EAT REAL FOOD
Focus on the quality and not the quantity of the building blocks: be wary of things that come in packages or plastic.
What you eat becomes a part of you. You could think of every bite as having the necessary building blocks that become a part of you and fuel that propels you. You will function better and prosper longer when you are built with and fueled by quality materials.
To reach optimal cellular function and thus health we would want everything that we consume to be as purposeful (fundamental) as possible. We want to maximize every bite with as many nutrients as possible to deliver the maximum number of required building blocks to our cells.
Thankfully nature and our own evolution have already done this for us. Our body’s FUEL requirements are largely based on our evolution: millions of years of survival have shaped our genetics and what building blocks our cells require to function optimally. For millions of years, this has been satisfied by what was available to us through foraging, gathering, hunting and now farming.
WHY EATING WHOLE FOODS MATTERS
Every whole food in nature is densely packed with calories from macronutrients and the minerals, enzymes and cofactors needed by our cells to function. Additionally, the trillions of bacteria that have evolved to live in our gut and whose health is required for ours, are well adapted to digest and process these foods. When whole foods are processed into more basic components, their nutritional density and quality decrease – the building blocks are incomplete.
Contrast this with a protein shake. While a protein shake may provide the required protein building blocks for your cells, it does not provide the additional vitamins, minerals and required saturated fat calories that a higher-quality source of animal protein does. Instead, the protein is consumed alongside nonessential nutrient fillers that do not provide essential building blocks to your body.
Contrast this further with potato chips, which are processed down to the most basic starch elements of the potato. They are devoid of any naturally occurring nutrients and further processed to include non-nutrients (chemical additives) or excess nutrients like salt that might hinder the optimal function of your cells.
Processing whole foods removes required nutrients that no fortification process can match. Filler cannot replace the building blocks that thousands of years of natural evolution packed those whole food sources with.
Eating real food means consuming the highest quality of foods free from processing and as close to their natural state as possible. We want to eat foods as nutrient-dense as possible, where every bite maximizes the concentration of building blocks our cells require. We want as few non-essential additives or overabundant nutrients as well.
Consuming the highest quality of nutrient-dense foods would alone transform your health and life dramatically.
WHAT TO DO TOMORROW TO GET BETTER
I want you to consider the food that you consume tomorrow. Think if all of the products are naturally occurring in nature or have they been widdled down from a whole food? What substitutions could you make to choose a whole food and get better nutrient density and nutritional quality?
The most important nutrition decision you can make is not necessarily how much you consume but rather how densely packed those foods are with nutrients and building blocks your body needs.
If you can get your diet to a place where 90-100% of the food you consume is whole foods, I think you have gone 80% of the work towards achieving great nutrition.
I think that it is time to stop thinking about foods as “good” or “bad”. We should be thinking about choosing delicious food that occurs in the real world and not a lab and that has us excited to sit down for our next meal.
If you are interested in getting more help with your FUEL choices then download our FUEL E-BOOK HERE
