Kategori: Nutritional guidelilnes

Enough is better than too much – the only dietary guidelines you’ll ever need.

Now that I’ve gotten your attention with an overly bold title I will still be so bold as to introduce the draft of my very own dietary guidelines.

The American Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) has recently produced a draft for the new American dietary guidelines. The Norwegian government has been doing the same here at home. Both in the US as in Norway the guidelines are greatly criticized, most recently and publicly in this article by Hite and colleagues in the journal Nutrition.

I sent a mail with the article to the big chief working on the Norwegian guidelines. I got a «thank you», but I doubt it’ll make a big impact.

The draft for the new Norwegian guidelines is a 370 page document consisting of close to 140000 words. It’s a tome and although it is great fiction I doubt very many will have the stamina to read it in its entirety.

As I feel the new guidelines are not fit to wipe my ever whitening bottom, I decided to make my own guidelines.

They are, I claim, far more likely to reflect the truth and a far better choice if health is your concern. And best of all, my guidelines are only 360 words.

Nutritional guidelines should of course be temporary and modified in accordance with the development of scientifically produced knowledge. I would thus be grateful for any suggestions or additions that might contribute towards improving my guidelines.

It is of course of importance that the dietary guidelines are for the general public. Because of its audience the guidelines must be easily understandable and easy to follow in everyday life. No general guidelines like the official or those presented here should attempt to cover all aspects of health and all eventualities. We still need professionals to address individual health.

The guidelines 

1. Relax
Don’t worry. Don’t worry about details, not even those pertaining to diet and lifestyle. If you focus too much on the details, your health will suffer and would indeed be better off with you not worrying about the details.

This is not strictly a dietary advice, but it’s too bloody important to leave out.

2. Eat like humans are built to eat
Science tells us that humans can thrive with good health on quite a lot of different diets, but the diets which accompany good health have a few but important things in common. Here are the main aspects of a healthy diet:

Don’t eat too much grain 
Grains or products made of grains should only be a small part of the diet, and wheat should probably be avoided all together. 
Eat unprocessed foods 
Most of the diet should be unprocessed foods; eat all sorts of animal and vegetable products but try to get most of it in unprocessed form. Now, processed is in itself not bad. Cheese is a processed food, but still a very fine food. While a sausage may be fine a steak is probably better in the long run. Processed foods that should be especially avoided are those with added sugars and starch, deep fried foods and those with added vegetable oils.
Eat fat 
Eat plenty of fats but avoid plant oils rich in omega 6. Eat animal fats. Eat butter, not margarines. 
Don’t eat sweet 
Keep a low intake of added sweeteners in any form, natural and artificial. Sugars should be avoided most of the time. 

3. Some of us need a little extra

If your body show symptoms of carbohydrate intolerance usually symptoms like weight gain and blood sugar fluctuations you should probably also reduce the total amount of carbohydrates in the diet.

Dietary supplements can make things even better. Extra vitamin D and long chain omega 3 fatty acids may benefit many of us. If you are an athlete, under lot of stress or in any other way are subject to stress physical or mental, supplements are more important and should be addressed by someone who knows what they’re talking about.

There it is. Nutritional guidelines as three main advises and four distinct and concrete dietary guidelines all adding up to 360 words. Suggestions will be considered and may appear in the final version.