If you’re like most people these days, food labels, the nutrients you need, how and where to get them and how much of which vitamin or mineral you need is just confusing. Daily values? The Food Pyramid? Ever-changing standards? And then you have to wonder who is paying who off and if you can trust any of this stuff at all.
I thought I’d just put together a little discussion to hopefully clear up some misunderstandings and cut through the noise.
The food pyramid (and related)
If you look at the difference between what the USDA told us to eat fifty years ago compared to what they’re telling us to eat now, it’s different. (See images)
When I was a kid, I was told very simply that fat is bad. We were under the impression that eating fat is what made you fat. We were also told that cholesterol is bad. It clogs your arteries and that’s the end of the story. Also, you’d always see grains. In fact, most of the versions of the food pyramid that I’ve seen have grains at the bottom. According to the USDA, that’s what you should eat the most of.
Both of these assumptions are patently false.
Grains are bad for you—pure and simple—and for several reasons. One, gluten causes gap junctions in your intestinal wall, meaning it opens up spaces between the cells that allows bad stuff to get into your bloodstream, which causes an immune response and inflammation throughout your body. Grains are also almost immediately converted to sugar in your body. And if you’ve listened to this show more than twice, you’ve no doubt heard me talk about how absolutely detrimental sugar is to your body.
And as for fat, it’s the same as cholesterol. There are two different kinds. One is good; one is bad. Bad cholesterol, called LDLs, does clog your arteries. It comes from things like fried foods and cheeseburgers and processed foods and snack foods. But GOOD cholesterol, called HDLs, does the exact opposite. It clears your arteries out, AND it’s the molecular basis for all of your hormones. It’s an understatement to say you NEED cholesterol. HDLs come from foods like avacados, nuts, fatty fish, butter and meat.
Daily values and your dietary needs
You are all probably familiar with those “daily value” labels you see on the back of all of your food. It says things like, “This food contains 20% of your daily value of Vitamin C.”
I find that this, in general, is a good start to living a nutritious life. It’s good that we can see and understand and think about the types of micro-nutrients we need. And it’s good to see labels and understand what sort of foods have higher concentrations of what sort of nutrients.
But we do have to understand and make a distinction about something.
For example, your daily requirement of Vitamin D, according to the Food and Drug Administration, is 400 international unites (abbreviated as IU). If you go back and look at the history of why and how this number was determined, you’ll find that it is simply the minimum amount you should eat per day to avoid getting rickets. (A disease where your bones calcify and deform.) The thing about Vitamin D deficiency is that rickets is the most outwardly apparent worst-case scenario. A vitamin D deficiency can lead to autoimmune disorders, a weakened immune system, high blood pressure, depression and all sorts of other things.
Since a lot of these conditions are also related to other things, we often don’t make the Vitamin D connection. But I recommend at least 8,000 international units of Vitamin D every day. That’s 20 times more than the FDA recommends. To get that much, you almost have to take a supplement unless you live and work in the sun and eat a lot of red meat.
But sometimes nutrients can be overvalued as well.
The reason most of the salt you see at the grocery store is “iodized salt” is because back in the early 20th Century, the U.S. had a rash of gout—you know, the disease where your get a big, swollen growth on your neck. Gout is caused by, among other things, a deficiency of iodine, so U.S. policymakers just thought they’d fix that right up and add iodine to something almost everyone eats—salt!
The good news is that it worked, and cases of gout dropped dramatically. The bad news is… well, we eat too much table salt now, which means we don’t have to worry so much about gout, but we do have to worry about high blood pressure and everything else that goes along with that.
As a general rule of thumb, eat more Calcium, Vitamin D, Potassium, Iron, Vitamin B12, Folate and Magnesium. Research suggests that most of us are defficient or borderline deficient in these nutrients. And thanks to the Daily Values labeling system, you can consciously look for foods with high concentrations of these nutrients.
The biggest problem with it, though, is that it’s sort of a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s simply based on a 2,000 calorie diet, which is—for the sake of simplicity—supposed to apply to men, women, children, pregnant women, sick people, all the people of different races and heritages, etc.
But that’s not really fair. If you’re a man, you are going to need about 25 percent more zinc, magnesium, Vitamin A and Vitamin C than a woman.
But women need much more iron and calcium than men. And pregnant women need double the iron recommended by the daily values system (generally) and about double the amount of B vitamins as well. They need more folate too—which is why you’ll find big doses of folate in prenatal vitamins—because it affects the growth of the brain and blood cells of the baby.
A step further
If you want a much more accurate system than what the FDA has on the back of your corn flakes, you can look to the Recommended Dietary Allowance provided by the Institute of Medicine. Not surprisingly, this is quite a bit more complicated.
It is much better because it splits people into different groups based on gender, age, race, pregnant or not, etc. And rather than simply indicating how much of a nutrient you need to barely avoid being deficient, it recommends how much you need to promote a healthy biological balance all around.
Still, you have to admit that no matter how specific you get with demographics and biology, you will never be totally accurate unless you evaluate people on an individual, case-by-case basis. That’s why if you’re concerned with your nutrition, it’s best to go see a nutrition coach. You’ll take a few tests, most of which don’t require a lab. They look at your height, weight, age, gender, how active you are, maybe your family history as well and determine what it is specifically you need.
Again, the daily values system is a good, very basic start. And the Institute of Medicine’s Recommended Dietary Allowance is a little better, but the best option is to have yourself evaluated on an individual basis.
The bottom line for good generalized nutrition
First, get rid of sugar. If it weren’t for sugar and smoking, I’m fairly certain we’d all be living at least another 20 years on average.
Second, get rid of grains. They’re basically just sugar.
Third, eat more good fats and good cholesterol. These come from things like avocados, nuts, fatty fish like salmon and mackerel, coconut oil and meat.
Fourth, at least, at least double the amount of green, leafy vegetables that you’re eating. Most of these vitamins that we’ve talked about—Vitamin A, B, C, D, E, potassium, magnesium, etc. can be found in green, leafy vegetables: spinach, kale, collards, broccoli, arugula, romaine, etc.
Just implementing those four changes will go a very long way in improving your health and bringing your body into balance.
Dr. Aaron Ernst, D.C. is host of News Talk 1110 WBT’s “AskDrErnst” show and clinic director of Maximized Living Charlotte.
He specializes in providing customized nutritional and detoxification total body healing programs, utilizing the 5 Essentials of Maximized Living.