If there’s one thing that irritates me about the fitness industry, it’s the amount of debate about “the best way to diet”.

Logically, wouldn’t the best way to diet depend on what you’re trying to achieve?

Not so in the land of the internet.

Everyone is competing  to gain followers and monetise them by selling them plans, cookbooks etc. I digress…

So what is the best diet to be healthy?

That depends how you define health. Far too many social media consumers I would guess define health by how low you can get your body fat percentage – but we know that being lean doesn’t necessarily equal health.

The World Health Organisation defines optimal health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absences of disease or infirmity”.

We know that diet plays a crucial role in overall physical and mental health.  There’s no denying that obesity is a precursor to many debilitating diseases.

So which is the best diet?

Periodically we are told that carbohydrates are a problem – however we can see many traditional diets that include a high percentage of carbohydrate with low rates of disease, and increased longevity – check out the traditional Kitivan society and you can see that you can be lean on a high carb diet! Granted, there are other lifestyle factors at play – including daily activity levels, consuming seasonal fresh produce as carbohydrate sources, and…. smoking???

The “Blue Zones” around the world – countries that contain the highest rates of centurions.  All of these societies report a highly “plant based” diet – that’s not to say they don’t eat meat, but they eat a lot of plant based foods in addition to fresh meat and fish.

None of these blue zones are vegan.

In my humble opinion, the best diet for health is one that is mostly fresh foods, does not cause mental or social distress, promotes activity and maintains a healthy body composition.

Comments