Stop The Diet Wars Insanity

Nutrition has gone tribal

Who here remembers the bleached blonde, buzzcut, diet doyen Susan Powter from the mid 1990s with her singular, buff, tattooed persona and her signature clarion call: “Stop the Insanity!”? I do! I do! Who here feels like swinging open the window—ala Network—and screaming that idiom at the top of your lungs?! I do! I do!

As some of you know, I’m not a consumer of media. In fact, I’m a relative social media outlier and I don’t watch television or read many periodicals that expose me to the latest advertorials and infomercials. Yet even I am getting whiplash from the onslaught of nutrition and diet information bombarding the airwaves—it’s a mad, mad world out there! And if I’m feeling it, surely you are as well.

Nutrition as lifestyle
I am all too familiar with the crazy diets of 40 and 50 years ago (my mom was very, very heavyset and I rode along to many a diet clinic): the Stillman diet, the grapefruit diet, the pineapple diet, the cabbage soup diet…too many to remember. And Sego—ugh, horrid! But we are in are different times. Those were diets—not overarching lifestyles or philosophies—you hopped on, you hopped off. Now, it’s complicated with diehard, feuding nutrition and lifestyle camps. Confusing and dizzying doesn’t even begin to describe the health and wellness ecosphere.

This really struck me several weeks ago when I saw a couple of posts from health and wellness author and TV celebrity Max Lugavere—whom I do think is a valuable voice in the space, by the way—smack down the Blue Zones, perhaps in response to the media blitz promoting the Netflix documentary, Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. And I do mean smackdown. He didn’t simply, respectfully disagree with an aspect of the premise, but purposefully headlined his weekly email with “Blue Zones DEBUNKED” in all caps. I thought to myself, “What the heck is this all about? How are you DEBUNKING—all caps—an entire generational lifestyle?”

His vehement criticism struck me as harsh and absolutist, and although buried deep in a paragraph was the caveat “The Blue Zones can certainly offer insights into healthy living…” the viewer was already tainted and likely to disregard all the good lessons the Blue Zones have to offer. Max dismissed the observational information as inferior to a scientific study that he cited, which bolstered his position that a predominantly meat-based diet is better for longevity than a predominantly plant-based diet.

Ahhh, the battle of the studies and their messengers. Expert against expert. PhD against PhD. Podcaster against podcaster. The problem being, there are studies that augment diabolically opposite positions, and with human studies, in particular, having innumerable confounding variables, it casts the results in murky waters. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pooh-poohing research; I find it valuable and evaluate everything I come across, I especially appreciate meta-analysis studies that average a pool of research. For simple, one-dimensional subjects, such as whether or not coffee stains your teeth, you can rely on fairly conclusive results. But to ascertain an entire way of living over a lifetime? That’s where I throw up the proceed-with-caution sign.

We’ve outsourced our judgement…
This may come with age, but I’m becoming more proficient at trusting the small but mighty voice of instinct that we were all born with. Intuition is an amazing gift that grows stronger every year, but it requires careful listening and use to fully develop and fine-tune. A variety of things have numbed our sensibilities, such as the litany of warning labels stating the obvious, but the cumulative result is: we've outsourced our judgment. Common sense has been swept away by the tsunami of pre-packaged opinions and recommendations from media sources ranging from traditional advertising to polished, too-perfect influencers.

I understand how we’ve gotten here. It’s daunting to separate the wheat from the chaff of purported facts and figures, but that's where we are so fortunate…we’ve got our built-in balderdash meter. If the thought “Oh stop, that’s just dumb!” pops into your mind—go with it! So often I’ll read or hear something and at first, I think, “Hmm, that’s interesting…” and then after I let it sit for a while, oftentimes my next thought is, “No, that’s silly” and I have learned to move on. 

Ancestral good, tribal bad
Back to the state of our nutrition—it’s gone tribal. With the addictive intensity and absolutism that the “gurus” use to communicate their message to their devotees, it feels like we are caught between warring factions. (Yes, I’m talking to you, Max Lugavere.) What makes this so disconcerting is that food is ground zero for health, well-being, and balance. It should be foundational, but with this barrage of fervent conflicting information, we are instead standing on very shifting sand. I see the frustration in people all around me.

We’ve transitioned from fad short-term diets to entire ways of life premised on Carnivore, Vegan, Vegetarian, Paleo, Keto, Gluten-free, Raw Food, Plant-based, Meat-based, Mediterranean, MediterrAsian…there’s even a Desert for Breakfast Diet with a “study” that purportedly proved people lost weight (No, that’s silly!).

While absolutes are appropriate for obviously deleterious sugary and processed foods, I find them debatable for a long-term nutritional approach. Our bodies are made up of highly nuanced, intricately interconnected systems that have been greatly influenced by evolution. Therefore, my diet viewpoint is grounded not in the tribal but in the ancestral: I look at what our body was designed to need and how it utilizes nutrients. The fact that there is such a wide variety of natural nutritional sources between the land and sea makes me skeptical of ways of eating that are highly restrictive.

What do I make of people who swear by very limited diets? Honestly, I think the variables are too great to know one way or another. It could be that their lineage predisposes them to certain foods. Or, as a limited diet provides a reset of sorts, the short-term results could be more indicative of the absence of harmful foods rather than the benefits of the specific diet itself. Overall, in my mind, the jury will be out for a few more decades before we can evaluate either observationally or scientifically their long-term effect on health and well-being.

Don’t throw the baby out…
About the brouhaha surrounding the Blue Zones: observationally, the people from these regions are only occasional meat eaters, so their diets are labeled and promoted as “plant-based.” And there’s the point of contention and—from my perspective—clarification. Except for the Seventh Day Adventist community, the groups aren’t strictly vegetarians; their diets do include some meat, just not as copiously and frequently as we’ve grown accustomed to here in the West. Meat simply isn’t as readily available to them for a variety of reasons, so although they do consume it, it’s not a daily food. 

Frankly, I’ve been so perplexed by the criticism of these particular ancestral “plant-based diets” because each Blue Zone is not only about the food. There are nine areas of lifestyle that contribute to the overall big picture of longevity…nine. The fact that the diet portion has become such a flashpoint speaks to the tribal nature of the warring camps. These heavy-handed critiques don’t take into account that people living in Blue Zones are not only eating the way their ancestors did; they are living in communities, just as their ancestors did, with social and cultural traditions that also affect longevity.

See the forest
Personally, I go above the treeline to see the big picture lessons that we can learn from the Blue Zones, but always with the proverbial grain of salt. I’m not touting a meat-based diet, nor championing vegetarianism. (Although, interestingly, you’d think I would. You see, I haven’t eaten meat since I was 18…46 years ago.) I eat fish, eggs, and dairy, and now—thanks to the research I’ve been doing—I appreciate the value of animal protein and have been folding in bone broths. I know my diet isn’t for everyone, so I don’t bang that drum too loudly. (I will, however, fall on my sword about eliminating processed foods. For that, I’ll bang a set of drums!)

Here is my Ageosophy: the pendulum rests in the middle. My goal is to sift through and discover the best set of principles possible for longevity while avoiding the insanity. I work hard to curate the media I consume, to stay quiet and listen to my inner voice, and to resist the temptation to pull too far in any one direction. I’ll consider most everything (unless it’s zealously all caps), sit with it for a while, and if it seems logical, I’ll adopt it in whole or parts. 

For me, this means a whole food, balanced diet from a wide variety of sources, and I see this as just one piece of a holistic lifestyle strategy that draws upon ancestral wisdom: movement, sleep, social bonds and community, faith, moderation, and purpose. In aggregate, these principles are my foundation to live well, age great.

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