What Does “Healthy” Mean Anyways? (Why Your Gut Will Determine Your Health) – Nutrition Crash Course Part 6 of 7
This is Part 6 of a 7 Part Nutrition Series. You can find the other parts here:
- Part 1: https://grahamtuttle.com/2021/02/the-big-3
- Part 2: https://grahamtuttle.com/2021/02/nutrition-101
- Part 3: https://grahamtuttle.com/2021/03/fats
- Part 4: https://grahamtuttle.com/2021/03/carbs
- Part 5: https://grahamtuttle.com/2021/05/cholesterol
- Part 6: https://grahamtuttle.com/2021/07/gut-health
- Part 7: https://grahamtuttle.com/2021/07/what-to-eat
So, what does “Healthy” mean anyways? It’s a common catchphrase that’s used to label anything and everything we think of as positive. Much of our perception of healthy is completely swayed by modern marketing – just go look through the store aisles and check the packaging. Anything with green wrapping that has “organic”, “protein”, “vegan”, “keto”, or “natural flavors” triggers our brains to think “This is good!”. Ironically, these processed foods are probably not doing you any favors. You can’t have your vegan cookie and eat it too. If it sounds too good to be true, well… It is.
A working definition of “healthy” is any food that meets a need effectively without causing a negative reaction. If you need calories but are lactose intolerant, then milk isn’t going to be your best option. If you are hungry but are gluten sensitive, then bread is a bad option. If you need vitamins and minerals but have an underactive thyroid, then cruciferous vegetables shouldn’t be your first choice. Simply put, while many things can meet our nutritional needs, not all foods do it equally.
“Healthy” is a relative term. It means something slightly different to everyone because we are all unique and operate uniquely. Each person has an individual mixture of genetics, preferences, and tolerances that make creating the “ideal” plan impossible. What works for me might not work for you. The best we can do is talk about foods and eating patterns that work for most people, most of the time.
There are three main criteria that you will use to decide what foods are best for you to eat.
- How much nutrition does it provide?
- How much energy does it provide?
- How much satisfaction does it provide?
How much nutrition do I get from eating this food? Food is the primary delivery mechanism for providing the basic nutrients we need to survive. This means that the majority of our vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients come from what we eat. In fact, the primary cause of the metabolic dysfunction and disease we see in the world today comes from a diet that relies mostly on foods that provide a lot of calories and energy, but little to no nutrition.
Simply put, the more nutrients you can get from a food, the better. Foods that have a broader array of nutrients are better than those that only provide one or two. For example, steak provides a whole host of vitamins, minerals, and fats, while broccoli is more limited in scope. That doesn’t make broccoli unhealthy, but it does mean that steak is likely a better choice to meet your nutritional needs.
When it comes to getting nutrients, the name of the game is simplicity. Instead of finding 50 different foods that each meet 50 different nutritional needs, finding 5 foods that each meet 10 different nutritional needs will make your life much easier. Though some people can do well eating a plant-based diet, the highest nutrient density in foods comes from animal-based sources – meat, organs, bone broths, dairy (if you tolerate it), eggs, and fish.
An important factor to consider when thinking about nutrition from any food source is how well your body will actually absorb the nutrients. Not all nutrient sources are equal. For example, while the Vitamin A in plants (Carotenoids) can be adapted for use in humans, it pales in comparison to the bioavailability of the animal form (Retinols). This means that you can consume the same amount of vitamin A in each form and receive a much larger benefit from the more bioavailable form in animals.
Additionally, several vitamins (A, D, E, and K) are fat-soluble vitamins. Without adequate fat in your diet, you won’t actually absorb these vitamins. Again, (pardon my bias) animal food sources provide a much more readily available source of fat for this nutrient uptake. You can still get nutrients from plant foods, you just have to be mindful that not all foods provide equivalent levels of nutrition when it comes to actual absorption. At the end of the day, whole foods are always best for this.
How much energy does this food provide? To answer this question, we need to look at how many calories we are getting each day. Each macronutrient has a specific number of calories: Carbs and Proteins have 4 calories per gram while fats have 9 calories per gram.
Calories are units of stored energy that we use to support daily life. We get calories from food. Think about it like gas fueling a car – the car doesn’t run on an empty tank. If you want to operate effectively and thrive, you need to fuel your body to meet the demands of your daily activities.
The term “energy balance” refers to how many calories you have consumed relative to your daily requirements. Put simply, if you eat more calories than you need, you will create a positive energy balance and gain weight. If you eat less calories than you need, you will create a deficit, and lose weight. A neutral balance, or maintenance, means that your weight stays the same.
It’s important to remember that this weight gain or weight loss can come from both fat and lean tissue (water and muscle). One is not better than the other; It depends on your goals. Generally speaking, gaining muscle is beneficial, gaining fat is not. Alternatively, muscle loss is bad and fat loss is good.
Even with all the negative buzz, you should not be afraid of calories. You need them to perform at your best. Starving yourself to try and lean out is always a bad idea that will impact your energy and focus. You cannot out work a bad diet. Your body is much smarter than you and can adjust your metabolism, non-exercise calorie burn, and cravings to make it extremely hard to lose weight.
More often than not, excess body fat and low energy comes from eating the wrong type of foods that your body doesn’t know how to process. These create inflammation and metabolic dysfunction. Instead of trying to punish yourself by eating less, change the food you eat. By focusing on getting your calories from whole food, nutrient dense sources like meat, vegetables, and fruit, your body will thrive and perform optimally.
Each body has unique caloric needs that are based off your daily activity, amount and intensity of training, body weight, composition goals, and performance requirements. Generally speaking, as your activity goes up, you will need to eat more calories to compensate for the extra burn. As your activity goes down, you need less. By and large the body does a really good job of balancing this loss or gain so there are realistic limits to how much fat you can burn or how much muscle you can build in a day.
How much satisfaction does this food provide? How much you actually like the foods you eat matters. It shouldn’t be your most important deciding factor, but actually enjoying the diet you eat every day goes a long way toward increasing your odds of actually sticking to it. The perfect diet you don’t follow won’t do you any good. I’d rather you stick to the imperfect diet that you can work with consistently.
That being said, the nutrient density and caloric load of a food should be primary deciding factors. Most people like cake and ice cream. But eating cake and ice cream at every meal would soon leave you inflamed, overweight, and unhealthy. Much like paying the bills each month, you have to take care of the big stuff first – rent, utilities, car expenses, and so on. If you choose to go buy a new TV instead of paying the electricity bill, you won’t have any power to turn that TV on.
While some people can thrive on a small and limited selection of food, others like a variety. While neither is superior, note that simple choices make your life easier. Variety is a modern-day convenience. Never before could humans walk into a 24/7 food store and choose from a year-round selection of fruits and vegetables that have been flown across the world.
While variety is nice, you don’t need to have a list of 20+ food options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You truly can eat the same thing every day. It might be boring, but your body appreciates consistency. This makes weight gain and weight loss much easier.
Finally, remember that food preferences are completely subjective. You might have been traumatized by the vegetables you were forced to eat as a kid, but that story only lasts as long as you want it to. Humans attach a tremendous amount of emotion to food. We base our decisions around what we want more often than what we need. But this craving mechanism serves an important function if we actually pay attention to it – how else would we have created a full spectrum nutrient dense diet without blood tests and nutrition labels? There is a reason you’re craving salt or get thirsty.
Unfortunately, modern food scientists have highjacked this part of our brain. Protein bars and shakes that are flavored like birthday cake come to mind. We are hard wired to prize high calorie, savory foods as a survival mechanism. There is a reason junk food can be so irresistibly inviting. Modern advances in food creation have outpaced our development in a way that makes it difficult to listen to our bodies.
While you are certain to have foods you love, do your best to have an open mind when trying new foods. Much like music, different foods have unique textures, tastes, and mouth feels. More often than not, the “picky eater” has already made their mind up about a new food before they even try it. If you truly want to maximize your health, you may have to open up to foods that don’t always rank as your favorites. Just remember, you can learn to like anything if you want to.
Now that we have a good understanding of what “healthy” means, the next question is what foods meets these criteria the best? It’s easy to talk about the positive attributes that foods have – even chocolate has some health benefit. But if we only stacked up the pros, we’d end up with a diet that consists mainly of wine, sweets, and fried foods. However, not all foods are received well by the body. In fact, the vast majority of what we eat today probably shouldn’t be considered food at all…
To truly be a “healthy” food, it needs to maximize the nutrient density while minimizing any negative byproducts, toxins, or reactions. To put this into a simple explanation; we all know that there are certain house plants that dogs and cats can’t eat or else they’ll get sick and die. Those exact same plants would kill you too if you ate enough of them. Most people just have the common sense to not eat the Dracaena Trifasciata sitting in the corner.
Put broadly, all animals are edible, most plants are not. We’ve become accustomed to walking into a food store and seeing fully stocked, beautiful arrays of colorful fruits and vegetables ready to eat, year-round. But the reality is that the vast majority of plants don’t grow in most places at most times of the year. This current luxury we have is a modern convenience afforded by mass transportation and refrigeration. Of course, I’m not saying we should shun advances in technology. These improvements have led to the first time in human history where we’ve actually conquered famine and starvation. Evolutionarily speaking, we’ve always been a few unlucky years from mass extinction.
I do want to put this into perspective, however. The modern narrative is that “fruits and vegetable are always healthy. Meat is bad”. But if you zoom out to any period of human existence past the last 100 or so years, the only dependable food sources you could find are animal based. Go walk outside in the nearest woods you can find and tell me how many calories are growing out of the ground, ready to eat… Not many, I can assure you that!
In fact, all of the vegetables you see in the food store are different variations of the same twelve or so plant species. For example, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, kale, rutabaga, bok choy, and cabbage, among others, are all part of the Brassica Cruciferous family – originating from the same plant. We’ve essentially farmed these plants to be bigger, brighter, and more digestible over the last few centuries.
The last part of “more digestible” is key. Even these commonly eaten plants have remnants of the natural plant toxins that are harmful to animals. Broadly speaking, these include lectins, oxalates, phytates, glycoalkaloids, phytochemicals, goitrogens, and sulforaphanes, to name a few. I’ll spare you the details on how each of those negatively impacts our bodies, but generally speaking they either interfere with nutrient uptake, create gut problems, or trigger inflammation in the endothelial cells.
At this point you’re likely skeptical of this heresy I’m talking about… “Vegetables could be harming me? Get out of here!” But if you’ll stick with me for a moment, I’ll share why this makes sense.
No one wants to be eaten. Animals, plants, bacteria… We all enjoy being alive. The difference is that animals have physical defenses – they can run, claw, bite, or hide from you. Plants are stuck in the ground. Since they can’t run away, they’ve developed chemical defenses to deter animals, including you, from eating them. Some plants have physical defenses, like the spikes on a cactus or thorns on a berry bush and are less toxic chemically. But for every other plant, to get the nutrients you’ll need to get past these chemical defenses. Animals don’t have this problem. If you can overcome the physical defense, the nutrients from eating animals are highly available without any negative toxins.
Historically, humans that eat any plant foods as part of their geographical ancestry have done this through the food preparation process. Soaking, sprouting, boiling, blanching, and fermenting can go a long way towards neutralizing most of the threat. To put this into perspective, eating a handful of raw kidney beans has enough phytohaemagglutinin to kill you. No exaggeration, you can go look that up.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t eat vegetables. They do have nutrients, we have evolved with them in the last several thousand years, and they are a cheaper source of food to help solve the world hunger crisis. I’m simply pointing out that they don’t come without negatives and were seen as fallback foods for our ancestors. And for our modern-day purposes, there are certainly better ways of eating to maximize nutrient density without the negative digestive stress that many plant foods have.
For example, if you look up the foods that are most likely to trigger Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Chrohn’s disease, or Celiac’s disease, they all fall into the category of high FODMAP foods. That acronym stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols, which are short-chain carbohydrates (sugars) that the small intestine absorbs poorly. In English that refers to the structure of the food. The worst FODMAP offenders are beans, lentils, grains, wheat, nuts, sweeteners (artificial too), lactose, some fruits, and some vegetables. All supposedly “healthy” foods.
Notice that meat, eggs, and organs aren’t on the list? Hopefully things are starting to come together and I’m not sounding too crazy. But to help you understand what’s happening, let’s talk about what is happening to the body when we eat foods that are causing problems. (And on a personal note, I would have included myself in the category of “no food problems” before cutting back on a lot of foods in the above FODMAP list. The improvement has been significant. Let’s just say that you forget what it’s like to have energy and feel great when you’ve been sick for long enough…)
Your body is made up of trillions of cells, most of them are bacteria. In fact, by number there are more bacteria living on (and in) you than there are cells in your body. A huge portion of these bacteria live in your digestive tract and are essential for breaking down food and absorbing the nutrients. Think of it as a mutually beneficial arrangement – they get a place to live and food, and we get access to nutrients we couldn’t otherwise digest. These bacteria are called commensal bacteria.
Unfortunately, not all microbes are beneficial to us. When the normal circumstances that support healthy commensal bacteria are interrupted (like antibiotic use, excessive hygiene, poor sleep, high stress, and bad dietary choices), we can lose these good microbes to competition with bad bacteria. Think of it like real estate, the only time someone can move into a neighborhood is if there is an empty house. Normally the commensal bacteria take up all available spaces and competitively exclude any newcomers. But when we kill off our good microbial friends, we open the door for bad actors.
Generally speaking, commensal bacteria are obligate anaerobes (meaning they can’t reproduce in the presence of oxygen). Many of the bad bacteria are facultative aerobes (meaning they can reproduce with oxygen) giving them an advantage. Once they’ve gotten a foot in the door, they have the upper hand in taking over the scene. So, you can see how important it is to maintain your health. The body has backup mechanisms for this though – once thought to be a useless structure, the appendix is now known to harbor extra bacteria to replenish the gut in the event of bacterial death.
But how does all of this bacterial warfare impact us? Essentially, anything that impairs the function of our gut microbiome messes with our ability to absorb nutrients and function optimally. The bacteria of the gut essentially make their own fuel when they break down substances. The gut microbiome is highly flexible and can shift rapidly based on what you eat. While traditionally thought to only operate off of the Butyrate generated from fermented fiber, gut microbes can also thrive off of Isobutyrate from protein fermentation and beta-hydroxybutyrate from Ketone digestion.
Without getting too far into the weeds, when the good bacteria are outcompeted by the bad bacteria, gut dysbiosis occurs, or a loss of bacterial diversity. This is essentially what is happening when you eat high Omega 6 unsaturated fatty acids, refined sugars, and processed/fried junk foods. This gut inflammation is thought to block the absorption of butyrate, meaning that the good bacteria and cells of our digestive tract can’t get the nutrition they need. Think of it like an army besieging a city by surrounding the outer limits with a blockade. The city slowly suffers a loss of resources and eventually is forced to surrender. This is what’s happening to your gut… It’s a snowballing cycle that gets worse.
While this is bad enough, the problems at the gut don’t stop there. The majority of digestion is controlled in the parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system and is innervated by the vagus Nerve. This nerve is also responsible for controlling mood, immune response, and heart rate which means that mental and emotion disorders like depression, PTSD, and inflammation in the brain all have a direct relationship to how well the vagus nerve is functioning.
There is a significant body of research that suggests that the bacteria present in our gut have a direct interface with the messages that the vagus nerve sends to the other parts of the body. For example, a certain strain of E. Coli (a bacteria that is correlated with ulcers and inflammation in the gut) has been shown to provide a template for misfolded proteins in the brain on the other side of the vagus nerve. This may not seem like much at first until you realize that misfolded proteins are the quintessential trigger for serious neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and ALS.
While it can seem far-fetched that the condition of the bacteria in your digestive tract can have such a large impact on the rest of your body, this is exactly what recent studies are showing. Essentially, what we eat, how much sun we get, how we manage stress, sleep, exercise, and other environmental variables are the determining factors in our health. When we are in periods of un-health the most sensitive parts of our organism are hurt first – the commensal bacteria.
The body’s universal response to problems is to enter a state of heightened inflammation to fight the issue.The body damages itself in order to fight off the invading pathogen or irritant with signaling processes that take resources away from growth, normal function, and healing. While this is fine in short bouts, long term exposure to this inflammation is devastating to the body. The elevated systemic inflammatory markers that result lead to disease and faster decline of capacity in old age simply because the body can’t heal. Larger inflammatory spikes, as in the case of acute infection are noticeable and short lived – you stay at home in bed until you feel better. But long-term inflammation is like a smoldering ember. It may not be providing enough heat to be noticeable, but it’s still too hot to touch.
Without going down a long list of problems and diseases related to this phenomenon, it is sufficient for you to know that health is only possible in the presence of a functioning and strong gut microbiome. While we share about 2/3rd of our gut microbiome with other people, about 1/3rd of our collective microbes is unique to us. This means that ancestry, lifestyle choices, antibiotic exposure, and disease history all factor in to creating the unique collection of gut bacteria that we call ours. Everything from breast feeding as an infant to how many oral medications you’ve taken shape your microbiome.
There is a marked difference between a healthy and unhealthy gut. When these gut bacteria are not healthy, we experience a situation called Small Intestinal Dysbiosis. (You may hear the term Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, but this is misleading and a better term for the entire situation is gut dysbiosis.) While there is definitely a collection of “bad” bacteria present in gut dysbiosis and certain key bacteria we see in a healthy microbiome, our knowledge of what actually makes a healthy gut is limited. The world of bacteria is still mostly unknown, much like deep sea, outer space, and the brain.
This is where marketing can be misleading. Certain advertisements would have you believe that taking the right probiotics, juice cleanses, fecal swaps, and enemas will fix everything. Though there is some promise to each of these (except for juice cleanses, sorry ladies), the reality is that because there is so much individuality in our gut microbiomes, these generic solutions rarely provide any benefit. These solutions are best done on a highly bespoke level and are expensive. Besides that, it’s not just as simple as “feeding the bacteria”. To actually heal and change you have to support the gut immune system.
Remember that the lining of the gastrointestinal tract is made up of special cells called intestinal endothelial cells. These create a separation barrier between the inside and outside of our body and are where gut bacteria live. Much like the endothelium of the arteries plays a key role in releasing nitric oxide to protect blood vessels, the intestinal endothelium protects this gut barrier. When bad bacteria take over and begin to “siege” the gut lining, they essentially cut off our endothelial lining from getting the nutrients and support it needs to be healthy. This means that the gut immune system isn’t able to function and leads to the snowballing cycle of further inflammation, disease, and eventually long-term dysfunction of organs throughout the body.
To make matters worse, these bad bacteria actually interfere with the hormonal signaling of the body. causing cravings for refined carbs, processed sugars, and other inflammatory foods to support their function at the expense of the good bacteria. The microbiota in our gut has a powerful pull over our brain that effects the foods we want and even the decisions we make. This has been repeatedly shown in animal and human studies, specifically those who undergo a gastric bypass surgery. Though it may sound creepy, microbes can produce toxins that make us feel bad when we don’t eat the food they want and make us feel inordinately happy when we eat the foods that they do.
This leads to the harsh reality that if you are unhealthy, the odds are stacked against you to turn that boat around at first. Of course, it’s entirely doable, but it’s important to acknowledge that the start of a journey toward health will likely be rough for the first few days and weeks. You’ll have to ignore the cravings, desires, and old habits you’ve formed as your body slowly heals.
Being overweight is a sign of two things – chronic overeating and dis-health. While the overeating part is simple to understand, the illness part of dis-health is often overlooked. The bloating, irritation, and excess fat your body is holding onto is in large part due to a chronic battle with inflammation. Instead of starting a weight loss journey with exercise and cutting calories, a better strategy is to eliminate foods that are causing irritation and harm to your body. Additionally, you can add in lifestyle choices that support healing, like adequate sleep, sunlight exposure, fasting, movement, and stress management. Once you’ve healed you can work to refine your body composition and capacity.
Of course, exercise and calorie restriction work for weight loss. But these are not sufficient for long term health if your body is sick. Most people want to jump straight into the “work hard – no pain, no gain” mindset. Unfortunately, that just doesn’t work. If it did, more diet and weight loss attempts would be successful! A better step is to work smarter by correcting the underlying root issue.
But what do you eat to support this healthy gut microbiome? Well, the most important thing isn’t necessarily what you’re eating, it’s what you are NOT eating. This is where things come full circle. I’ll get to a full list of what to eat and what to avoid in the next section, but I’ve created a simple list that will help you make effective choices:
The Worst Offenders: Vegetable/Seed Oils (Canola, vegetable, soybean…), Corn, Wheat Soy, and Sugars.
The Worst FODMAP Offenders: beans, lentils, grains, wheat, nuts, sweeteners (artificial too), lactose, some fruits, and some vegetables.
I’m sure you’re reading that list wondering what you’ll replace these with. After all, most of those options sound like healthy choices, right? I know it’s a big paradigm shift, but the reality is that a lot of the constipation, bloating, migraines, irritation, and digestive problems we have come from the foods we love that just don’t love us back. Whether it’s the natural plant pesticides or the pro inflammatory fatty acids from artificially created vegetable and seed oils, many of these foods create dysfunction in our gut lining and open up the door for chronic conditions.
And again, I can’t state this clearly enough. I am not against vegetables or carbohydrates. But the narrative we’ve been sold for the last 60 years is so heavily plant centric that we’ve lost sight of the fact that plants exist on a toxicity scale. Not all plants are good for you to eat. Many of the worst offenders are monocrop staples like corn, wheat, soy, and sugar that make up the vast majority of the processed foods today. And while each person responds to plant foods like legumes, seeds, and grains differently, in large part these are the cause of a lot of disease and inflammation we see today.
Ancestrally speaking, humans would have had access to large ruminant animals or fish year-round, and some tubers, honey, or fruit on occasion. The relationship we have to monocrop agriculture in modernity has shaped our perception on what’s normal today – the vast majority of vegetables on offer to us today either didn’t exist or weren’t edible at the time. And though some people can do well on a vegetarian diet, the reality is that we didn’t evolve that way. Plant and animals diverged on their evolutionary path millions of years ago, and while we can get some vitamins and minerals from plants, our bodies have to do extra work to convert these nutrients into less optimal, but usable forms.
Does this mean that you can’t eat vegetables? Of course not! But it does mean that certain things like fiber aren’t always panaceas for gut health. In fact, the ketones that are produced in the liver in response to a high fat diet or fasting are digested into Beta-Hydroxybutyrate which bypass the inflammatory barrier around the gut lining to deliver nutrients to the right bacteria and cells for healing to occur. I know that was a loaded sentence, but essentially in response to a fat-based diet (cutting out the carbs) or fasting, the body can sneak nutrients to the cells in need so that the good bacteria and gut microbiome can mount a defense.
That’s why fasting, low carb diets, and animal based, nose to tail patterns of eating can be incredibly beneficial for people suffering from chronic inflammation and gut dysbiosis. Think of it this way, there are essential amino acids and essential fatty acids. There are no essential carbohydrates. Again, carbohydrates are not the enemy. They play a big role for athletes and the body doesn’t respond well to avoiding carbs long-term. But if you want to make a big improvement in your health, cutting out foods on the Worst Offenders list is a huge step.
Once you’ve done that, if you’re still not at the level of health, vitality, and energy you want to be at or you’re suffering from any of the symptoms of poor digestion and gut dysbiosis like bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation, nausea, or problematic bowel movements, then removing vegetables on the FODMAP list will be the next step.
To wrap this part up, I’m not advocating that you become a carnivore, or even that you eat less vegetables. I’m simply hoping to reframe the conversation to help you realize that majority of our conceptions on food are misleading and inaccurate. Of course, you can still have cake and enjoy pizza on occasion but understand that the only way your body gets nutrients is from the food you eat. Optimal health isn’t just about balancing calories. What you eat matters, a lot.
The food you put in your mouth will dictate how your body functions. For decades now we’ve been sold the same narrative that plant-based, low fat, low cholesterol, low sodium, and high fiber diets are the cure to our rapidly expanding health crisis. Unfortunately, though the vast majority of people follow this advice, it’s not doing much to stem to tide. It’s time to rethink the foods we eat if we want better.
