What's Harmful About Eating?

Consuming food is a necessary condition if we want to survive, and there are necessary types of food we need to consume if we want to not only survive but also thrive, for optimal health and well-being. For this we have to be more mindful about what and how we eat, and we have to exert more effort to maintain balance in the internal workings of all the different systems of our body.

I remember as I child having an account with a building society where I could save some of my pocket money and see my balance in my account grow. They gave me a money box which had one opening at the top to drop coins in, and a silo for each coin denomination. I found it fascinating and motivating as each coin dropped into their corresponding silos. It was a very clever way of getting kids to save as we would gamify it by getting as many of each coin as possible and also competing with each other to see who got there first before taking our savings to the bank.

When I visualise consuming food, I often use this silo analogy. I see the whole food plants I eat entering the digestive tract and moving through the stomach and into the small intestine and then the large intestine. As it does, what I find even more fascinating, is how the food gets broken down and each of the macronutrients (fats, carbs and proteins), micronutrients (vitamins, minerals), phytonutrients, and phytoestrogens, know what to do and where to go to have maximum benefit for our health and well-being.

Whilst we only need micronutrients in very small amounts their impact on the body can be critical and deficiency in any of them can cause severe and sometime life-threatening conditions. Moving from a plant-based diet to a whole food plant-based diet in 2022 was a game changer for me and was instigated by a few things; the recent loss of both parents to cardiovascular related diseases, a family history of heart disease and cancer, turning 50, and being recently diagnosed with my own rare and incurable autoimmune blistering disease.

What we put into our mouth, may or may not be a risk of harm to us depending on our predisposition, risk factors, and response to eating that particular food. My nan used to say, “too much of a good thing doesn’t do you good” and “eat everything moderation” of which I agree with to a large extent in all areas of life. We have to remember though her post-war diet consisting of offal and fatty meat and fish and dairy was a far cry from the whole food plant-based diet my partner and I live on today where more is more!

I know we are becoming more sensitive and intolerant to certain foods such as gluten, lactose, histamine, FODMAPs including fructose, peanuts, avocados, caffeine, salicylates (salisilates), sulfites, aspartame (ah spar tame), eggs, food colourings, yeast, sugar alcohols, and the list goes on!

As new protein sources like plant-based alternatives and edible insects gain popularity, there is a growing need to assess allergenicity risks associated with these novel foods to ensure we all stay safe.

After the traumatic loss of dad in 2019 and then in 2022 being on the verge of losing mum too, I felt vulnerable and stressed. I was 50 and reading about all the changes that start to take effect in women around that time and beyond. I needed to empower my self with knowledge to do something different and to prove that predisposition to family genetics wrong. I could have never forecast living with an auto-immune disease, these things happen to others, not someone like me I thought. I didn’t even know much about what one was until I got my diagnosis and started researching it.

So, what else should I be know about that means I live my best life possible and mitigate the suffering I’ve watched my parents and extended family go through. In 2022 I ventured to the local library on my lunch break from teaching hypnotherapy & NLP. I wasn't sure what I was looking for but I came across a book, sat down, and started to read. The book was called Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease; The Revolutionary, scientifically Proven, Nutrition-Based Cure by Caldwell B. Esselstyn (stn), Jr., MD.

I had never read or come across anything like it and really never expected to be glued to such a book. My eyes were opened up to a whole new world I had heard nothing about! From there it opened up a pandoras box. I was all over the research journals and bought more recommended books based on the same theme of preventing and reversing all manner of diseases including diabetes, obesity, cancer, hypertension...the list went on.

This 'new' wave of science got me so excited at the endless possibilities of how we can mitigate our risk of suffering so many serious, life threatening and prematurely life ending, conditions including mental ones such as depression and anxiety by eliminating harmful eating. This was just what I needed. I already knew a lot about promoting health and preventing disease from my health psychology post-grad training but reversing it too?!