What's The Healthiest Diet?
As a personal trainer, fitness coach, and nutritionist, one of the questions that I get asked most often is “What kind of foods should I eat? That is a pretty important consideration after all, since optimal eating has been associated with longer life expectancy and a dramatic reduction in your risk of developing several deadly diseases.
If you do a simple Google search on how to eat healthfully, you’ll be overwhelmingly bombarded with confusing and seemingly contradicting information from different self-proclaimed experts, ranging from mom-bloggers and “bio-hackers”, to confusing news articles and Youtube videos. Many of which can seem very convincing and rooted in science, thanks to content creators with great looks and excellent marketing skills.
It's quite understandable that the average person who has never actually studied health or nutrition can end up having really hard time knowing who or what to believe since the claims of people who swear by different diet approaches appear to be in direct contradiction with each other.
Science is the way to get closest to the truth, but the type of nutritional study that shows a direct cause-and-effect relationship between diet and health is really difficult and expensive to do. Researchers would have to lock up the subjects in a lab for a long time while controlling and measuring every bite of food that they eat. Nutrition studies are also subject to the bias of the researchers as well as the people being studied. There also tend to be a large number of confounding variables in population-wide studies that rely on things such as government health data or getting people to fill out surveys. “Confounding variables” is a fancy way to describe stuff, other than the diet itself, that can influence the outcome of a study. For example, some people who eat a certain way are also more likely to engage in other habits and behaviors that may negatively affect their health.
In a perfect example, many people who eat a lot of red meat are generally less health-seeking and more likely to smoke, drink, avoid exercise and sleep poorly, so it’s really difficult to narrow the cause of their poor health down to red meat when looking at studies of entire populations.
In the next section of this article, I’m going to take a brief look at some of the currently popular eating approaches which have helped many people improve their overall health. If we narrow down the things that they all have in common then we can filter out the other noise and apply the important stuff to our own diets so that we can live longer and happier lives.
Let’s start by reviewing the currently popular diets and their fundamental principles:
The Paleo Diet
The paleo (short for Paleolithic) diet is based on the premise that the (presumed) diet of our cave-dwelling hunter-gatherer ancestors is the optimal way to eat. The diet generally excludes grains, processed foods, and dairy while placing an emphasis on lean meats, vegetables, nuts, and fruits.
Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is more of a meal timing protocol rather than an actual diet. It can be combined with any of the other dietary approaches listed in this article.
A very popular approach is Leangains 16/8 which was popularized by Martin Berkhan, where you go 16 hours without eating each day, normally by skipping breakfast in addition to your overnight sleeping period. This is referred to as the fasting period. You then eat all of your meals within an 8-hour period referred to as the feeding window.
The above is just one example of many popular intermittent fasting approaches. There are a variety of other popular meal-timing schemes such as Eat Stop Eat, in which you fast for 23 hours and then eat one meal or the 5:2 diet, Every Other Day Diet, etc.
Despite claims about insulin fairies and “fat-burning mode”, the thing that they all have in common is a restriction of your eating to a predetermined time period. This is one way to manage how many total daily calories you eat while enjoying larger individual meals and feeling less deprived.
The Vegan Diet
The vegan diet excludes all animal products, including dairy and eggs. The underlying philosophy is based on the rejection of using animals as commodities. Many people become vegans due to personal ethical and environmental concerns about factory farming and the harming of animals. Veganism is a relatively new phenomenon having originated in 1944 Great Britain. The movement has been gaining traction throughout the 2010s. Although vegan diets are inherently deficient in some key nutrients that are only found in animal products, those deficiencies can be managed with careful meal planning and a short list of supplements.
Low-Carb Diets
The low carb diet is based on restricting your carbohydrate intake below a certain amount, which depending on the approach, is normally around 50 grams per day.
A very popular incarnation of low-carb is the ketogenic diet. It’s high in fat, very low in carbohydrate, and contains moderate protein. The diet is based around a physiological state called ketosis, which normally kicks in during periods of fasting, starvation or severe carbohydrate restriction. By severely reducing the number of carbohydrates you eat, your body switches to burning ketones instead of glucose (sugar) as its main fuel source. In order to fuel this process, your liver converts fat into ketone bodies, which are then used as the emergency replacement for blood glucose, feeding the cells in your body and keeping you alive. Some individuals seem to experience less hunger on the keto diet, making it a good calorie-management tool for those individuals.
Flexible Dieting or “If It Fits Your Macros” (IIFYM)
The premise of a flexible dieting approach is that no single food is good or bad in isolation and that eating the right balance of calories, protein, fat, and carbohydrates for your goals allows you to fit a few indulgences into your diet without having to worry about negatively affecting your goal outcome or having to rely on “cheat days” to keep you sane. For example, you can still enjoy a cookie, some ice cream or a bit of chocolate that you’ve been craving if you track and count it towards your daily target of protein, carbohydrate, and fat.
This way of eating has gotten somewhat of a bad rap and you can thank the people who take it to the extremes and use it as an excuse to live on junk food. Many people who follow the IIFYM approach use meal-journalling smartphone apps, such as MyFitnessPal or Lose It, in order to keep track of their daily macros (short for macronutrients).
In order to follow this approach in a reasonable way that aligns with health goals as well as physique improvement, you should still eat about 80-90% minimally-processed foods and allow 10-20% for the fun stuff. Despite what some people may think, indulgence foods are simply an option with this approach, not an absolute requirement.
Can each of these approaches improve your health?
The answer is a resounding yes. You can find people who are not just healthy but also thriving with any of these approaches. There are so many real-life examples that it’s a major reason why nobody can seem to agree on which approach is best. People tend to get married to the approach which worked for them, quickly deeming it as the best approach for everybody else.
What do the healthiest people in the world have in common?
If you take a broader look at the people who are truly healthy and thriving on any of these diets, you’ll find that they have a few things in common.
For starters, they mostly tend to eat nutrient-dense, minimally-processed foods and they include a bunch of foods that come from plants in their diets such as veggies, legumes, fruits, nuts, and omega-3 fats. Many of them also have a moderate intake of animal products including seafood, lean meats, and eggs, and they tend to avoid the excessive amounts of processed meats that are prevalent in the Standard Western Diet. They eat in a way that provides enough vitamins and minerals to support a healthy, functioning body and most of their food doesn't come in a bar-coded box, bag or can.
The healthiest people also manage their body weight with an energy-balanced diet. This means that the total amount of calories they eat matches the amount which they burn through daily activity. You don’t have to count calories, but they do absolutely count when it comes to maintaining a healthy weight, which is strongly associated with having a protective effect against many diseases.
Focussing on a whole food diet like the one described above makes it far more difficult to overeat than eating a bunch of super-tasty processed food which is specially engineered to hijack your senses and override the satiety signals that your body uses to let you know when you’re full.
Summary
While each popular diet has its own distinct approach or a different set of rules to follow, you’ll find that they tend to share a few fundamental principles. There are a few elements which are compatible with all of these methods and seem to contribute to a positive health outcome.
First, they limit refined starches and added sugars by minimizing processed foods like the ones you would find in supermarket freezers, snack aisles, corner stores, and gas stations.
They also minimize or eliminate harmful trans-fats, which are mostly found in processed foods and baked goods, while emphasizing monounsaturated fats from sources such as nuts, avocados, salmon, olive oil and natural nut butters.
Another common theme is a primary emphasis on plant-derived foods such as, vegetables, legumes, fruits and whole grains. Seafood, lean meats and lean dairy are also a common theme in some of the healthiest eating approaches such as The Mediterranean Diet
Adequate protein intake is also worth mentioning, especially for people who want to lose weight, perform better at sports, build a strong, attractive physique, and improve the quality of life during their senior years. Now, I love my protein and I’m sure I’ll raise the eyebrows of a few fitness pros for barely mentioning it. Although I’m personally biased towards recommending a higher protein intake for various reasons, it becomes a slightly lower priority when the main focus is general health, disease prevention, and longevity. By following the general guidelines in this article, most regular people who just want to be healthy (and aren’t trying to get jacked, shredded and sexy) will tend to consume enough protein, except perhaps some people following poorly-designed vegan diets.
Key Points
Focus on eating an inclusive diet, rather than an exclusive one that cuts out entire food groups
Eat mostly whole or minimally-processed foods including veggies. fruits, seafood and meat
Eat an appropriate amount of calories for maintaining healthy body weight. Avoid chronic overeating.
Minimize the intake of tasty highly-processed foods that aren’t filling and are very easy to overeat
Include monounsaturated and Omega-3 fats from nuts and seafood
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” is a good general guideline to follow
I really hope you enjoyed this article. If you need step-by-step guidance along the way, including a personalized custom training program and nutrition coaching, you can hire a coach to help you become the best version of yourself.
Source: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182351