Disclaimer: I’m not a nutritionist or have any related qualification. For nutritional advise please consult a medical doctor or certified nutritionist. In this post I want to summarize research and want to communicate my own opinion and perspective.
Introduction to the Importance of Food
Food is one, if not the most important aspect of living. Clearly, without eating we would die, which we call starvation. Since we came to the world as little baby, we grow in size only because we eat food which our body accumulates to manage all kinds of mechanisms within our body. Food provides us the elementary building-blocks to live not only a healthy and functional life, but actually makes living a life possible in the first place.
Logically then, we are, what we eat. Our body can only grow and work with the fuel we provide it. This means, since the body includes our brain and the gut (also referred to as 2nd brain!), that food influences our mental processes. We often forget the role of food and nutrition in mental health since we are so concerned with our thoughts and emotions, which many think are distinct and separated from our body.
Nowadays, with increasing progress in neuroscience, medicine and research into psychopathology though, we cannot negate any more, that the constitution and health of our body has not an influence on our thinking and the way we feel.
In fact, as we will see in this post, food and especially the bacteria we feed with that in our gut have so profound effects on mental health, that they can create or cure psychopathology, make us feel miserable or ecstatically well, can make the difference between living in agony or full prosperity and thrive.
That is not to say that food is the one and only cause and cure for all our human suffer. Certainly multiple different aspects play a major role as well in how we feel in life. However, food and physical health is the foundation for every other of those aspects and is therefore of upmost importance.
Not only from the perspective of bodily health food is important for humans, animals and any other living organism, but also from the perspective of how much our life consists of thinking about and seeking food. We humans have comparable complex life’s by being quite unique in our ability to be consciously able to inhibit our impulses, instincts and drives. The life of many other animals though consists mostly of food acquisition and reproduction (see for example spiders who seemingly sit in their web for days, waiting for food to come in order to eat and reproduce). To an extent, we humans also think about food half of our lives (to exaggerate a little). In our modern western world we can go to a supermarket at any given time or order food with 2 clicks on our smartphone. But if we now imagine that our internet will be shut-down by tomorrow and supermarkets would not exist any longer, what would our first concern be? (besides not being able to upload our daily Instagram picture…)
I think the point here is clear. Food and food management is inevitable for us in order to live and experience true well-being.
The Quality of Food
Since we are now reminded that food is crucial in our overall well-being, let us speak a little about the importance of quality in food.
As someone without certified expertise or being a medical doctor, I cannot and do not want to advise you which food you should eat or not. That should be totally up to you! Moreover, it is not my intent to change your diet here. What I want to do though, is to advise you to care about the quality of food you intake, no matter what food it is.
Why is the quality of food so important, if I just eat healthy you may ask?
If we lived in the 18th century, this aspect would be less important to consider. However, in the 21st century our way of cultivating and producing food has dramatically changed. Depending on where you live, there could be dramatic differences in the quality of food you have available.
Plants
Starting with the use of chemicals, pesticides and fertilizers we use to cultivate our modern food, our food can be considered toxic to some extent. Not only to us, but to any organism consuming the food and the sprayed-on chemicals that are used. Glyphosate (Round-Up) is the perfect example of a toxin which creates more damage than it can do good. Why I said depending on where you live there can be a difference? The American population is on average 5x more exposed to glyphosate as the average European (EWG, 2016). But what is so bad about Glyphosate? According to many studies and meta-reviews, one of them conducted by Peillex & Pelletier (2020), glyphosate can “impart dose-dependent cytotoxic and genotoxic effects, increase oxidative stress, disrupt the estrogen pathway, impair some cerebral functions, and are allegedly correlated to the development of some cancers” (p. 170). Besides that, Peillex & Pelletier (2020) mention the effects it has on other mammals and even fishes, since the heavy use of this toxic pesticide is finding its way into seas and groundwater! Although glyphosate is an extreme example of pesticides, it is very much prevalent and still in great use.
But what is wrong then with our fertilizers? To understand this aspect, we must first talk shortly about the problem with monoculture in our food production. Monoculture means that we deliberately let only one crop, which is our precious vegetable, grow on a big area. Since every crop needs a specific and unique nutritional composition (of various Micro & Macro nutritions), it will suck respectively those out of the soil. Most plants need all Micro & Macro nutritions, but the ratio is different for each crop. Generally, the more green a vegetable is, the more Nitrogen it will need to create chlorophyll, for instance. That means, that there is a big difference between growing Broccoli in a monoculture or let’s say carrots, in terms of its nitrogen requirements.
Monoculture ultimately leads to heavily depleting the soil of the respective nutrients the specific vegetable needs. Here is where the first issue emerges. Since we often use chemical “all-purpose” fertilizers, we mostly provide the soil with N-P-K (Nitrogen, Phosphor, Potassium). So far so good, but what is about all the Micro-nutrients such as boron (B), chlorine (CI), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), molybdenum (Mo), zinc (Zn) & nickel (Ni) that the plants need for healthy growth? Imagine all you would eat is potatoes and grains. What about all the B-Vitamins you still need that are not present in potatoes and grains, or the 8 essential amino-acids, to just name two examples here.
Ultimately, we (just as the plants) can certainly live our lives to some extent without those, but how healthy are we? How long would we live without those? Now remember yourself back that we are, what we eat. But not only that, we are, what the thing ate, that we eat. In nature and for the past million years (besides the last 100 years) this was less of an issue, since there basically did not exist monoculture to that extent. That means that first, the soil is more or less depleted by all different kinds of plants, but also fed back by the death of all kinds of plants which ultimately (by worms and micro-organisms) give their nutrients back into the soil, which build a self-sustaining cycle. If we now take away all the plant diversity and substitute them with one plant-species, while spraying glyphosate on them and chemically kill away all other undesirable types of plants (and also worms & micro-organisms), the soil (and therewith the plants) will be basically unhealthy.
Another aspect is that our modern plants are not only deprived of nutrients, living in a dead and nutritional-unbalanced soil, but are also bred with upmost care, so that they face no natural adversities any more. What do I mean with that? A lot of important and beneficial compounds, called secondary plant substances, in plants are only created if A) they have the necessary nutritions for that (relates to the previous issue) and B) if they are stressed and face natural adversities.
The best wine is the one facing a prolonged dry-period (adversity), the best coffee is the one facing big differences in temperature (adversity), the strongest plants are those facing hard wind (adversity). Only when plants face stressful conditions, they produce high amounts of compounds which protect them from those. Those compounds are not only reinforcing the plant, but very often, also the one who eats those plants. That is why the content of polyphenols, anti-oxidants, and other relevant compounds varies tremendously between the same species growing in different conditions. Now consider that we increasingly tend to grow in greenhouses, with temperature control, not much wind differences and being watered at the same time every day. On the first sight this seems to support the plants, and it does, to some extent. But what gets lost here are the adversities the plant must (and is used to) face, in order to produce those beneficial compounds. The insight that plants need adversities comes not from my own experience, but from research of Harvard professor Dr. David Sinclair, specialized in longevity.
The effects of our modern plant-cultivation reach way further than just those simplified explanations I gave here. However, I think to highlight those aspects should be sufficient to show that it matters which quality of plants we eat, not only which type.
Animals
When it comes to animals and animal-products as food, the aspect of you are, what you eat and you are, what the “thing” ate, you are eating becomes even more prevalent. If we should eat animals from a moral or healthy standpoint is strongly debated, with expert proponents for both sides, but this should not be the topic here. Instead, I would like to emphasize that by eating animals, we directly eat what those animals ate.
When we consider that in mass-production of meat, animals have to be fed with antibiotics because they otherwise get sick by the conditions they are living in, we will inevitably eat micro-doses of those antibiotics. As we will see later in this post, we are basically a collective of organisms and bacteria working collectively together to build a human being (every cell is a “being” in its own). We have more or less 2 kg of bacteria in our gut alone, which are managing various (very important) mechanisms in our body. When now ingesting, even micro-doses, of antibiotics, they will effectively do what they are designed for: kill microbes. Moreover, it has been shown that the stress hormones which animals produce when being slaughtered and not properly cared about, will affect our own hormones and mood, by deregulating our gut-microbiome.
Similar to the plants example, the foods that animals eat also influence how functional and healthy their body and therefore their meat is. When being fed solely with soybeans for example, which in the millions of years this animal-type never ate, they cannot process the soybeans in the same manner as the food they and their body are used to and evolutionary made for. If we take a cow, which is used to feed on grass and lawns and eat all types of wild herbs and grasses to get their nutrients suddenly is fed with supplements or soybeans only, they will not be as healthy as their counterparts, who do feed on natural lawns. In turn, the deficient meat they produce will be ingested by us, which provides us with less-quality food.
Conclusion about the Quality of Food
To draw a conclusion about the quality of food: it does matter which quality of food you eat, not only what type of food. To get the best out of your food (and therefore give your body the best fuel possible) decide to buy organic food. Moreover, when you eat meat, be mindful about the food the animals had and that they had a good and peaceful life themselves. At best, you go for biodynamic food, which is the type of food being grown in its natural cycle with only the least amount of human-intervention during the growth process. I would encourage going to a nearby regional farmer and ask them for the conditions in which they grow their food. Lastly, try to eat fresh food as much as possible. It might cost you a little extra, but this cost will benefit your health and ultimately well-being in the most direct way.