Westernizing an Apple a Day
History will not be kind to the “dietetics” of yesteryear.
Remember the one-food diets from the 80’s? (The cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet...)1 No matter how much of that single food you ate, the pounds would slip away. Yes, that’s how nutritional starvation works. One-food diets are damaging to the body because, while grapefruit and/or cabbage are healthy, they only provide a slice of the nutritional spectrum your body needs.
Or how about the egg and wine die from the 60’s/70’s? Daily meals proceeded thusly. Breakfast: one egg and a glass of wine. Lunch: two eggs and another glass of wine. Dinner: a 5oz steak and the rest of the bottle of wine.2 As ludicrous as this sounds, does it partially remind you of some modern fads, like the carnivore diet? (Which also focuses excessively on protein.)
Franklin said, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” but he wasn’t suggesting an Apples Only Diet. Franklin lived in a time of great health ignorance. His fruit recommendations weren’t about curtailing anything, but about reminding people who had limited (and seasonally-dependent) nutritional access to continue eating fruits and vegetables as best they could throughout the year.
And that has recently proven, again, to be the best course for health. This time, the evidence came not from US laboratories or European surveys, but from the increasing Westernization of Africa.
As Africa continues to urbanize and processed food becomes more broadly available, many Africans are leaving traditional plant-based diets behind in favor of a Westernized palate. As researchers from the Radboud University Medical Center and Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College found out, a mere 2 weeks of this Westernized eating disrupted metabolic pathways, increased inflammation, and weakened immune responses. All of these things are drivers for Western inflammation-based health problems like heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
But as Americans, we love our fad diets, and beneath it all, we have a reason. Standard American fare (burgers, fries, pizza, hotdogs, etc) composes one of the least healthy diets on earth, and we subconsciously know that, so we’re always on the lookout for something better. Fortunately, it does exist—as a variety of heritage diets, from African to Latin American. For example, you may have heard of the Mediterranean diet. It follows Franklin’s recommendations, and those of the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College by being a plant-based, whole-foods diet with little to no processing. As the name implies, “Mediterranean” isn’t really a diet, it’s a way of growing, harvesting, preparing, and eating a meal. It’s a way of life. So yes, it’s a nutritional choice, but more deeply, it’s a cultural one.
That fact should not be discouraging, but greatly encouraging. Instead of an unhealthy, impossibly narrow regimen that brings culinary misery, a healthy diet can indeed be an entire cultural experience, with all the colorful breadth and depth that implies. Throughout previous human history, we would have been confined to one locale with few choices, and even fewer healthy ones. Truly, we live in a wondrous time, when all this knowledge, health, and cultural experience is so readily available to us.
Why is a company that makes cardiac surgical equipment publishing a blog about healthy eating? Because our goal is your best health, and thereby your best life, whether you need our equipment or not!
And because African cuisine is delicious! You’ve got to try it!
Bon appétit,
Transonic Systems, Inc
The Measure of Better Results
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