Nutrition and Diet (Properly Interpreted Evidence Trumps Worldview)

This is a post from my old parkour blog (which I'm slowly closing down). The important thing to take out of this post is that we don't need to fight about where our reasons come from for some things. The evidence can stand for itself. I've shifted the links to the bottom that were originally at the top because I have a whole set of links from www.crossfit.com that are your one-stop shop for starting nutrition. They are the 8 parts of a lecture by Dr. Sears, creator of the Zone diet. In them, he explains how nutrition can be treated like medication, with dosages to control different hormone levels in your body. Get the hormone levels in the right zone and your weight sorts itself out.

Diet, Inflammation and Disease - parts 1 to 3
Diet, Inflammation and Disease - part 4 (Fish Oil)
Diet, Inflammation and Disease - part 5
Diet, Inflammation and Disease - part 6 (performance)
Diet, Inflammation and Disease - part 7 (performance)
Diet, Inflammation and Disease - part 8 (performance)


3rd July 2009
As I've said in a number of places before (though not on this blog), I disagree with the reasoning behind some of the sorts of dietary advice mentioned but my reasoning leads to basically the same general ideas. The main exception is the recommendation not to eat fruit (or "real fruit" juices) - I think fruit is something that should be part of every diet though, as with everything, in moderation.

Some of my reasoning and assumptions:

1. Disease has become much more prevalent in the last couple of hundred years and is easily linked to diet (though not solely). This means we only need to look back to the diet of people within recorded history to see what is good for us to eat - supposed evolutionary models are not required. 
2. A long life is not automatically an important thing - quality of life (mental, physical, spiritual) is more important than a long life.
3. Nutrition is simple and the main principles can be understood by everyone with a mind to consider it.

These are the ideas that I think everyone can relate to. There are more concrete concepts that derive specifically from my Christian worldview, but my primary desire in this post isn't to get into that side of things, just to give people some ideas for developing their health through diet. If you want more info on that side, email me or post in the comments and I'll give you a brief run down.

A couple of worthwhile articles that Tom Kurz linked to on his blog:
http://blog.zeroinginonhealth.com/?p=1009
http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com/2009/06/diet-nutrition-and-health.html
http://www.paleonu.com/get-started/