The Nutrient Myth: Nutritionism Shattered

By Deborah Schwartz

We humans seem to relish  "improving" on nature. While I appreciate climate-controlled buildings, indoor plumbing and technical running gear as much as the next person, there are also unintended consequences: global warming, geo-political conflicts, vast economic inequalities, and running shorts that I can never justify replacing because the darn things never wear out.

When it comes to our food choices, we always seem to be tinkering with Mother Nature. Anyone who has ever grown a tomato plant knows that the uniform sized and colored tomatoes found in the grocery store could never happen in nature. Even the same tomato plant produces fruit in different sizes and shapes.

Since humans first changed from foragers-of-food to growers-of-food, we have been cross pollinating/breeding our food to give it the qualities we crave: uniformity, high yield, transportability, etc. Of course, whenever we do this, some qualities are gained and some are lost (like taste and nutrition) - again, the law of unintended consequences. We sometimes forget that the sun-plant-animal-human food chain has evolved and adapted over millions of years. It is an intricately complex, interdependent web that we are only just beginning to understand.

Nutritional Industrial Complex

Today, our food is the product of the Nutritional Industrial Complex (to use a phrase from Michael Pollan's new book, In Defense of Food). Pity the poor (and few) industrial food providers in this country. Our U.S. population is growing at the paltry rate of 1% a year, yet investors require business growth much greater than that. What is a poor industrial food provider to do? Certainly, a look at people in any mall has shown that we have increased our calorie intake over the past 20-30 years, but basically there is a natural limit to how much more each person can eat that does not bode well for corporate growth.

To compete in the grocery store, food labels and packages shout out their nutritional advantages with la-nutrient-du-jour and la-mal-nutrient-du-jour: "high in vitamin C! low in fat! high in antioxidants! low in salt!  high in Omega-3s! low in Omega-6s!" Meanwhile, whole foods sit quietly in the produce section. It is hard to chemically add fiber to a sweet potato. Pollan calls this "the silence of the yams."

You would think that with all these nutritional improvements, we would be healthier than ever. However, it is clear that consumers of the Nutritional Industrial Complex suffer from more chronic diseases than any other populations now living or in history. Heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and general malaise are at all time highs. We get daily reports on what to eat and what not to eat: "more wine! less wine! low-fat! more yogurt!" All this noise sure helps to keep food providers, nutritionists and journalists employed, but the effects on us consumers have been decidedly mixed.

Diversity and Complexity

So here I am, greatly believing in science and scientific studies but also knowing that there are a great many "unknowables" in the world. Scientists like to reduce complex systems into knowable parts, but in the process reduce out what I believe are important factors. This is especially true for nutritionists, who have only touched the very top surface of the complex chemical interactions that occur among and within species,

Ask any runner why he/she runs, and eventually you get to some variation of "getting closer to nature." Runners appreciate and relish the diversity of the earth: we like to breathe different air, feel different temperatures, propel ourselves over the earth on our own power at different speeds. It is clear to us that nature loves diversity and no man-made environment, pleasant as it may be, ever comes close to a run on a crisp spring day or in the falling snow.

Carrying this concept over to food, it is intuitively obvious that there are very complex systems and interactions at work in the process of converting sunlight (the only original source of calories on earth) to fuel for our bodies. Plants, animals and humans have evolved over millions of years to synergistically interact for our mutual benefits. Despite our fascination with "tinkering" with food, we just can't improve on nature. We only temporarily think we can.

One example among thousands of the laws of unintended consequences: thirty years ago, nutritionists and the FDA decided to label saturated fat as unhealthy rather than take on the meat industry to label animal foods as unhealthy (never mind that this was basically a political effect of the 1977 George McGovern dietary recommendation to decrease red meat and dairy foods and increase plant foods. The good cattle producers of South Dakota voted out this popular, three-term senator for daring to challenge their industry and we have been talking "nutrients" (like lower fat) rather than food (like decreased consumption of animal-products) ever since).

Imitation Foods

So, with saturated fats on the "mal" list, what should we spread on our toast if we can't use butter? Well, margarine of course! This man-made substance could be cheaply produced from corn oil; all a food producer had to do is zap it with some hydrogen so it is solid at room temperature and voila, no more saturated animal fat! Cheap, easily transportable, and never spoils. Then, as la-nutrient-du-jour changed over time, through the miracle of modern food technology, we could improve it again: add vitamin A ... add Omega 3s.

However, no one wants to eat imitation butter and a 1938 Food and Drug act required the word "imitation" on any imitation foods. No problem - in 1973 the Nutritional Industrial Complex got that rule tossed out as long as the imitation food was not "nutritionally inferior" to the actual food. So now we have things like raspberry flavoring with no raspberries, made from corn, and we don't even think about it because it is never labeled "imitation."

Oh, but those darn unintended consequences. Now we know that the trans fats in margarine are even more harmful than the saturated animal fats. This story of isolating one nutrient (in this case, fat) and calling it "good" or "bad" leads us to an unhealthy place and this story is repeated over and over.

Processed Corn Running

If you used a mass-spectrometer to do a chemical analysis of our bodies, what would you find? By looking at isotope ratios (carbon 13 to carbon 12), you would find that our staple food of choice is corn. Most people would guess wheat - Americans consume an average of 114 pounds of wheat flour per year  versus 11 pounds of corn flour [Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma, p. 22]. So, where did all this corn in our bodies come from and why?

Think of all the things that modern food technology can make from the cheap, easily grown, genetically modified, pest resistant, draught resistant, transportable commodity of corn: high fructose corn syrup (used to sweeten everything from soda to cakes), beer (alcohol fermented corn), modified starch, fructose, ascorbic acid, maltose, HFCS ... all the unpronounceable food ingredients in processed food. Corn is in coffee whitener, Cheez Wiz, Twinkies, frozen foods, chicken nuggets, syrups, mayonnaise, mustard, vitamins, toothpaste, and the vegetable wax on your cucumbers.

All the animal foods you eat contain corn. Remember, only plants can change sun energy to food fuel and corn is cheaper than grass to feed to animals. Even though cows, chickens, pigs, and even salmon don't naturally eat grains, they are genetically chosen to be able to feed on corn because it is so cheap. When you eat them or their products (eggs, milk, cheese), you are basically eating corn. Note that now that la-nutrient-du-jour is Omega-3s, food producers tout flaxseed-fed (along with the corn) salmon and chickens and pigs. Next year, it will be something else.

So, that is us today, as Pollan would say "processed corn walking" or, for us, processed corn running.

Is this really so bad? After all, corn is "natural." But, is it diverse? Can a commodity product grown with the same oil-based fertilizers, stored in huge mountains of grain contain the thousands of nutrients in the correct proportions for human health? Could it be that our reliance on processed foods is greatly contributing to our health problems? Many forward-thinking nutritionists think this is true (such as Colin Campbell). Other nutritionists stick with their ways of studying nutrients rather than whole foods and, miraculously, because they are funded by the food industry, find that there is a health benefit to any nutrient - even nutrients in chocolate, my personal favorite.

While the nutrition scientists fight it out--nutrients versus food--it makes sense to me to respect the diversity and complexity of nature. There are too many stories of isolated nutrients, vitamins and processed foods causing harm for me to believe that science can replicate nature in our foods. Our bodies need a variety of foods, grown in different soils to get a variety of minerals. Ironically, modern distribution methods make it possible to get peaches from Chile in February, more variety than ever before ... and we are still mostly corn.

Never buy your food where you buy your gasoline

So, what should we eat? The omnivores dilemma is what to have for dinner when such a wide variety of stuff can keep us going (look at the wide variety of diets across the world). It is just that our Standard American Diet (SAD) is not one of the diets that keep us healthy.

There are a few simple (but not easy) rules I follow. Eat foods that are:

• As close to the original plant as possible
• Prepared/cooked yourself
• Have no unpronounceable ingredients
• Green and leafy every day
• Of many colors
• Of many varieties from many places
• Packaged with no "added/better" nutrient labels
• Starch-based for complex carbohydrates: potatoes, rice, beans, whole grains. These complex carbohydrates have been healthfully feeding populations for millions of years. (See the latest McDougall newsletter for some great information)
• Low in fat, especially animal fat and vegetable oils which are highly processed. High fat plant foods, such as nuts and avocados, while fattening, contain a complex variety of nutrients that our bodies can healthfully process.
• The meat issue: although I choose not to eat animal foods, I know most people choose to consume them. If you do eat them, minimize quantity (think condiment, not main course). There are thousands of scientific studies pointing to the risks of eating animal food, but none about risks of eating too much edible plant foods. To your body, there is not much difference between beef, chicken, pork, and fish (and even milk and eggs), despite industry claims.

I am stricter with myself and follow a plant-only diet. Mike Anderson, who has a great DVD on this, calls it the RAVE diet:

1. No Refined foods
2. No Animal foods
3. No Vegetable oils
4. No Exceptions

And Exercise!

Conclusion

As Michael Pollan says: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. "Eat food" sounds simple, but it means eat whole foods, not nutrients. Whenever a food label says "Contains la-nutrient-du-jour," don't eat it. Eat as in "dine" and not as in "feed."

While the food scientists and Nutritional Industrial Complex fight it out, "improving" our food, I will stick to the time-honored, diverse, complex stuff of real food.

Sources (some of my favorites)

T. Colin Campbell, PhD

Ph.D. nutritionist from Cornell University. Author of The China Study, the best, science-based book on nutrition I have every read. Get it! Read it! It will change the way you think about food. Campbell grew up on a dairy farm and started his career working on ways to grow animals faster so starving children could be fed "high-quality" protein. With an open mind, he followed the evidence that maybe animal protein is not so great. In fact, based on his laboratory studies on protein, he has found an amazingly strong link between animal protein and cancer. He was lead researcher of the China Study, the first joint scientific study conducted with China (and Oxford) after diplomatic relationships were established between the U.S. and China - called the "gold standard in epidemiological research" by the New York Times.

Michael Pollan

Journalist and writer of two New York Times best sellers, The Omnivore's Dilemma (mostly about the environmental impact of our eating choices) and In Defense of Food (Eat food, not too much, mostly plants). I have just finished reading these and they are very interesting (and, Pollan is NOT a vegetarian).

Mike Anderson

Produced a compelling DVD with an accompanying book that incorporates and includes snippets from my favorite experts: Campbell, Esselstyn, etc. His DVD can get a little strident, but it is a powerful eye-opener for those of you who prefer watching to reading.

Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., MD

Hudson Valley resident and researcher/clinician at the Cleveland Clinic (the most renowned heart-surgery hospital in the country). Also an Olympic gold medalist in rowing. He has written many scientific articles in prestigious medical journals. You can get (and understand) his recent book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. Interestingly, his colleagues at Cleveland Clinic rejected his offer to teach patients suffering from heart disease how to use diet to control/reverse heart disease progression (their careers and income depended on surgical interventions). However, when some of these same colleagues developed heart disease, they came to Esselstyn for treatment through diet.

John McDougall, MD

One of my favorite sources - a medical doctor practicing for over 40 years. He started practicing in Hawaii and noticed that his older patients on a traditional diet of rice and vegetables were healthy and vibrant into old age. Their middle-aged children and grandchildren, on SAD, were suffering from all the chronic diseases we have and McDougall was frustrated that American medicine only offered drugs to solve chronic diseases (note that it was not genetics that caused these chronic diseases). He has been successfully treating patients with a low fat, whole food diet. Visit his website or read his history of protein research. All of his books are great; his wife has developed thousands of recipes (some on the web site for free, some in books). We had a delicious McDougall stuffed pumpkin for Thanksgiving.

John Robbins (of the family that started Baskin-Robbins)

His book, The Food Revolution, gives lots of sources for research into the health benefits of a plant-based diet. It also includes compelling environmental and humanitarian reasons for moving away from animal foods.