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The one-size-fits-all food guides do not work for most of us. We are all different, and a diet that works well for one person won’t work at all for someone else. By listening to what our bodies are telling us, we can figure out the best way to eat for ourselves.

The USDA is working towards putting out its 2010 Dietary Guidelines, and so far based on what I’ve seen, I’m thinking they are still heading down the wrong path. For the first time the guidelines are going to be geared towards the unhealthy, obese and type 2 diabetes population, and rather than lowering the intake of grains which would make a huge difference for that population, they are lowering fat intakes even further. Surely after 30 years of food guides that have suggested high carb low fat diets along with concurrent increasing rates of obesity and type-two diabetes, it is abundantly obvious that this strategy isn’t working? Perhaps the powers that be need to review Albert Einstein’s famous quote “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” US citizens and organizations have until July 15th to submit commentary and research to the panel that is going to be putting out the guidelines. Perhaps there is still time to change them for the better. Scroll down to June 18th and find a letter sent by someone with Type 2 Diabetes. I think he is bang on with his critical commentary and kudos to him for stepping up to the plate. You will notice as you scroll through the list that much of the input and commentary for the new food guide is from the food industry pushing their agenda.

The USDA is making some positive changes, like lowering salt intake guidelines to 1500mg per day, shifting to whole grains from refined, and lowering added sugar and trans fats. But the biggest changes in the new guide look to be lowering saturated fat (hard fats) consumption from 10% to 7% and trying to get people to eat more vegetable oils instead. Olive oil is fine, but increasing consumption of omega 6 polyunsaturated plant oils will increase body inflammation and is a very bad idea. And decreasing overall fat intake further tends to increase intake of processed starch, which also diminishes health by increasing problems with insulin.

Food guides in general can't work, because we are all different metabolically speaking. We need individualized food guides. The current food guides work for maybe 15 to 20% of the population, but they are quite wrong for the majority of us. Switching the guide to put veggies as the most important (not fruit), animal foods as the next most important, and whole grains less important than both would help 80 to 85% of the population in my opinion. But even that wouldn't work for some. The only guideline that would help absolutely everyone would be to suggest a diet that consists of only unprocessed food, something that is unlikely to happen as governments need to pander to the food companies. Food politics plays a big role in what we are told to eat.

So, if one can't rely on the food guides because the one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn't work for most of us, what can one do? No problem. It really isn't too hard to figure out how to eat in a way that makes us feel great if we take the time to pay attention.

When we are hungry, our body is telling us it needs NUTRIENTS. But what we tend to do is eat anything that will fill us up to take away the hunger pangs, not thinking much about nutrients. Often a muffin or a cookie will do the trick. But there isn't much in that muffin or cookie to nourish us, and as soon as the body realizes that the nutrients it was looking for did not arrive in the snack, it makes us hungry again. So, should we repeat the process, we will be eating lots of calories, leaving the body still hungry.

A meal should last a minimum of three hours. If you are hungry before those three hours are up, either there were nutrients missing in your meal that your body needs, or there weren't enough of certain nutrients. The easiest way to ensure you are providing adequate nutrients is to only eat unprocessed food, and to make sure you have a mix of animal foods and plant foods in each meal. Then play with the ratio of animal to plant foods to see which ratio keeps you satisfied longer. Include fresh vegetables to ensure you are getting the vitamins and minerals too. By paying attention to what our bodies are telling us, we can create our own personalized food guide which might turn out to be quite different from the one the governments are suggesting.

In my experience, most people need to eat some animal foods at each meal, and some people actually need a surprisingly large ratio of flesh foods to vegetables at each meal to be at their best and to last at least three hours. And for those people, that high protein/fat diet will actually make them healthier (lower blood sugar, triglyceride levels, decrease inflammation markers, improve LDL to HDL ratio etc). I think that people that decide to become vegetarians initially do really well because they move from a diet of processed food to unprocessed food which drastically increases nutrition. But not many do well long term on a vegetarian diet as there are some nutrients in animal foods that are difficult to obtain from plant foods. Supplementing a plant-based diet with some animal foods can make all the difference.

The point is some people do well on a plant-based diet supplementing with a bit of meat, and others do well on an animal-based diet supplementing with some vegetables, and most of us need a diet that lies somewhere between those two extremes. We each need to figure out for ourselves what ratio of plant foods to animal foods works best for us by listening to what our bodies tell us and eating the ratio that makes us feel good and keeps us satisfied for at least three hours. The only valuable food guideline that can be generalized to everyone is that we need to eat the best quality food we can access in its least processed form, preferably from our own garden, farmer's market, food coop. Eating healthy requires time in the kitchen. Any animals or animal products we eat should have eaten their natural diet during their lifetime – stay away from factory-farmed meats, poultry, eggs and dairy. And finally, if you are not hungry, don’t eat!

Very soon I'll be offering my nutrition seminar online – people have told me they leave the course with complete clarity on how to know whether or not a food is healthy to eat. And months later when I run into those that have taken the course, I am told what a difference the information has made to their lives. So look out for it soon!

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