to be thorough about it, vitamin supplements and/or super-foods are necessary to make up for that loss. Both of these topics are a whole other conversation though. Additionally, daily consumption of water is an important factor and is also a whole other conversation, for another day.

Overall, I just hope that this post somehow serves to make you more aware of what health and wellness really is. That’s all I intend to do. I think many of you might be surprised at how much being our best self is dependent on how we feel physically. There is no real good or bad or probably even any true enemies in this game. We are all simply navigating our way through the culture we were raised in, and the culture we continue contributing to. I myself cook and consume commercially processed food regularly, but I also balance that out with my own personal whole-raw-food quota every day, and this feels great. As my body changes over time, perhaps that habit will shift to something else again, too, all according to how things make me feel. We can each create our own quotas and healthy patterns to follow simply based on how we fair up with each one. Hopefully this post will help you to figure that out for yourself.

The importance of this particular knowledge is heavily under emphasized in our society. It’s important to remember that nutrition is a legitimate field of study at Universities globally, and certified nutritionists are trying to make us aware of knowledge like this all the time. It falls on deaf ears because there still isn’t enough hype in mainstream media, for whatever reason. I firmly believe that this stuff should always be in our thoughts at the very least. I think informed decisions are almost as important as that very freedom to decide.

Please be well.