The main reason I dislike nutritionism is that it gives the impression that there are foods everyone should eat: everyone should eat broccoli because it boosts the metabolism; everyone should eat avocados because they reduce belly fat. The problem with these kinds of claims is that they ignore the individual. Every person has unique dietary needs depending upon their body type and health concerns. For example, bananas are a wonderful source of potassium, but they will also aggravate heartburn and hiatal hernias. Nutritionism ignores individual needs in favor of making broad health claims about foods. People feel like they must be missing out on some essential health benefits if they don't eat the "superfoods".
The truth is that just about any whole food could be considered a superfood. By "whole food" I am referring to fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, herbs, and spices. I could honestly take almost any fruit, vegetable, herb, or spice and come up with at least a 2 hour class worth of information about the health benefits of that food. Any food from nature is going to have health benefits.
Another reason I dislike nutritionism is that it creates anxiety about eating. The last thing we need in the U.S. is more anxiety about our food. There are continually new discoveries being made about whole foods and exactly which components cause them to be effective in creating certain actions in the body. These new discoveries get published in diluted form as broad-based health claims, which creates confusion. I have had so many people come into my office and express this confusion over the contradictory messages about foods that they see in the media: "Is a gluten-free diet really good for everyone?", "Is raw food really better for you than cooked?", "Is coconut oil good or bad for you?", "Is it really bad for my health to take vitamins?"
Keep in mind that media headlines are intended to hook the reader and not to convey the big picture about anything.
In a world where there is so much anxiety about what to eat, I do not believe that health professionals should be creating further anxiety about eating. I believe that we in America live in a society that is fundamentally plagued with an eating disorder. We want to be so thin that if we got there we would have abnormal hormone cycles...but we also want to eat whatever we please. The high prevalence of digestive disorders in the U.S. can be perceived just by turning on the television and seeing how many commercials there are for antacids and digestive aids.
We have created a culture of experts and given over to them all the wisdom and power about what we should put into our bodies. We have lost the basic knowledge that we need to survive and that basic knowledge is how to eat. I believe that it is ridiculous to think that another human being, no matter how much education they have, intrinsically possesses better wisdom about what you need to put into your body than you do. Of course, there are medical conditions that can be treated with food and that knowledge is worth seeing an expert about. However, the problem I see is that people have lost the ability to listen to their bodies and make simple choices about what to eat for wellness purposes on a daily basis. We have become a culture that invests our faith in nutritionists and dietitians, and we have lost faith in our own wisdom. We think we need someone to tell us how much protein we need, how many carbs, how many calories.
I believe that what is important in learning to eat healthy is to learn to listen to your body and what it tells you. Your body will let you know if you ate too much: you may get heartburn or a stomach ache. If you are eating too much protein, you may feel heavy after eating. If you are dehydrated, your skin will be dry and your urine will have more color. All of these things were common knowledge in my grandmother's generation, and information that my mother passed down to me. In my lifetime, I have watched us discard the wisdom of our ancestors and trade it for the science of nutritionism.
Ayurveda brings back our innate healing wisdom. As an Ayurvedic practitioner, I look at the individual and help each person to get back in touch with the messages being sent by the body. I realize that at first this might seem like I am just another expert creating dependency. However, the difference between Ayurveda and nutrionism is that Ayurveda is empowering. Each individual learns about their dosha and how to keep balanced by listening to the body. Once that information is learned, there is no need for "expert" guidance about what they need to eat to maintain health and wellness. Ayurveda provides a means for freedom from the constantly changing discourse of nutritionism about what you should eat. Ayurvedic eating guidelines have remained effective and unchanged for at least 5,000 years; modern nutrition guidelines change almost monthly.
Sometimes all we need is a guide to show us how to get back to listening to our bodies. If we don't understand when are we hungry or when are we thirsty, that is a problem. Our bodies will let us know if there is an imbalance somewhere because we will crave different foods. Learning to interpret those cravings is important but also just listening to the body's wisdom is key.
Each of us has dominant elements within our bodies (our Ayurvedic constitution/dosha) and those dominant elements are going to determine what foods our bodies feel best eating. What I find typically is that foods children reject are often foods that are not compatible with their dosha. What happens over life is that we lose that wisdom of listening to our bodies and what they want.
Now I am not suggesting that every parent simply let their child choose every meal they should ever have. With children there is of course also the issue that they would eat whatever tastes good to them, and being humans that is typically what is very salty or very sweet. What I am saying here is that instead of relying on experts to tell us for our whole lives what we should eat and how much exactly and how many grams of nutrients, we can listen to our own bodies and what they are telling us we need.
There is so much more to being healthy and eating healthy than counting calories and counting grams of nutrients. There are times in our life when we need more protein than others and our bodies will crave that. There are times in our life when we are going to need greater caloric input than others and our bodies will let us know that. But to get attached to the idea that each of us, no matter how big or how small, or what stage of life, or what season it is, only needs 1500 calories a day and specific proportions of nutrients is ignoring the big picture. This is the impression that nutritionism gives us: the idea that there is a magic number of calories that every person needs every day, that we all need so many grams of protein, so many grams of carbohydrates, so many grams of sugars every day to be perfectly healthy.
While I do see value in knowing about nutrients and what they do, I believe that it is very important not to become attached to them. At different times in our lives we have different nutritional requirements. Quite frankly, the fact that we in the U.S. are even able to have a discussion about nutrition is a luxury. In another country my viewpoint on this would most likely be very different. In another setting where there was a serious issue with people acquiring sufficient food to sustain them through their daily life, ensuring that those people simply get enough nutrients to sustain biological function would be very important. But in the U.S. where even our processed foods are fortified with vitamins and minerals, such as breakfast cereals and bread, this idea that we are nutritionally deficient is a little bit erroneous. The problem typically I see is not that people aren't eating enough; it's that they're not eating actual food.
I believe that this nutritionist philosophical stance contributes to unhealthy eating. Basing a food's value solely on nutritional quality creates the idea that the food itself is not important. What becomes important in the nutritionist philosophy is simply nutrients: are you getting enough vitamin B12; are you getting enough vitamin D3? The problem then is that people come to believe that all they need to do to be healthy is look at nutrients. It's much easier to get a powder of green vegetables that you can throw into a yogurt and make a smoothie in the morning than it is to buy whole foods and cut them into meals.
To break foods down into effective nutrients ignores the effects of the food as a whole. The benefits you get by eating a whole food are very different than those you get from taking supplements made from the "active components" of that food. Taking green tea extract, for example, does not offer the same health benefits as drinking green tea. This is because the human body recognizes green tea as a food and knows how to process it. The human body does not recognize the extract in the same way. Reducing foods to active components also ignores the principle of synergy. Synergy is the process of interaction between chemical components that creates different results than any single component would cause on its own.
The problem with this practice of breaking foods down into active components is that it creates the foundation for our society to become nutritionally deficient. When we use a powdered supplement of vegetables and fruits instead of eating actual vegetables and fruits, our bodies do not recognize this substance as food. Consequently, our bodies will not use this supplement to our greatest health benefit. Nutritionism makes it too easy to believe that the value of food is nothing more than its set of nutritional components. That belief I think is the most dangerous aspect of nutritionism. When we believe that taking a powdered food supplement is the equivalent of eating a whole food, that is when we have lost the knowledge of what it means to listen to our bodies and learn from nature about what it means to be healthy and feed ourselves on the most basic level.
It is easy to become confused about what to eat when trying to keep up with all the new health claims being put out into the world. If you feel overwhelmed, take a step back. Remember that humans have been existing with nature for many years. The foods that we have evolved with and developed the abilities within our bodies to digest are the foods that will best nourish us. So, when you feel overwhelmed about all the health claims that are out there, just ignore them. Don't worry about how many calories you are ingesting every day. Don't worry about how many pounds the scale says you weigh. Just think about how you feel. Think about eating whole foods. Think about going to the farmers' market in your local area and discovering what's in season. If you can't manage the farmers' market or there is no farmers' market near you, then just go to the grocery store and simply begin by eating from the produce section. Buy ingredients and not premade meals. Just begin with with play. Buy some fruits and vegetables that look good to you, then find a way to cook them. Experiment with new recipes using whole foods and cooking with friends and family. Take the stress out of eating, empower yourself, and take your wisdom back.