Happy Gut, Happy Mind

We finally started to talk about food in one of my classes the other day.

And not just the economics behind it all.

There is one other girl in my program who is studying Nutrition at UNH as well, and her and I were discussing after class about how great it was to talk about food as food, and not as a commodity or tourist attraction.

It was a great change of pace to say the least.

We started off talking in class about how The French Paradox and how the French are such a nutritional anomaly.

The French consume a lot of butter, cream, pastries, white bread, dairy and cheese and yet their obesity and heart disease rates are much lower than Americans.

The French even eat three times as much saturated animal fat as Americans, and still only a third as many die of heart attacks.

The fact of the matter is, it’s not so much as what the French are eating, it’s how they’re eating it. What I mean is that the portion sizes are much smaller here and the quality of ingredients are much more superior, accessible and affordable than those back at home.

This is where my Nutrition classmate and I started to discuss after class…

We both lamented about the plight of being a Nutrition major is that we often get asked, “Is this healthy?” “Should I eat this instead of that?” etc. etc.

Ironically, being a student in the Health industry I really have come to dislike the word “healthy.”

What does it mean to be healthy anyway? How does one become healthy? There are so many different areas of health that don’t pertain just to food and exercise, and what may be “healthy” for one individual may not be “healthy” for another.

See what I mean? “Healthy” is just too complicated for me.

There is no silver bullet for good health, nor will there ever be. And from the short amount of time that I’ve spent away from the U.S. I’ve come to realize that that notion is a tough pill for Americans to swallow (no pun intended). For better or for worse, Americans love the idea of a one-stop, one-pill, cure-all fix, and in reality that is just unattainable.

Eating well and being well has a lot of moving parts and gears, and it’s important to keep each gear well oiled to live the best life possible.

But back to my discussion with the other Nutrition student…

As we were talking about the plight of being a Nutrition major we started to discuss what we tell people when they ask us that questions.

Lately, what I like to tell people is instead of asking yourself, “Is this healthy to eat?” ask yourself, “Is this clean to eat?”

And I’m not talking about the kind of clean you get after scrubbing the skins of potatoes before you boil them, folks…although, from a microbiology standpoint, that’s important too…

This is my clean food checklist:

1) How was it grown?

            - With pesticides? Without them?

2) Where was it made?

            - Is it local? How many miles has it traveled before it reached your plate?

3) How processed is it?

- How much work/carbon/oil had to go into making this item? Is it something your great-grandmother would recognize as food?...if not, you might want to put it back on the shelf.

5) Can I pronounce/recognize all the names on the ingredients list?

            - Or does it look like the names of items in a chemistry set?

4) How will my body benefit from eating this?

- Are these empty calories? Is this item nutrient dense? Will I feel great/satiated after eating this or will I feel lethargic and unsatisfied?

Every thing you consume your stomach has specific enzymes that digest it and send chemical signals to your brain in response to it. The most common example would be the release of endorphins that are usually transmitted through your body when you eat chocolate.

And many individuals who suffer from gluten intolerance can attest that when they accidentally consume gluten their mood can instantly change and their minds become cloudy. This is because as the gluten hits their gut, certain signals are sent to the brain that triggers a mood change.

Does that mean I don’t enjoy a greasy, cheesy slice of pizza at 2:00 in the morning? I’d be lying through my teeth if I said that wasn’t the case. But I’d also be lying if I said it didn’t affect me negatively as I was digesting it.

The bottom line here is, when you have a happy gut, you have a happy mind.

So do your gut some good, and eat clean food. Your mind will thank you for it.