Beyond Whole Foods: Navigating the Limitations of a Purely Whole Food Diet
While some people can tolerate the above foods, for others, they can be causing everything from autoimmune disorders to chronic fatigue.
Last week, we talked about how to filter through all the nutrition and diet advice available. Ultimately, I recommended, at minimum, eating whole foods that were available to our ancestors. In this post, we’ll dive deeper into what a whole-food diet is and why you may want to remove some of those foods for healing or optimizing performance. Thousands of books are written about diet, and I won’t be summarizing all of them in a blog post. Instead, I’ll give you a framework for understanding why some people need to go deeper than just eating whole foods and why some interventions are labeled “fad diets.”
Eat Whole Foods
A few variations are floating around regarding what constitutes a “whole-food diet.” Most agree it comprises meat, seafood, dairy, eggs, legumes, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and whole grains. People tend to disagree about whether grains or dairy belong in the whole foods category. Both would be considered minimally processed foods. Adding salt and enzymes to milk to make cheese is an example of minimal processing.
Simply put, these foods would have been available to our ancestors, requiring little to no processing or additives. Now, could you still screw this up? Yes. If you eat all fruit and whole grains but no meat, dairy, and eggs, you will not receive adequate protein, which comes with a whole other host of issues.
Unique chemical compounds found in seemingly healthy foods could be the cause of your unresolved health issues.
The Food and Nutrition Board has the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein as 0.36 grams per pound of body weight. The consensus from many in the health and longevity space is that this is not enough. Most agree a more reasonable RDA would be .70 - 1 grams of protein per pound of lean mass. The recommendation for athletes or anyone trying to gain or maintain muscle mass is 1 gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight.
It's hard to overeat protein; in most cases, people aren’t getting enough. When in doubt, eat more protein, and you won’t be wrong.
What Not to Eat
To prioritize your health and increase your lifespan, it's crucial to steer clear of the following food categories. Numerous studies link the following foods to everything from migraines and obesity to heart disease, dementia, and cancer. All ultra-processed foods contain one or all of the below ingredients:
Seed/Vegetable Oils – Eight of the worst oils to avoid are Canola (rapeseed) oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, grapeseed oil, rice bran oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, and sunflower oil. Also, beware of products that contain "vegetable oil" or "vegetable oil blend," which are alternative terms for seed oils.
Refined Sugar – The most common examples are high fructose corn syrup, white sugar, cane sugar, cane juice, brown sugar, coconut sugar, palm sugar, and most ingredients ending in -ose, such as glucose, maltose, or dextrose. While all these sugars may come from plants, they have been processed in some way to create a simple, sweet form.
Refined Carbohydrates - Examples of refined carbohydrates include white flour, bread, pasta, biscuits, and cereals. Besides being nutritionally poor and containing anti-nutrients (plant compounds that reduce the body's ability to absorb essential nutrients), our body rapidly digests these simple carbs and quickly sends glucose into our bloodstream.
Just say no to drugs kids.
I will provide resources at the bottom of this post if you want to learn more about how seed oils, refined sugar, and refined carbohydrates are wrecking your health.
Was it 80/20 or 20/80? I Forget
Once we eat a whole foods diet with adequate protein and remove the foods most harmful to our health, we have achieved the coveted 80/20 solution. Twenty percent of the effort gave us eighty percent of the results. So, you could stop here and, with some luck and some exercise, be relatively healthy and disease-free for the rest of your life.
But what if you are doing all of the above and still don’t feel great? You haven’t lost the weight you wanted, have an autoimmune or gastrointestinal issue, your joints hurt, or you’re fatigued.
The simplest explanation is we all have some variation in our biochemistry/genes, which will determine how our body responds to foods. Some people can eat nuts and shellfish, while others will have a severe and potentially fatal reaction. Others can tolerate gluten, while others experience diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting from consumption.
We don’t have to go any deeper into the science here; suffice it to say that foods affect people differently.
When 80/20 Isn’t Enough – Try a “Fad Diet”
I think the term “Fad Diet” was invented by doctors and nutritionists in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies. I say this because many of the same people deny how much of an impact diet and lifestyle have on our health. If you heal your autoimmune condition, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes by changing your diet, you no longer need to buy their medication, which threatens their paradigm. To prevent this from happening, they dismiss and minimize many diet interventions by calling them “fad diets.”
Now, I do recognize there are some crazy diets out there that are deserving of the title. Examples would be “the potato diet” or the liquid meals diet, with names like Schmoylent, enjoyed by the tech bros in Silicon Valley.
Many individuals turn to the Paleo Diet as a means to address autoimmune disorders or shed pounds; however, this dietary approach may not prove adequate for everyone.
Diets such as Paleo, Whole-30, Keto, Low Carb, Animal Based, Carnivore, Intermittent Fasting, One Meal A Day, and any others I’m forgetting do not deserve the title “Fad Diet.” They are tools people use to correct a health issue or optimize their performance. You just need to find the right tool or combinations of tools for you.
Why Isn’t a Whole Foods Diet enough?
Common whole foods considered healthy, such as legumes and whole grains, can be quite problematic for many people and irritate their gut. The protein in eggs or milk can trigger allergies or skin issues in people. Nightshades like white potatoes and peppers may be the reason your joints are aching. The oxalates and plant defense chemicals found in certain vegetables could be the reason you have gas, bloating, or diarrhea. The point is, just because a food is “healthy” or tolerable for someone else does not mean it is for you.
You aren’t supposed to have daily headaches, migraines, fatigue, joint pain, psoriasis, gas, bloating, heartburn, etc., and the solution shouldn’t always default to medication. Nine times out of ten, your symptoms are probably caused by something you’re eating.
The Carnivore Diet is an elimination diet used to quickly identify foods that were triggering an autoimmune response. Most people do not stay on this long term and gradually add foods back in while monitoring reactions.
If you’re experiencing health issues, have already removed the ultra-processed foods, and are eating whole foods, you may want to try some of the diets mentioned above.
Conclusion
Diets are subjective; some get closer to the mark than others, but there is no perfect human diet. We’re starting to recognize that as long as you’re getting enough bioavailable protein, the argument as to whether high carb or low carb is better comes down to the individual and whether or not their body performs better on fat or carbohydrates.
No one should seek to be on an overly restrictive diet if they don’t have to. Life is undoubtedly easier when you can tolerate and thrive on a larger variety of whole foods. If you start to remove foods to resolve a health issue – once the issue is resolved, you can begin reintroducing foods while monitoring your symptoms.
For example, I gave up dairy for a long time. Consuming dairy would give me a stuffy nose and cause breakouts on my skin. I discovered the Paleo diet, which excluded dairy, and I did that for several years. With my gut being healthier and the discovery of raw milk, I consume dairy daily without any adverse side effects.
An Animal Based Diet popularized by Dr. Paul Saladino has proven to be beneficial for many people on their health journey. It removes the most problematic foods for people while being less restrictive than full carnivore.
Don’t fall for the slogan of the packaged food industry and their puppets of “everything in moderation” if you aren’t thriving - or continue to eat a “healthy” food if it isn’t working. Try different protocols, experiment, ask questions, look for correlations, and try something else if something isn’t working. Find what works for you.
Resources
Here are diet interventions listed from most restrictive to least restrictive. You will notice the one constant with all of them is meat. There is no longer a debate on the benefits and importance of meat in the human diet. All of these resources also dive deeper into why you should avoid refined sugar, carbohydrates, and seed oils.
Carnivore/ Keto Diet - https://issuu.com/cnyfertilityteam/docs/kiltz_s_keto_cure_2020_spring_edition_medium__comp?fr=sZGZhMTUzODk2OA
Animal Based Diet – https://heartandsoil.co/the-ultimate-guide-to-the-animal-based-diet/
Paleo Diet – https://robbwolf.com/what-is-the-paleo-diet/
Whole 30 Diet - https://whole30.com/whole30-program-rules/
