Food Groups

America, what a place! Nutrition has not been our strong suit in the past, well, handful of decades. The amount of misinformation out there is astounding. I grew up learning “proper nutrition” from the USDA food pyramid. What a joke! That led me right to my overweight, asthmatic, and sugar dependent teens and 20s. It wasn’t until then that I decided to learn a little and tinker a little for myself and open my mind to another way. Say what you will, but I believe my journey is more common that you may think amongst people in this country. This is a huge failure of the system, and you can argue twenty different ways about the reason for this, but the reality is people are not living longer and life is not as enjoyable when nutrition is poor. The few fat wallets that a food pyramid like this generates are not worth the thousands of struggling souls that we end up with. We have to take our nutrition into our own hands and be responsible with your households in controlling the drug that is known as food.

I was listening to a man by the name of Adam Robinson (Princeton Review co-founder/freelance author/Chess Federation life master) talk the other day and he mentioned his nutritional strategy that is very simple, yet also very helpful when thinking about how to eat. When asked how he eats he, said there are three categories. Those foods that make him feel good, those foods that are neutral, and those foods that don’t make him feel good. This is a brilliant, super concise, yet very telling of his approach and engagement with what he chooses to put in his body.

There are so many diets out there these days telling you to eat this and not that. One tells you not to have this, the other tells you that this is all you should eat. Some say eat low fat, others say eat all fat, another will say eat no carbs, there’s like one want you to only eat carbs. Then, of course, some say eat only meat and we all know about ones that say to eat no meat.

Maybe just eat something and see how your body feels. Take stock of how something affects you. Eating clean is no hard concept. Eat lean meats, eat vegetables, and eat good fats. All of these things just so happen to be naturally occurring, not manufactured. Is everyone the same? Absolutely not. Make your diet simple, and then pay attention when you have new things and how they affect you. I am not going to tell you to follow a fad, or this diet, or that one, but I can tell you when I removed dairy from my diet, my asthma immediately went away. No doctor told me to try diet in fifteen years of seeing them, but they did show me which inhaler to buy.

It’s funny how money seems to make the wheels turn in this country, even when people’s well-being might just be on the short end of the stick. It’s hard to create a scheme to make money on vegetables and lean meats. Additives and sugars are our vices, and they will bring us down. There is also good money in sugary treats. If it has a label, make sure you read it. Chances are there is something shifty in there. Pay attention to how foods affect you, and not always what you hear. Stay plugged in to your nutrition. Your body will thank you daily for years to come.

 

Danny Lesslie

@dannylesslie