Why I never talk about nutrition
I often get asked by followers to comment on the nutritional benefits or negatives of certain food choices. Often on posts regarding veganism or meat eating, each side spouting claims of living forever with no wrinkles. While I am endlessly fascinated by nutrition and spend a large portion of my time reading studies on various health and nutrition topics, I don't like to bring them into my conversations about food with most people.
Everyone's body, lifestyle, location, and food culture is incredibly different from one another, so when you are speaking to a wide audience, like the internet, or even one on one, it is so necessary to be aware of that. As a baseline personal example, let's talk about milk. My partner did not grow up in Canada and did not grow up drinking a lot of milk. His face is one of extreme horror as he recalls the first time he saw someone in Canada drinking an entire carton of chocolate milk. I on the other hand am the descendent of a dairy farmer, and grew up in Ontario Canada where I drank milk almost every day growing up. Milk is a common occurrence and something my body is used to.
So is milk good or bad for you? You can throw all the studies you want at me, for or against, but let me tell you this-I feel great when I chug a glass of cold milk, my partner on the other hand would likely projectile vomit. At the end of the day the studies don't matter as much as how your body feels and reacts based on your unique circumstances. The problem is that many people latch onto their good feelings and attribute it to whatever fad they have most recently tried. "Wow, I'm vegan now and I have never felt better" or "Keto saved my life." The thing is, the majority of the time when someone tells me this, I am almost 100 percent sure that it wasn't the specific diet that made a person feel better. What happened was, they started paying attention to what they eat, leading to more home cooking, and less processed foods in order to accommodate their new food philosophy. Anyone who starts to eat real food and quality meals is going feel a million times better!
Nutrition matters, and it is important to make sure we get all the right amounts of things we need, however I do believe that our bodies give us pretty clear signals, and if we have a positive relationship with cooking and eating you are probably on a pretty good path. I am not a nutritionist, and neither are most people spouting health claims on the internet. Even within the field of nutrition there are debates.
Often times, sensationalist health claims on social media will be made based on half truths and pseudo-science. It never makes me feel good when someone is trying to make me "afraid" of one thing like oat milk for example, in favor of another thing like cows milk. It presents these food options like they are the only choice available to us, when in fact there are nuances within the choices that they don't even cover. Industrially produced oat milk and cows milk both have problems, but you can provide both of those options from healthier sources and they would simply be different foods with different nutritional components.
If you have health concerns and want to find nutrition based answers, seek out people who care about you and your body, not those trying to push a political agenda through food choices.
My philosophy will always be to eat real food that makes you feel good, and if you have access to choice, choose food that considers the well being of the planet a priority. Any form of food activism should primarily be about demanding better options from companies and support for sustainable farming and food production practices from the government. It's not sexy and it doesn't make for a viral TikTok but it brings people into a conversation about sustainable choices instead of pushing them away based on arbitrary facts that greatly depend on individual circumstances.
