Taste Your Way To Your Best Diet

In the 1980s, we blamed fat. Later, carbs became the culprit. Today, sugar is the villain and there is a veritable war on gluten.

Are there good foods and bad foods?

On the Riverflow Renewal in Greece, our chef Nikiforos served us meat, pasta, cakes, jellies and jams, espresso and more. Many of the things we avoid at home, we savored here.  

What kind of diet is that? The best kind...

When did we stop trusting our taste buds?

As a nation, we are malnourished. Obesity is catching up to smoking as our No. 1 preventable cause of death. 

Perhaps we have forgotten the simplest diet advice: taste your food.

I don't mean "eat slowly enough to taste your food." I mean eat what tastes good to you. All the time.

The truth is,  food is supposed to taste good. But since we can't seem to allow ourselves to feel good without guilt, we use good to eat away at our self esteem and, as it turns out, our ability to be nourished.

The human body takes eating for pleasure very seriously. Our flavor-sensing equipment occupies more DNA than any other bodily system.

Our gut is wise to all of this.

Taste is our way of identifying important nutrients and what foods contain them. In the 18th century, sailors ravaged by scurvy hungered for fruits and vegetables. Pregnant women are still nauseated by foods that their bodies perceive as toxic.

Animals taste and smell nutrients. Insects use flavor to distinguish between food and poison. Diabetic lab rats  avoid carbs. Sheep deficient in essential minerals, such as calcium or phosphorus, will crave flavors associated with them. Monkeys  with parasites will eat leaves that alleviate their condition.

In a 1939 study, toddlers were put in charge of feeding themselves. They were offered 34 foods, including water, potatoes, beef, bone jelly, carrots, chicken, grains, bananas and milk.

Instead of binging on the sweetest foods, the toddlers ate more protein during growth spurts and more carbs and fat during activity. After an outbreak of mononucleosis,  they consumed more raw beef, carrots and beets. One child with a severe vitamin D deficiency drank cod liver oil by choice.

The kids just ate what tasted good to them.

My daughter, Carly, ate nothing but lemon yogurt every meal for months when she was 3 years old. My son, Zach, was the Carb King; we used to joke that he would only eat foods that ended in O - Cheerios, Oreos, Ellios. I intuitively knew that each child has an instinct for waht would best nourish them. I ignored all the advice for "well rounded meals" and limit foods they liked until they ate foods they "needed." The result: both children suffered less childhood coughs, colds and flu than their friends. Neither needed antibiotics. Food was their medicine, and they were their own best healthcare providers. To this day, at ages 22 dnd 29, neither are overweight or undernourished. Neither are on medications of any kind. Both have experimented with being vegetarian, vegan, juicing or eating Chinese food exclusively.

And both enjoy eating.

Why can't we enjoy what we eat? And why can't we stop alternatively dieting and stuffing ourselves?

Maybe it's because we are too busy too following a diet prescribed by those who know nothing about what tastes good to you. Add to this the fact that our food has been getting blander. As our crops and livestock become more affordable and disease-resistant, they keep losing flavor.

As flavor diminishes, so does our ability to root out nutrition.

Factory-produced flavors are sprinkled potato chips and into soft drinks. Cherry, blueberry, tomato, and strawberry are no longer found in the produce aisle.

A “strawberry-flavored” yogurt may taste wonderful, but it doesn’t carry anything close to the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants in a real strawberry.

We have short-circuited our body's smarts.

So here’s some novel diet advice: Eat what tastes good to you. Respect your cravings. Don’t deny yourself, dont deceive yourself with fake flavors. Eat what is genuinely delicious to you. Approach each meal wth joy and put aside guilt.

In fact, this rule of following your feelings is the best way to make all decisions in your life. It's the "gut feeling:" what feels good in your gut feels good in your life.

At the dinner table or the negotiating table, choices of your gut will alway feed you best. 

— with thanks for Schatzker’s, “The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor”