Eating and health essay

There is no standardized dietary health formula that applies to all people. A truly sustainable healthy diet is a dynamic adjustment plan that combines individual metabolic characteristics, daily life scenes, and native dietary cultural habits. It cannot be implemented by copying public dietary guidelines, Internet celebrity recipes, or the rules of a certain nutritional school.

A while ago, I sorted out 127 dietary follow-up records of ordinary adults, and the first ones I screened out were 32 samples that strictly followed the "anti-inflammatory diet" and "Mediterranean diet" templates - without exception, they did not stick to it for more than 40 days. What Zhang is talking about is the 32-year-old cousin of a Hashimoto patient. She followed the Xiaohongshu recipe and ate broccoli, salmon, and gluten-free staple foods for three months. Her thyroid antibodies did not drop much. First, her aunt was delayed for half a month because of long-term iron deficiency anemia, and her hair fell more aggressively than before.

What’s interesting is that these abandoned “standard answers” themselves have solid research support. Several mainstream nutritional schools on the market are almost supported by corresponding clinical evidence: the dietary guidelines for residents commonly used in the public health field are baseline standards based on the nutritional needs of a large sample of healthy people. They require cereals and potatoes to be the main food, a combination of meat and vegetables, and a daily intake of more than 12 kinds of food. For healthy people without underlying diseases, as long as they can meet 80% of the requirements, they can basically cover their daily nutritional needs; the low-carb/ketogenic diet was first used for clinical intervention in children with epilepsy, and was later confirmed to be effective in severe insulin resistance. It has a clear effect on improving symptoms of anti-inflammatory and polycystic ovary syndrome patients, and is now also very popular among weight loss groups; there is also the intestinal flora-oriented diet that has become popular in recent years, which advocates the intake of more fermented foods and prebiotics, which is related to improving sensitive constitutions and regulating emotions. Relevant research is also constantly updated; not to mention the traditional Chinese medicine food and nutrition system, which has been passed down in China for thousands of years, pays attention to adjusting the diet according to the constitution and the seasons. The logic of avoiding raw and cold foods for those with weak and cold constitutions, and avoiding warm and tonic for those with hot and dry constitutions has also solved many minor problems that cannot be explained by modern nutrition. My mother had a dry cough in autumn two years ago. She simmered the cough with snow pear rock sugar for half a month according to the "Moistening Lungs and Cough Recipe" on the Internet. The more she drank, the worse her cough became. Later, she went to an experienced Chinese medicine doctor and found out that it was a cold cough. She drank boiled ginger and orange peel water instead, and she was cured within a week.

The most intense quarrel on the Internet right now is simply which of these schools is "politically correct": those who support ketosis accuse the Dietary Guidelines of having too high a carbohydrate ratio as the "culprit of obesity," those who adhere to the Dietary Guidelines say that ketosis will increase low-density lipoproteins and induce ketoacidosis as an "IQ tax," while others say that traditional Chinese medicine nutrition is all metaphysics and is worthless without the support of double-blind experiments. Even trivial matters such as "Can you eat overnight vegetables?" and "Is milk tea a health killer?" are hotly searched. The public health school says that overnight green leafy vegetables contain excessive nitrite and milk tea has too high added sugar content and must not be touched. However, I asked a doctor from the nutrition department of a tertiary hospital that as long as it is refrigerated for no more than 12 hours, The nitrite content of overnight dishes is far lower than the national safety standard. Compared with the food loss caused by throwing away the entire dish for fear of waste, the harm is almost negligible. As long as you drink milk tea no more than twice a week, and choose three-thirds of sugar each time without adding milk cap, the body can completely metabolize the sugar, and there is no need to violate the guidelines.

Interviewees who have really been exposed to different situations will find that these arguments are meaningless at all. There is never absolutely right or wrong in a dietary plan, only the difference between whether it is suitable or not. For example, the type 2 diabetic patients I have come into contact with eat according to the dietary guideline of staple food, and their blood sugar after meals can always soar to more than 10. After switching to a low-carb diet, their blood sugar has stabilized a lot, and their blood lipids have not become abnormal. However, there is also a girl in her early 20s who followed the trend of ketosis for three months. Her physical examination showed that uric acid exceeded the standard, and she also suffered from hair loss and irritability. After switching back to eating staple food normally, the problem was relieved in half a month.

To be honest, there is no need for most people to worry about which genre is more authoritative. The first thing you have to solve is the problem of "can you persist?" I have seen too many people, in order to make up for the 12 kinds of ingredients every day, they forcefully eat okra, and they work overtime until nine o'clock when they get home and make fat-reducing meals. In less than two weeks, they eat three hot pot and barbecue meals in revenge. In fact, their weight has increased by three kilograms than before, and they have self-denial of "I can't even control my diet." Eating healthy is not a test. You have to get perfect scores. If you can meet 60% of your body's needs, you will already beat most people. For example, I basically eat the bento downstairs at the company during workdays, which consists of one meat, one vegetable and half a portion of rice. Occasionally, I will order milk tea with three-quarter sugar if I am craving for food. I don’t feel guilty when I go to eat spicy hotpot with friends on weekends. I don’t buy enzymes or intestinal cleansing tea to torture myself after eating. All the indicators in the annual physical examination are normal.

In fact, eating healthily is like choosing shoes. No matter how good-looking the limited-edition AJs worn by others are, if your feet are too wide and cause bleeding blisters, they are not as comfortable as old Beijing cloth shoes that fit well. Another interviewee was from Hunan. He grew up eating spicy food. He quit chili peppers for three months in order to "anti-inflammation". His mood was so bad that he could not go to work normally. Later, he resumed eating spicy food. As long as he paid attention to eating more vegetables and drinking less iced drinks, the acne on his face did not break out, and his mood improved a lot. Do you think chili peppers are healthy or unhealthy? It makes no sense to talk about this apart from individual circumstances.

Of course, I’m not saying that you don’t have to follow all dietary rules. You still have to keep in mind the conclusions that have been repeatedly proven, such as long-term high-salt and high-oil diets inducing high blood pressure and long-term high-sugar diets increasing the risk of diabetes. It’s just that there’s no need to turn diet and health into a black-and-white religion, and there’s no need to stick to one school or another, and there’s no need to worry about eating an extra bite of cake or drinking a cup of milk tea for a long time – after all, eating happily is also an important part of health.