different diets.
Diets and diet culture can be dated all the way back to the 1500s when an overweight Italian guy called Luigi Cornaro restricted his diet (after getting so big he couldn’t even have sex) and wrote a book about it (1). Since then many different (and ridiculous) diets have been created, leading us to associate “diet” with weight loss. But we all “diet”, as the literal definition is:
“the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats”.
I could bore you with the history of dieting, talk in-depth about the “cabbage soup” or “the grapefruit diet”, and dissect the etymology of the word “diet” (derived from the 12th-century French word diete, meaning “regular food”). But none of that is really relevant. What is relevant is that weight loss diets don’t work.
The reason? Well, there are two. One from the body, the other from the mind.
the body.
Initially, when you start “dieting” you’ll probably lose a ton of weight. But that soon plateaus as your metabolism (the rate you burn calories) starts acclimatising to your new food habits. This is literally a survival technique. As in cave(wo)men times, if we suddenly started eating a lot fewer calories (carbs, fats and vital nutrients) we’d want to hold on to some of that fat.
the mind.
Eventually, seeing that you're not dropping any more weight, your mind might start missing your old eating habits (and also start craving sugar, fat and carbs as most weight loss diets starve you of vital nutrients), and seeing your mate eating a pizza one day think “fuck-it”. Once we’ve had a taste of the delicately combined mixture of a perfectly proved sourdough crust, basil-infused San Marzano tomato base, topped with bubbling buffalo mozzarella and organic olive oil - one bite is never enough. So, we yam the pizza, drop the diet and our brains go back to riding the same neural pathway wave that our original eating habits feed on (2).
This is why 80% of dieters regain the lost weight within a years (3).
Changing our diet is important though because the Western diet really isn’t supposed to be eaten by humans (or any living thing. This is why high shelf-life foods last so long - because not even bacteria want to eat them (4)), but losing weight shouldn’t be our main drive. However, long-term weight loss is a potential outcome if we change this mindset.
fat.
Weight or fat gain can be boiled down to a few things:
eating too much, eating too much sugar and not getting enough nutrients.
(arguably) the most interesting: not getting enough nutrients.
When our body doesn’t get the nutrients it needs, it starts to store fat in a really weird way. Instead of storing it in lots of different cells, our body starts putting a load of fat into just a few cells. This basically makes us look “fatter” than we actually are (5). Malnutrition is one of the main dishes of the Western diet (4).
The typical Western diet is so bad for us in just so many ways. Not only does it make us put on weight, but it also kills off the good bacteria in our microbiome making us more vulnerable to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, depression, anxiety… the list goes on. And, because our bodies are malnourished our amygdala (our fight or flight read here for more) takes over from our rational brain, meaning that we’re not able to make conscious or rational decisions (6,7). This is why it’s so hard to change our diets. It really is all in our heads (and our guts).
I’ve had to change my diet a lot over the years, so trust me when I say I know how difficult it is. It’s mentally torturous. When you have to cut out literally everything, all you can see is the billboard ads for chocolate and smell the coffee and cake from cafes when you’re walking down the street.
But, it’s important, and here’s why.
food intolerances.
Food intolerances are one of the most common diseases in Europe (8). In the UK alone, hospital admissions for children with allergies have increased by 500% since 1995, 44% of adults now have one or more intolerances (this grew by 2 mil just between 2008-2009), and it's estimated that:
half of the entire EU will be affected by an allergy by 2025 (8).
why are allergies on the rise??
Allergies have been on the rise since the 1950s (7) when the Western diet (as we know it) started to evolve. The refined carbs, saturated fat, sugar and additives (which are a big part of the Western diet (7,9)) cause what’s called “leaky gut”. The name’s a bit grim, but so is what we’re doing to our bodies. These foods eat away at the protective layer we have in our small intestine. If this layer is gone, food particles can get into our bloodstream which is one of the causes of intolerances. There are others of course. We’re complex, so we can’t just boil it down to one thing. But, diet plays a big role.
so, what is a food intolerance?
Food intolerance can mean different things to different people, and we can be intolerant to pretty much any food. It’s not always a case of “don’t eat nuts”. This is because we’re all unique. Our bodies react differently to different things because our biochemistry, our microbiome, and even our nerve interactions are exclusive to each individual. So, symptoms of food intolerance differ (which is why they can be hard to diagnose).
I get chronic fatigue, brain fog, numb limbs, anxiety and depression when I eat something my body can’t tolerate (essentially a bad hangover). For someone else I know, their entire body swells up and they can’t breathe. For another, their body convulses uncontrollably.
A food intolerance doesn’t (necessarily) mean life or death (in that instant) when someone eats certain foods. But it can make them quite sick. And, in the long run, it can cause some serious damage.
the issue.
Just because you’ve got an intolerance to certain food(s) is not (necessarily) a life sentence. But, healing from it does take time, effort and energy. And it’s really difficult to go against the grain (so to speak) particularly when the grain is the problem.
The low-FODMAP diet is the most commonly prescribed diet by doctors, nutritionists and dietitians alike to tackle the issue. But, it’s pretty difficult to follow in a world where 80% of our supermarket is full of processed and packaged foods, and the other 20% of fruit and veg grown in pesticides (all of which cause intolerances). And, where no eateries cater for low-FODMAP.
With almost half the UK suffering from food intolerances and growing (which as we know, affects not only our mental and physical health but the way we think) it’s pretty vital that this changes…
Food is our fuel, our pleasure and our medicine. But, it’s personal and can also be our poison. So, it’s important that we understand a bit more about intolerances, the different diets created to tackle them and how we can make it more accessible for half of our population to heal from them.
references:
Embody Health London (2021) Where Does Diet Culture Come From?, blog, 5 February (accessed 5 September 2022)
Drillinger, M. (2020) Most Diets Don’t Work for Weight Loss After a Year: Here’s Why, Healthline blog, 3 April (accessed 5 September 2022)
Masters, M. (2021) 70 Dieting Statistics You Should Know, Livestrong blog, 8 June (accessed 5 September 2022)
Pollan, M. (2009) In Defence of Food: The Myth of Nutrition and the Pleasures of Eating, London: Penguin
Spector, T. (2015) The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
López-Taboada, I.; González-Pardo, H. and Conejo, N.M. (2020) ‘Western Diet: Implications for Brain Function and Behavior’, Frontiers in Psychology 11.564413: 1-11, DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.564413 (accessed 5 September 2022)
Gupta, R.; Sheikh, A.; Strachan, D.P. and Anderson, H.R. (2006) ‘Time Trends in Allergic Disorders in the UK’, Thorax 62.1: 91-96, DOI: 10.1136/thx.2004.038844 (accessed 5 September 2022)
Allergy UK National Charity (nd) Statistics and Figures: Allergy Prevalence: Useful Facts and Figures (accessed 5 September 2022)
www.sciencedirect.com. (n.d.). Western Diets - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics. [online] Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/western-diets.