I have written loads of articles on special needs and diets that address those needs like gluten sensitivity, Small Intestinal Bacterial Overload, low glycemic diets, fasting and intermittent fasting, and so on. But what about the average person that simply needs a healthy diet and does not have any special needs? What kind of diet supports optimum health for those folks?
Nothing in this article is going to come as a great surprise, but it might be nice to have all the pieces in one place. A good diet serves two basic goals: it gives you all the nutrients you need to be healthy and it tells you to avoid foods that contain things that will harm you. Considering the health of the average American, the average American diet fails on both of these goals.
The average American diet is designed for convenience and taste, not health. Unfortunately in the battle to gain your shopping dollars the mass food producers have focused on training you to favor their foods by using highly addictive additives to produce repeat sales. If these were added to healthy foods, it might not be so bad because you would become addicted to stuff that is actually good for you. But the exact opposite has occurred. Manufacturers want the food to have a long shelf life, pretty colors, and taste profiles that end up avoiding most useful nutrients. Most healthful nutrients are very fragile and don’t taste sweet. They can’t sit on a shelf and tend to be bitter or astringent. About the only healthful foods that have been mass commercialized are coffee, tea, and chocolate – notice the bitter and astringent flavors that dominate real coffee, tea, and chocolate.
So what does a healthy diet look like?
The most nutrient dense foods per calorie are fresh, non-starchy vegetables. These are the foundation of a good diet. At least half of the food you eat by weight should be fresh, non-starchy vegetables. Of course you want to eat vegetables that do not have pesticides, herbicides, preservative sprays, ripening chemicals, or are genetically modified. We want to avoid the poisons.
After eating vegetables for the complex phytonutrients, minerals, and vitamins, we want good sources of protein. The best sources are wild caught, low mercury fish like wild sardines, organic organ meats, such as the liver, kidney, spleen, brain, and sweetbreads and organic, free-range chicken and turkey. Non-organic is usually high in arsenic used to kill parasites in the poultry. A healthy diet will have about 40 to 60 grams of protein per day in it, which means about 4 to 6 ounces total per day. Red meats should be limited to about one to two servings per week. Cured and preserved meats should be avoided all together. Moderate consumption of pastured eggs is good. American sourced dairy, other than organic butter, is a big problem for most people. Some people can tolerate goat and sheep cheese and some imported hard cheeses. Nut milks are an acceptable alternative. If you are vegetarian then appropriate protein powders would need to be used to meet your protein needs.
Alternate protein foods would be nuts and sprouted seeds, but these would need to be used in moderation. Be aware that all seeds are coated in poisons called lectins to keep insects and molds from eating them, hence the reason for sprouting them to decrease the lectins. This is especially a problem for legumes, which need to be soaked several times before cooking, so legumes should be used sparingly. All children should avoid soy products, but adults can tolerate some non-gmo soy, especially if it has been sprouted or fermented.
Vegetable (seed) oils are all toxic and should be avoided. That includes margarine, shortening, corn, soy, canola, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, and even grape seed oils. Healthy oils and fats are butter, avocado oil, coconut oil, olive oil, and supplemental krill oil and fish oil. Avocado is the best for cooking as it handles high heat better than all the others.
Fresh fruit should be used in moderation, about a cup a day of the lower sugar fruits like berries, cherries, plums, melons, citrus, and so on. The darker the fruit the more antioxidants it usually has. Fruit should be eaten whole, not juiced or dried as that concentrates the sugar too much. Bananas are best used green for the resistant starch in them that feed the good guy bacteria in our guts. They go well in smoothies along with berries and greens.
Chlorella, spirulina, and blue green algae are good foods to add to the diet as they are nutrition packed and help remove toxins from the body. I use chlorella daily to remove heavy metals from my body. Another bonus food is bone broth, which I have written about previously.
Herbs and spices can be used liberally as they are full of all sorts of life promoting nutrients. Vinegars, mustards, and many other sugar free condiments are also fine in a healthy diet.
Low consumption of low glycemic, unrefined organic grain products are ok for people that have no gut issues, but should be avoided if any gut issues are present. Avoid all refined flours and grains, including the grain substitutes like tapioca or potato starch. Low consumption of non-cereal grains, such as quinoa, buckwheat, and amaranth are tolerated by some people. All these foods are starches that quickly turn into sugar in the gut and sugar is a major body poison to be avoided at all times as a food source. This includes honey, maple syrup, organic sugar, palm sugar, and so on. Sugar is a condiment to be used like salt – a couple teaspoons a day at most.
Other starchy foods like potatoes, refined grains, baked goods, breakfast cereals and the like are really just sugar in disguise as they turn into sugar almost immediately upon consumption. They are not part of a healthy diet. Some starchy vegetables are usable in small quantities like sweet potatoes, carrots, winter squash, beets, and jicama. Keep the quantities small and eat all of them in only one meal per day to allow the body 23 hours to recover from the sugar load before having to deal with another load the next day. Starches also increase serotonin levels in the brain, which relaxes you and helps you sleep, so evening time is the best time for consuming starches. Conversely, your digestion is strongest in the early afternoon so this is the best time to consume your heavy proteins.
If you are young you need more proteins than adults, as you are still growing. This is also true of adults in strenuous occupations that break down muscle tissue. These people may benefit from additional proteins earlier in the day. But most people do better with just one primary protein meal in the early afternoon and little or no food in the morning other than coffee, tea, or a green smoothie. In the morning your body is still trying to break down toxins through the liver, and food consumption stops this process.
This pretty well describes a general healthy diet for most people. Be aware that any individual can be allergic to virtually anything, so no matter how good something is supposed to be for you, don’t eat it if it makes you feel bad. Always feel how the food you are eating makes you feel. Does it energize you and feel good or does it weigh you down? Food is meant to support you and feel good. Choose foods that build your health so you can feel as good as possible.