The science of eating healthy

Every year it seems like new research is coming out about nutrition—and it always seems to be different from last years. Wine is good for you. Wine is bad for you. Eggs are in! No wait, eggs are out. With all this conflicting advice being dumped on our ears every year, it can be frustrating to figure out what exactly we’re supposed to be eating.

The good news is, scientists now believe they’re closer to figuring out what a perfect human diet looks like, and more importantly, what it doesn’t include.

Eat Whole Foods

Regardless of whether you are a vegetarian or an omnivore, unprocessed foods have been repeatedly found to be healthier than processed foods. A diet of oreos and potato chips may well be vegan, but it doesn’t take a scientist to tell you this is not a healthy diet.

A 2019 NIH study confirmed that processed food is also more likely to lead to weight gain. Processed foods tend to cause overeating, making you consume more calories than you otherwise would have. It’s by no small amount either, participants in the study who ate processed foods ate an average of 508 calories more than those who didn’t.

In general, the more unprocessed foods you incorporate into your body, the healthier you will be.

Think Mediterranean

If you are looking for a new diet to try, the kind that restrict whole macronutrients may not be the right choice for you. While diets such as the keto diet may be necessary for those with specific medical conditions, they’re not helpful for the majority of people.

Instead, you may want to look toward a Mediterranean diet. These diets have been proven to increase lifespans, reduce incidences of all causes of mortality, are especially good for the heart, and can reduce chronic illness.

The Mediterranean diet is rich in variety and flavor, is mostly plant matter, and tends to exclude red meats. These are in keeping with the majority of research papers in terms of health.

In fact, a new 2020 research paper found that a Pesco-Mediterranean diet, accompanied by intermittent fasting, could well be the ideal human diet. Researchers broke down the key components of the diet, and proposed it as the ideal human diet.

They also broke down what that included, talking about fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, olive oil, and various kinds of seafood in their paper.

Research continues

Humans have survived for millenia because we can adapt our diets in such a huge variety of ways. The Mediterranean diet has certainly proven to be a very healthy diet, as evidence by how common it is in “Blue Zones” or places where people often live to be 100, but that research is not yet definitive.

If you’re not sure about your diet, your best choice is as always to speak with your doctor, and see if changing to a Mediterranean diet is best for you.