The healthiest diet is one that emphasises
🌝Fruit
🌝Nuts, seeds, spices & herbs
🌝Beans & legumes
🌝Mushrooms
🌝Vegetables
🌝Whole grains
over
😡Processed junk
😡Milk and associated dairy products
😡Animal products; Meat, including poultry, fish and eggs
😡Extracts and isolates of any food.
Our diet is the single biggest cause of death and disability having pipped smoking into second.
Like any species that over populates its ecosystem, we over consume and simultaneously pollute the environment with toxins and contaminants that will ultimately conspire to limit our ability to reproduce successfully, and grow economically, intellectually and interpersonally.
Farming has changed significantly such that chicken for example has been genetically modified or bred such that it has much more fat than ever before, and today is the biggest source of cholesterol, of which there is no acceptable level in our food. We make what cholesterol we need.
Changes such as depletion of soil, sanitation and the reduction of sun exposure mean we need to supplement with a number of minerals and vitamins; principally Vitamin D, Vitamin B12 and Zinc. And not just when pregnant.
The only diet proven to prevent and reverse degenerative disease is what I described above; cardiovascular disease (most prevalent condition at death), Type 2 diabetes, and halt cancer tumour growth, and in some cases shrink it and achieve remission. Some of the preferred foods have greater health benefit than others, that I won’t go into here.
‘Safe’? you ask. A big question for here now – maybe another dedicated post when I have time.
Suffice it to say that our environmental impact has had consequences as you alluded. But note that vegetarians working in toxic chemical industries have lower toxin burdens than their non vegetarian counterparts, because the body uses plant materials to detoxify. So, what has become conventional horticulture uses excessive amounts of pesticides, but even they are better than low plant intake, but obviously organic when affordable (bulk or group purchase, and sometimes local or grow your own).
When you focus on the healthiest diet and eating what’s on that list, there is actually little or no space for the rest.
Modern man has been around for up to 50,000 years which is less than 2000 successive mothers. Nothing in the history of time. Eve and her daughters and granddaughters did not have frequent access to animal product and evolved that way. More importantly our gut microbiome evolved that way and has to be fed with mother’s breast milk which provides the right formulation of oligosaccharides only they can digest. One of the most damaging features of the animal sources we use today is its antibiotic load, which wrecks the gut microbiome.
The fad diets such as paleo and ketogenic diets have no benefit based in science. Besides the fact that many proponents struggle to define them, I could post more than 25 scientific articles highlighting the problems they cause.
Ketogenic diets are sometimes used in medical practice in an approach that is analogous to jump leads on a car. To prime a system and provide the body with a stressor that forces the body to make a positive change. But not something you do every day, or as a lifestyle.
Ketogenic diets show benefit for epileptics, but are difficult to sustain and are unsurprisingly beset with nutritional deficiencies. Ketogenic diets are unsafe due to the nutritional deficiencies whether epileptic or not, so significant testing and supplementation has to be done.
All the largest land animals, including those we farm, are herbivores and have no shortage of protein to get to their size. The protein content of our milk is one of the lowest in the animal kingdom; those with higher levels grow faster and die younger. A calf grows at 4 times the rate of a human baby; cow's milk is no substitute for a mum's milk. And milk has no business in the human diet past 2 years of age. (that also goes for the idiot on TV that was still breastfeeding her 7 or 9 year old in the recent past).
15 years ago the debate in the food industry was what will we do next after protein? It is amazing that this con is still going strong: total commercial BS.
Aided and abetted by useless client-nutritionists and dieticians.
Enough for today. That should provide you with some guide rails.