Most books written on nutrition are like children's books; their objective is to talk about nutrition, but the authors often have a limited understanding of the diets they describe. Nutritional sciences are understood on a technical level, but many in the industry fail to put all the pieces together, leading to a lot of misinformation and inaccuracies across professionals who need to understand nutrition.
The way I see diets for human beings is that there are two types: diets that mix plants with animal protein, and diets that only use animal protein. I have never met a person who only ate animal protein for every meal. The closest I've seen are people who consume extraordinary amounts of protein with every meal, but even they are eating junk food and refined, processed carbohydrates.
Technically, when you eat any grouping of food, they are all loaded with living bacteria. For understanding purposes, let's divide what you consume into three different types of cells: plant, animal, and single-cell organisms like bacteria. There's no way to avoid consuming bacteria living on this planet. So, let's just take bacteria out of the equation and say you are either eating animal or plant cells.
There is no scientific data to support that a person who strictly eats plants will have deficiencies, provided they are getting an adequate amount of calories from a diverse range of produce including fruits, vegetables, nuts, sprouts, seeds, and some grains. The amount of calories anyone needs is related to their activity levels and overall size. There isn't a precise formula, but there is a guideline to work with.
When I say there isn’t a precise formula, I mean that many variables—both psychological and physical, age versus youth, sedentary versus active—affect the outcomes. On top of those components, food availability for any particular region, and sociological and emotional eating patterns influence eating habits. Every human being benefits from eliminating processed and refined foods from their diet.
This brings us to the principle that there are only two things you can take into your body: something nutritive or something toxic. A nutritive component is beneficial to your body, either replacing something we lose or facilitating important metabolic processes. The other type is something toxic.
One might argue that there are toxic foods with some nutritional value, but the benefits do not outweigh the cons. Some people, due to their circumstances, must get their nutrition surrounded by toxic materials.
Understanding the three types of macronutrients we need and the two micronutrients is essential. Macronutrients are needed in large amounts in our diet. The body does not create macronutrients. Carbohydrates, the primary macronutrient, are essential as the primary source of calories. They include fruits, vegetables, and grains, some of which contain protein and fat.
Protein is the next macronutrient. The body can convert protein into carbohydrates if necessary, but it burns differently. Protein is essential for building and maintaining muscle, but for energy, carbohydrates are more efficient as they are closer to the original energy source, the sun. Plants rely on sunlight to grow, and without them, plant eaters would die, leading to a collapse in the food chain.
Strictly carnivorous creatures are highly specialized and fewer in number compared to plant eaters. They generally live short lives and are often sedentary between meals to conserve energy. Some exceptions include highly active carnivores like polar bears and sharks, which require constant hunting to meet their energy needs.
The last macronutrient is fat. Fats are crucial for brain health and critical processes like waste removal. Dietary fat helps store nutrients and slows the absorption of certain materials within the bloodstream. It's not as simple as eating fat makes you fat; excess calories not used by the body lead to increased fat content.
The two micronutrients are vitamins and minerals. We need them in small amounts to be healthy. Micronutrients facilitate chemical reactions within the body; for example, sodium is a micronutrient mineral. Vitamins help facilitate chemical reactions essential for bodily functions.
There are other compounds that fall slightly outside the micronutrient description, but they are still important and beneficial to the body. While they aren’t classified as minerals or vitamins, these compounds positively impact bodily functions. Like any compound, they can be broken down into molecules, atoms, particles, and eventually into the quantum realm. However, understanding quantum mechanics isn't necessary for maintaining a good diet. Some of these interesting compounds are well-known, like antioxidants and flavonoids.
Nature designed human beings to extract all their nutritional needs from the plant kingdom alone. If a nutrient does not exist in plants, the human body does not need it under regular and normal conditions. In other words, to be healthy, you do not need any compound that does not exist in the plant kingdom. Sometimes, we might need specific compounds because we lack access to the plants that provide them. The one exception is collagen, a type of protein found in animal products. While we can find compounds in plants that help us produce collagen in our bodies, we do not get collagen directly from plants. This means that while you might have more wrinkles by the time you’re 80, a plant-based diet can keep you at a healthy weight, mobile, and pain-free. Inflammatory responses in the body are significantly different with a plant-based diet compared to a diet high in animal protein.
Although I’m vegan, I do not believe that only vegans have the right to be healthy according to nature. Humans are designed to adapt their diets as needed and still thrive, as long as they maintain specific parameters and consistent healthy patterns. If your diet isn’t perfect, it is crucial to exercise daily—whether it’s walking, running, weightlifting, yoga, or other activities. When our diets are imperfect, getting enough rest is essential to give our bodies time to process and remove the toxic materials created by our dietary choices.
If we drink too much coffee, it can eventually lead to noticeable problems in our moods and our ability to focus. For some people, small amounts of caffeine can be tremendously focusing, but exceeding that amount can turn this focusing power into a distraction. It’s quite interesting how that works, demonstrating how delicate our chemistries are. Something essential like air, which contains oxygen, is also responsible for destroying our cells. That's right—oxygen is also the reason we decompose. This is why it’s important to eat foods rich in antioxidants because they slow down the oxidation process. There are countless such processes in human chemistry that require the intake of specific nutrients to address specific problems we encounter without them.
At this moment, if you’ve read this far, you probably know more than many doctors across America. You might think this is the end of nutritional discussions and that once you memorize this, you know everything. But it’s quite different. Now that you have a foundational understanding, you can begin to understand how problems start throughout the body. The best metaphor is to think about a complicated man-made machine like an airplane. The airplane has many systems or groups of machines: hydraulic, electrical, fuel intake, and so on. Each system must be in pristine condition to function properly and avoid negatively affecting other systems within the machine. There is an interdependency among these systems. None of them are truly independent.
Similarly, human beings are filled with different systems: the respiratory system, digestive system, nervous system, skeletal system, muscular system, and the waste removal system, which is directly linked to the digestive system. Our defense system against pathogenic bacteria and viruses is another example. Each system is completely dependent on the others. If one system starts to break down, it will eventually affect another system. This is the law of causation: one thing causes another to happen, which then causes another thing to happen, perpetuating the cycle until the end.
Each system needs its own type of maintenance. The body is a miraculous healing machine designed to self-maintain each system. Most human-made machines do not have self-healing abilities. For example, a computer might be designed to detect corruption in its storage systems and then execute programmed commands to eliminate the problem. However, there are vast limitations to the self-cleaning, self-fixing, and self-healing systems of most human-made machines. Most human-made machines require maintenance by a human being.
The human body, when in a pristine environment with access to pure, unadulterated food, is a machine designed to self-heal each system for a long time compared to most animals on this planet. As modern medicine and surgeries improve over the centuries, human beings will be able to live even longer than previous generations, even with lifestyle mistakes.
Now, here is where I might be controversial. The brain, although it never changes its shape—it looks like a walnut, is kind of gray, and has lots of intricate folds—is easily identifiable by most three-year-olds in a child's picture. However, the workings of the brain are unique in that it is the organ that can sense and exist in a non-material way, unlike any other organ in the body. In other words, the brain knows exactly what it feels like to be the stomach, the heart, a pair of lungs, the kidneys, or a bone in the bottom of your foot. I don't believe the stomach is a second brain, as many people in the industry suggest. I believe the body and mind are inseparable and are just one entity.
The brain can sense what’s happening throughout the entire body. It’s an incredible computer that relies on the skin to tell what’s happening outside with temperature and to protect it from the elements. It can sense and comprehend damage through an incredible mechanism called pain.
The ears are designed to alert us to what is happening in our environment. They contribute to our overall sensations when we are conscious, helping us understand the outside world.
In reality, the mind itself creates its knowledge of what’s happening outside, using the senses to construct that story. When we’re sitting in a room, we can figure out the distances and decide whether the room is large or small. We decide by the shapes, the heights of the ceilings, the decorations, and the amount of light whether or not the room is pleasant to be in.
The tongue is an incredible organ because it helps us memorize the taste, texture, and consistency of different substances. The nose also tells us a lot about what we’re eating. We know what an apple tastes like because we remember it, and it’s distinct from the taste of a pear or a hotdog. We are incredible creatures in our ability to sense the world around us. Sensations pass information to the brain, which quickly analyzes it and decides whether it’s safe or dangerous. Based on our individual personalities, we then decide how to react to the current moment.
Now you might be asking what this has to do with food. All your senses are essentially digestive organs. They sense the outside world, we absorb that information, and then process it to understand our environment. Food is not vastly different. We take in food, break it down into smaller particles, and the body uses what’s necessary to keep itself going. We don’t think about this process throughout the day. However, our thoughts and experiences impact the digestive and circulatory processes. When we eat with negativity on our minds, we are more likely to get indigestion and feel less mentally nourished. Without feeling nourished, the mind signals the body to eat more, leading to weight gain over time.
Another important nutrient that flies below the radar because it’s absorbed by the lungs, not the stomach, is oxygen. Oxygen can be seen as the first and most essential nutrient. It is a chemical compound vital to brain function and keeping the cells of the body alive. We die quickly without oxygen, whereas we can live much longer without food or water.
When we understand what an important, calorie-free nutrient oxygen is, we should ask ourselves: why don’t we give ourselves more of it? It’s free, so our breathing patterns, which determine our oxygen intake, are directly linked to our physical health. Oxygen is incredibly important for our brains to function optimally. When we are not breathing well or are starved of oxygen due to a cold, our brains get foggy.
This can exacerbate naturally occurring feelings of anxiety, leading to a cycle of increasing anxiety. Our thought processes become deeper and more intricate. Instead, we should have a checkpoint at the beginning of a thought to determine whether it is useful or garbage. If it’s garbage, dismiss it. If it is important for our happiness, work to keep it. However, just because something is helpful to us doesn’t mean we should pursue it. The next most important criterion is whether it is helpful and compassionate to the rest of the creatures on this planet, including our fellow humans and Mother Earth herself.
Now, consider how the human diet is slowly affecting the planet. Human beings tear down trees, which provide oxygen, to make machines that produce profitable products. Nothing could be more horrendous. No one really knows if supply creates demand or if demand creates supply. I believe it’s the supply that creates demand because necessity is the mother of invention. When there is a need for something in society, whether right or wrong, an invention arises to meet that need.
Humanity cannot stop the greed of those capable of building industries, marketing them, expanding them, capturing consumer interest, and creating products that radically affect the chemistry of people who do not yet understand the nature of their own awakening and the goal of enlightenment.
Food is slowly becoming one of the corrupt industries that humanity created, an industry that should be centered around generosity and collectively banding together to end poverty. Many companies display their peacock feathers as if they’re doing something to benefit humanity and the planet, but their intention is often just to be trendy and to fit into the slot of time that they exist. It is rare to find big companies with the executive power to create initiatives that are not only money-makers but also immediately and dramatically affect human chemistry and the cleanup of our planet.
The next most important concept in nutrition is to realize that we metaphorically "shit where we eat," since the entire planet is a bounty of food for all creatures, including us. When we rip down the land, we are destroying our chances to get pristine, unprovided, uncorrupt food in the future, if not immediately. Humans wander into this insanity like senseless sheep because many of us are unconscious and simply follow the branding patterns laid out during our formative years. Additionally, we have our addictions, which is a major component of what keeps us stuck in suboptimal ways.
Each and every one of us, no matter what we do, is a prototype. Although it may look from a distance that we’re all the same and doing the same things, it’s very different. Each one of us has different childhood experiences that vastly affect the way we eat as grown-ups. Somewhere along the line, we all had heartbreaks, and somewhere along the line, we have some good memories of holidays with each other.
"You are what you eat eat" is a better saying than just "you are what you eat." Whatever the animal you consume has in its primary diet is what you take on when you eat that animal. When we add another body to the equation, the energy of what we consume changes. We might lose the power of the sun because of the corruption of other materials that come along and pervert the purity of sunlight. Plants are the only creatures on the planet that can absorb sunlight and use it for energy. When we eat plants, we are taking on the energy from the source that the plant's flesh came from. There is a difference if we go one step up the food chain, and we should make that evident.
The world is filled with creatures eating each other. One could say there is a constant battle in nature for survival among these creatures. Everything seems to be eating everything else, so one moment you're the hunter and the next you're the prey. Even the highest-level creatures in nature, such as humans, have something to answer to. Humans kill for fun, rage, food, and resources.
The killing stops with humans because we have a choice to do something different. The killing stops at humans because if we are cared for and nurtured, and do not become desensitized to what actually has to happen in order for us to eat the flesh of an animal, we elevate ourselves. One by one, when the minds of humans reject warfare, starvation will be defeated, and slowly the oceans will become clean. In the meantime, the amount of anxiety that exists in nature is unbelievable. Our nervous systems are programmed with a mechanism called the fight or flight response or the sympathetic brain. The conclusion I have made over the last decade is that most of the people I observe in this world are displaying symptoms of anxiety. Anxiety is a dirty word for unaware people. Anxiety is no more stigmatizing than happiness. Anxiety, in my mind, is anonymous fear. Fear is something we can directly identify as frightening or startling, whereas unhappiness can be detected by many. We can define when a person’s energy is becoming toxic to a culture.
In this writing, I wanted to illustrate in a few brief points how complex the science of nutrition is, and we haven't even scratched the surface. The first thing that comes to my mind when I read this is the need for a chapter in the book that provides an expert to help navigate through it. I wrote this book in a way that each paragraph, of which there are about 400, tells a specific story. We want the baby to learn at night before bed. It is my belief that the deeper we go into the subject matter, the more people are going to fall off.