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May/June 2005 Alternative Health
Food for Thought:
Making Sense of Conflicting Dietary Advice

by Daniel I Newman, M.D., N.D.

We all want good health. It is difficult for our spirit to be serene and energetic if its temple, the body, is ill. It is also clear that what we put into our bodies in the form of food can have a powerful effect on our health. Nowadays, the problem is not a lack of information about what to eat, but rather too much, often incompatible, advice. Three of the most popular diets of our time are mutually contradictory: low fat, high carbohydrate (e.g., Ornish); high fat, low carbohydrate (e.g., Adkins or South Beach); and balanced protein, fat, and carbohydrate (e.g., Zone). And that doesn’t even take into account more specific questions, such as whether to be vegan, vegetarian, eat only raw food, eat dairy, be macrobiotic, etc.

I have found in my nearly quarter century as a physician that it is possible to dissolve this confusion by first acknowledging these three simple guiding principles:

• Some foods are bad for all people.
• Some foods are good for all people.
• Some foods are good for some people and bad for other people.

1. Some foods are bad for all people.

Some ‘foods’ are simply not ‘food’ at all, in the sense that they contain chemicals that are foreign to our bodies and have a deleterious effect on our metabolism. This includes processed grains, oils, dairy, and meats, as well as refined sugars and irradiated food (now euphemistically called ‘cold pasteurized’). Other noxious ‘foods’ include artificial flavors, colors, and sweeteners, as well as preservatives and texturizing agents. Last, but by no means least, on the poisonous ‘foods’ list are agricultural chemicals: hormones, antibiotics, herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides. These ‘foods’, either separately or in combination, have been linked in numerous studies to a host of diseases that plague our society today.

2. Some foods are good for all people.

What can be universally proclaimed as good for people is, in fact, the antithesis of what we know to be bad. Eating organic food not only avoids putting harmful agricultural chemicals into our bodies, but also helps protect the environment in a more global sense. Eating locally grown organic food is even better, since the food does not have to be shipped and warehoused, and is likely to be fresher.

Eating food that is unprocessed gives us the fullest nutritional value of the foods that we choose to eat, and helps us to avoid harmful food additives. There are ways to ‘process’ food, based upon traditional wisdom, that actually increases the digestibility and nutritional value of food. An example of this is the lacto-fermentation of milk into yogurt or kefir. Much of this information was preserved and catalogued by an early twentieth century researcher named Dr. Weston Price, and is available at the website of the non-profit organization westonaprice.org.

Let us also remember to attend to the quality of our water. Chlorinated water has been implicated as a carcinogen, so it is best to filter our drinking water through a good quality carbon block – resin membrane filter, or to use a reverse osmosis system.

3. Some foods are good for some people and bad for other people.

"One man’s food is another man’s poison," said the Roman Lucretius over 2000 years ago. More recently, biochemist Dr. Roger Williams wrote a book published in 1956 called "Biochemical Individuality," in which he detailed the vast range of human biochemical (and hence, nutritional) individuality.

It is hardly surprising that we all have somewhat different nutritional needs. After all, people vary in appearance, exercise tolerance, sleep needs, and a myriad of other parameters. What is surprising is how common it is for ‘experts’ to emphatically assert that we should all eat a certain way.

One thing that is certain is that we should avoid foods that make us ill. Some of these are true food allergies, and can be determined through lab testing, while others are ‘sensitivities’, that is, reactions we may notice if we eliminate a food for a period of time (generally at least 4-6 weeks) and then re-introduce it later. These foods are ones that we should uniquely avoid.

There are many ways of assessing what type of general diet a person should eat. Some of these are not physical, such as the ethical question of whether one should eat meat. Among the systems of making distinctions on physical grounds, some are as ancient as the Ayurvedic system of dividing people into three basic metabolic types: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. The more modern version of this was summarized by the mid-twentieth century researcher, W.H. Sheldon, who coined the terms ‘ectomorph,’ ‘mesomorph,’ and ‘endomorph.’

Research in the last twenty years has elucidated that different foods have the opposite effect on different people. Dr. Rudolph Wiley ("Bio-Balance"), Dr. George Watson ("Nutrition and Your Mind"), and Dr. Harold Kristal ("The Nutrition Solution") all did research on the effect of food on blood pH (acidity / alkalinity). The net result of their research is that through testing (termed ‘metabolic typing’) you can determine what foods will have the most serendipitous effect on your metabolism.

The details of this testing are beyond what I can discuss here, but using this type of analysis, not only can health be promoted, but it has formed the basis for the treatment of disease as serious as cancer! (See ‘Cancer: Curing the Incurable’, by Dr. William Donald Kelley).

Whatever diet you choose, I hope that it leaves you healthy, vibrant, and able to live your life to the fullest!

Daniel I Newman, M.D., N.D., is the only combination Medical Doctor, Naturopathic Doctor, Classical Chinese Medicine trained physician in the United States. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Pain Medicine, and Naturopathic Medicine. He has a special interest in treating difficult cases. He may be reached at his private practice in downtown Vancouver, WA at: 360-696-3800. Or, you may visit his website at www.drdanielnewman.com.