Have you heard of The Great Health Debate? It’s a free limited time online event being hosted by Kevin Gianni from The Renegade Health Show. If you’re at all interested in diet and still scratching your head about which diet is the best in the world, it’s worth checking out.
The address is http://www.renegadehealth.com/ghd.
He’s gathered 14 different leaders in the natural health movement to battle it out. It’s a free event, and there’s two hours of debate every night this week. The event is already half over, but you can still catch the last few calls if you’re interested. I’ve listened to the last two nights, and I’m fascinated.
You see, in this day and age, eating healthy isn’t very straight forward.
Let’s start with the Standard American Diet as our baseline. Obviously we know this isn’t working so well for society, or you wouldn’t be here reading this.
The next level up from that in the journey toward ‘healthful eating’ gets into the Canada (or America or Australia) Food Guide and your standard government recommended meat, dairy, grains, and vegetable servings. They don’t give you much detail and ask you to make use of conventional foods. I don’t think the government food guides are enough to keep you truly healthy.
Then you start getting into natural health which is where my philosophies lie. Natural health is generally more into large amounts of fruits and vegetables, organic foods, less dairy, and fewer chemicals and processed foods. It pays attention to things such as digestion and gut health and also makes use of other unconventional health foods and practices that aren’t usually found in the mainstream. If you’re a newbie to healthy eating, this is probably what you want to concentrate on learning so you can at least elevate your diet to this level before you go down the rabbit hole.
I call it the rabbit hole because the natural health side of things then splits down battle lines into cult like sects. This is usually about things like meat vs no meat, raw vs cooked foods, acid vs alkaline diets, and it goes on and on and on.
People are different – there is no one correct answer!
Everyone has a different body composition. Different people feel better on different ratios of fat to carbs to protein. But some people strongly believe there is one right diet out there for all people, whether it’s based on science and anthropology or pure ethics.
As a result, people get so caught up with their diets, that they end up building a whole life around the food they eat. Their egos and personalities and friends and sometimes businesses all grow around this idea of being a raw vegan or a primal eater or a such and such.
So what happens then when their diet isn’t working for them anymore and they’re forced to change? It’s devastating. It’s not just the food that they have to let go of, it’s all that other stuff as well.
That’s why I think it’s so important to be open minded about things like diet. If what you’re truly interested in is health and not dogma, then you’ll be eager to hear all sides of the argument. That’s why this event it so awesome!
If you’re new to natural health, I’m just going to give you a quick little run down here of some of the common health factions and what they believe. This way you’ll be informed if I mention them in the future, or if you decide to tune into The Great Health Debate!
Common Health Diets
- Vegetarian – Doesn’t eat animal meat, but usually eats eggs and dairy.
- Vegan – Doesn’t consume any animal products whatsoever
- Raw Foodist – Only consumes raw foods because they believe that cooked food is dead food and doesn’t contain the living enzymes necessary for life. That their food should be consumed raw is about all these folks agree on… some eat raw meat and dairy, others only eat fruit, some consume superfoods, some don’t. The most common raw foodist is a raw vegan and only consumes raw fruits and vegetables, nuts, and seeds.
- Primal aka Paleo Diet – Believes that the natural diet of humans was that of a hunter gatherer, therefore, only eats organic grass fed or wild animal meat, nuts, seeds, vegetables, and some fruits like berries. Primal eaters don’t eat grains or legumes.
- Macrobiotics – Mainly consumes complex grains, fermented soy products, cooked vegetables, and maybe a bit of fish. This diet and lifestyle is based on balance energies and the Chinese principles of yin and yang.
- Alkaline Diet – Believes that all diseases in the body are based around the blood being too acidic, therefore they only consume alkaline foods. This means they are usually vegans who eat a lot of greens and not much sugar, not even natural sugars.
Are you a vegetarian? Vegan? Raw vegan? Primal eater? etc etc? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below.
Hi Tracy,
I’ve been reading your blog for couple of days, and i really like it! Today I had my first green smoothie for breakfast 🙂 delicious!
To answer your question, I stopped eating meat when i was 14, since then It’s been 11 years 🙂 but i do eat fish, and i like seafood. It’s hard to go vegetarian or vegan when you live in a small town, there are seasonal fruits and vegetables and during winter It’s hard to find anything fresh.
Best wishes from Serbia!
I listened to some of that and it’s got a lot of great information, but something kept bothering me. We have all these people who truly have the best of intentions, but it just goes to show that when it comes to health we have just began to scratch the surface.
My educated guess is that the IDEAL diet is what our cavemen ancestors ate. It’s obviously not a vegetarian or vegan diet. Call it the paleo diet or whatever you want, but that seems to make the most sense.
Yeah, from what I can tell from the debates, it definitely doesn’t sound like a long term vegan diet is sustainable. It can be great for cleansing purposes, but after that, you start to become deficient unless you use lots of supplements… which obviously isn’t natural, so how could that truly be the healthiest diet?
Of the two, I’m on paleo side, but I don’t think I’m ready yet to give up everything else to only eat meat and vegetables. I like meat, but I’ve always preferred plant foods. But, I am very interested, and I was thinking I may do a paleo experiment sometime in the future and see how I feel. I hear a lot of people with acne have had great success on it.
Before ya do, you might wanna check out Matt Stone’s blog: 180degreehealth.blogspot.com
Going too low in carbohydrates can appear miraculous in the short term, but over time can cause serious hormonal problems. I’ve experienced this, sadly.
Thanks for the link, I read some of his stuff and it’s very interesting.
I actually wouldn’t ever recommend going super low carb ketosis style… in fact, despite this video, I don’t see myself getting seriously on one diet bandwagon. No matter which diet philosophy you have, you can find scientific evidence to back it up and have it make perfect sense. You can also find a lot of people who ended up with serious problems from the same thing.
All I can say is to eat a balanced, healthy, whole foods diet to start, and tweak it to what works for you, because there really doesn’t appear to be any straight answers!
Glad to here you are on the paleo side 😉 Once you engage in it you understand how common sense it really is. But, one must choose there own pathway!
I’ve been hesitating all the time if paleo is really the best way to eat. So I ate lentils, as they contain almost no sugar (I have to remove the mold in my blood). Minutes later, my face was red, my bottom lip was a bit swollen (I ate a lot of almonds right after that, and the symptoms went away). While you might think this is an allergic reaction, I’m 100% sure it was not. I always get these symptoms after high GI meals (e.g. baked potatoes, cereals, a lot of grapes, even sweet potatoes, but strangely enough not after 60g of quinoa). Lentils only have a GI of 29, yet they are worse for me than quinoa (GI = 53). Both have around the same glycemic load.
So yes, paleo is the best way to eat. The question is : how much meat, how much nuts, how much fruit? I found the answer today : eat the seasons. When it’s hot, you need fruit and vegetables to keep you going. You don’t really need a lot of meat, and nuts only start growing in september (although I think hazelnuts start a bit earlier). You practically follow a (raw) vegan diet. Fats would only make you lazier, slower, fattier. You don’t want that during summer.
But when it’s cold outside, you need to be rather fat and strong. You need fats and protein. You’ve collected nuts during september, they are still good, so that’s a handy source of energy. Fruits don’t grow. Meat is important too. And the rest of the calories you need go to vegetables, as those grow all the time.
I think quinoa grows all year long, so that’s allowed too. And herbs are good dried or fresh.
The thing is, if I eat meat, I’m more prone to acne. If I’d eat meat with sugar I’d get some zits. So you HAVE to eat vegetables, and not eat tons of meat. That way you stay alkaline all the time, yet you are eating paleo. Hazelnuts and macadamia nuts are alkaline (I’m not sure about almonds).
Very interesting! Yes, definitely agree with the seasonal eating, considering that closest resembles how our ancestors and tribal people actually eat. I also think that what spikes people’s blood sugar is slightly different for everybody…. the best way to know is to get a glucometer that diabetics use…. I would really like to get one myself!
Hey Tracy, I was wondering.. Wouldn’t it just be healthier to eat certain foods from each diet that is still deemed healthy? I mean I figured it would be better to just eat a portion of everything from all the diets (the healthy whole foods course) instead of stressing of what to eat and not to eat? ;p
Yes, the problem is that no one can agree which foods are healthy. No matter what the food, one of the diet camps will have a good reason why it’s bad for you. I’m sick of diets of all sorts, I just eat whole foods