I've been on quite the journey learning about food, food systems, and foods role as a medicine or a poison in today's life. I haven't had a chance to really write down my manifesto on food here (having now written all this out I realize I should just publish this), but let me take you through a quick line of thinking:
Plot twist - whole grains are pretty terrible for you, and there is no reliable evidence that red meat causes cancer. Here's a list of the reading so far:
A big discovery for me in this was that the damage fructose does to your body (from lowering your metabolism and increasing irrational behavior & food cravings to inducing insulin resistance and inducing fatty liver disease) is nearly identical to the damage that poly-unsaturated fats do. I also have had the opportunity to talk to several doctors about this, and the main thing I keep experiencing is that they learned about nutrition for about 1 hour in medical school, rarely know that nutritional ketosis is even a thing and can't explain why the current advice is the advice other than to refer to epidemiology, which to be clear is extremely low quality evidence. Ultimately this leads to a conclusion that processed food is bad and that zero amount of ultra-processed food is an okay amount to eat, but what even the most proud Englishman who staunchly cares about his health does not realize is that he is silently consuming these things without realizing. This crap is in your bread, your cereals, your drinks, your snack bars and your baby formula. And what's more - to reverse the damage. Exercise and eating less is in many, to most cases not going to work. So what about me? Well 3 months ago I decided to try something new. A purely animal based diet. Lots of red meat, saturated fat and strictly no vegetables. I'm actually not going to go into much more detail on this here but to say, it has been fantastic for me. Anecdotally, my joints feel better and I have had zero soreness from exercise despite taking on the hardest physical challenges in my life. I am never hungry. I think about food only in a curious, scientific way. My energy is improved. My disposition is indescribably more positive. The acne I have struggled with for 20 years disappeared. I lost 2 inches from my waist despite eating 500-1000 more calories a day. My digestion has improved. And my blood markers improved (including cholesterol!! 🤯) I could talk about it for hours, this is truly fascinating stuff to me, but what's more is its implication for the future. I am slowly journalling away on my journey but also on my understanding of the system and what opportunities there might be to fix things. I'm highly optimistic on the future and that we can correct the course.
2 Comments
Anwar
3/7/2024 01:26:11 am
Dear Matt, I came across your content on Twitter.
Reply
Matt Quinn
3/7/2024 03:15:42 am
I used to live in Mountain View! But now I live in Denver so will give a miss. Happy to have a private conversation.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
August 2024
Categories
All
|