Effects of diet on health

It is not necessary to build a "usefulness rating" for each component of your diet. The same product can be both harmful and useful in each case.
As soon as the food mixes with your saliva, the magical process of digestion begins in your body. Each of the chemicals in food begins to interact in a special way with other chemicals in food and your body. This is an infinitely complex process, and it is impossible to determine exactly how substances interact. We will never be able to figure out exactly how this whole complex process takes place.
Over the course of evolution, the human body has developed a very complex system of chemical reactions aimed at maximizing the benefits of whole foods as they exist in nature. It is possible to claim the benefits of one particular nutrient, but such an oversimplified approach would be misleading. The human body has learned to benefit from the chemicals in food, rejecting some and using others as it sees fit.

Do not get carried away with vitamin supplements, they harm rather than bring health benefits. It is especially dangerous to compensate for the lack of vitamins and fiber with food additives while following a protein diet. It is useless to try to reduce the side effect of a poorly balanced diet (with imbalances in protein, fat and carbohydrates) by using chemical additives.
Because nutrition is an endlessly complex biochemical process involving thousands of substances that affect your health in different ways, it is unlikely or almost impossible that individual nutrients taken as supplements can replace whole foods. Taking nutritional supplements does not guarantee long-term good health and may cause unforeseen side effects. Moreover, those who rely on nutritional supplements postpone the transition to the correct diet.
It's not that nutrients aren't important to the body. They are important, but only when taken in the form of food, not dietary supplements. Excreting nutrients and trying to get the same benefits from them as eating whole foods indicates a lack of knowledge of the processes that are triggered in the body during a meal.

В растительной пище содержится гораздо больше антиоксидантов, клетчатки и минералов, чем в животной. Фактически животные продукты почти полностью лишены некоторых из этих питательных веществ. В то же время в животной пище гораздо больше холестерина и жиров. Кроме того, в ней несколько больше белков, чем в растительной, а также витамина В12 и витамина D, хотя в случае с витамином D это обусловлено его искусственным добавлением в молоко.

Разумеется, существуют исключения: некоторые орехи и семена богаты жирами и белками (например, арахис, семена кунжута), в то время как некоторые животные продукты содержат мало жиров, обычно благодаря искусственному обезжириванию (например, обезжиренное молоко). Но при более детальном рассмотрении выясняется, что в орехах и семенах содержатся другие жиры и белки: они гораздо полезнее жиров и белков в животной пище. Более того, они сочетаются в этих растительных продуктах с веществами-антиоксидантами.

Don't overestimate the power of inheritance: genes don't start functioning on their own. Nutrition largely determines which genes will be activated: "bad" or "good". Perhaps any disease is somehow embedded in the genetic code, but if we draw an analogy, these are just seeds that germinate only under certain conditions.

I can confidently state that the occurrence of each specific disease is caused by genes. They determine everything that happens in our body: both good and bad. Without the corresponding genes, there would be no cancer, no obesity, no diabetes, no cardiovascular disease. And without genes, there would be no life.

However, with this increased attention to genetic issues, a simple but very important point is often overlooked: not all genes are constantly fully active. If there is no activation, or expression, genes, from a biochemical point of view, they remain "dormant" and do not have any effect on our health.

Observations show that the incidence of certain diseases varies so much over time that it is biologically impossible to attribute this to the influence of genes. Until recently, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease and many other diseases of the rich were rare and our genetic code simply could not have changed so much over the past 25, 100 or even 500 years.

Therefore, while we can argue that genes play a key role in all biological processes, we have very strong evidence that gene expression is much more important, and it is determined by environmental factors, especially nutrition.

There are regular reports of cancer-causing chemicals in the press. Acrylamide, artificial sweeteners, nitrosamines, nitrites, Alar, heterocyclic amines, and aflatoxin have all been linked to cancer in experimental studies.

It is widely believed that cancer is caused by toxic chemicals that enter our body and affect it negatively. For example, people often raise concerns about potential health problems to justify their objection to the use of antibiotics and hormones in animal husbandry.

One of the chemical carcinogens of concern is acrylamide, which is found primarily in processed or fried foods such as potato chips. This suggests that if we could remove this chemical from potato chips, they would be safe to consume, even though they continue to be unhealthy processed potato slices soaked in fat and salt.

So many of us seem to need a scapegoat. We don't want to hear that our favorite foods are harmful simply because of their nutritional content.

Chronic diseases take several years to develop. For example, it is believed that the initiation of breast cancer can occur during adolescence and the disease may not manifest itself in the future until the postmenopausal period! Therefore, it is likely that there are many middle-aged women around us, whose initiation of breast cancer occurred in their youth, but the disease will manifest itself only after the onset of menopause. Many, on the basis of this, will fatally consider that nothing can be changed. What should we do, given that many of us may already have a chronic illness that will manifest itself decades later?

Luckily for us, proper nutrition helps us achieve the best possible health at every stage of the disease. We reviewed research findings showing that eating whole foods can help heal late-stage cardiovascular disease, help obese people lose weight, and people with diabetes to stop taking medication and return to their pre-existing lifestyle. disease.

Certain diseases, of course, are apparently incurable. Autoimmune diseases are probably the worst, because if the body starts a war against itself, it may not stop.

When I was negotiating the publication of this book, I had a meeting with the editor of a large publishing house, and I shared with her my intention to devote some chapters to certain types of diseases in order to talk about the relationship between nutrition and certain ailments. In response, the editor asked me: "Could you develop specific diets for each disease, so that the same recommendations are not made in every chapter?" In other words, could I recommend one special meal for cardiovascular patients and another for diabetics? Of course, the implication was that the same diet for different diseases would not attract enough attention, would be "not easily marketable enough."

It might be a marketing coup, but not a scientific one. Therefore, I'm afraid I don't have a separate recipe for each disease. I have only one nutritional recommendation: you can easily achieve optimal health and protect yourself from a wide variety of diseases with one simple diet, [preferring plant-based foods over animal foods].

There has been a lot of talk lately about a holistic, or holistic, approach to health. People understand this concept in different ways. Many include "alternative" medicine and medicines, so in their understanding holistic medicine is associated with acupressure, acupuncture, herbs, meditation, vitamin supplements, chiropractic, yoga, aromatherapy, feng shui, massage and even sound therapy.
I endorse holistic medicine as a concept, but not as a popular phrase that is used to refer to any non-traditional medical practice, the benefit of which is often not proven. Nutrition, for example, is of paramount importance to our health. Eating is perhaps the closest contact we have with our environment; what we eat becomes part of our body.
However, other things are also important - physical activity, emotional and mental health, and a comfortable environment. It is necessary to include these aspects in our concept of health, since they are all interrelated. And this approach is truly holistic.
This growing relationship became apparent to me during my animal experiments. Rats that were kept on a low-protein diet not only did not develop liver cancer, but also had lower blood cholesterol levels, were more energetic and voluntarily "exercised" in the wheel twice as long as rats whose diet contained a large amount of squirrel. The evidence for increased activity has been backed up by the overwhelming number of practical examples I've encountered over the years: People who eat well are more energetic.
The synergy between good nutrition and physical activity is very important, and there is evidence that the two areas of life are intertwined. The combination of proper nutrition and regular exercise helps a person achieve better health than the two factors alone.
We also know that physical activity affects a person's emotional and mental well-being. Much has been said about the effect of exercise on various chemicals in our body, which in turn determines our mood and concentration. And the improvement in emotional well-being and intellectual ability pushes us to maintain an optimal diet.