I commented on a social media post this morning on the topic of not being able to eat peanuts. This wasn't a question of allergy, but because the poster had read that they are contaminated with a mould that is terrible for our health. And as an extrapolation of that, the question was also posed as to what is actually safely eat, given there seems to be a problem with EVERYTHING when you start to really analyse food and health.
And as I reflect back on my own health and nutrition journey, I can really relate to this. As a newly qualified Nutritional Therapist, I enthusiastically bought a myriad of functional tests to “fix myself” with, then dutifully removed all potentially offending foods… At some point I then started to develop anxiety over all the restriction. I clearly remember having a sense of panic as my then two-year-old reached over and helped himself to some avocado from my plate with his gluten-contaminated hands! And luckily for me I had the good sense to put myself in check and loosen up the rules a tad.
I had immersed myself in the world of the “clean eating” and started to learn even more details about non-organic food production (full of pesticides), organic wine production (full of “natural” pesticides that we also shouldn’t be consuming in quantity), farmed fish (full of medications), wild fish (full of ocean plastics), oxalates, histamine-inducing foods, histamine-producing foods, phytates, seed oils, pasteurised homogenised dairy products, grain-fed chicken, the list goes on and on, you’ve probably heard the recent one about the additive in dairy that prevents cows from farting but is said to inhibit fertility, and yes, peanuts can indeed contain something called aflatoxins – mould spores that can be harmful to the human body...
And yes, much of this info is correct/possible, but what is the impact of all of all these “restrictions”? How the hell are we supposed to go about our daily lives, fuelling our bodies with available food and somehow finding joy in that? (And definitely not stress?)
I mean, you can move to the wilderness and attempt to grow and forage all your own food, keep your own chickens for eggs and cows for milk (hand up again, sort of, never got my cows) and I absolutely love this turn my life has been able to take for a while, however the reality is it just isn’t a sustainable life for me. Not if I also want to have a life, pay the bills, be a good mum, occasionally go out and meet some friends or, heaven forbid, travel the world a bit. And if that’s your bag, totally go for it. But if you are trying to do ALL of this (and then some) and are feeling stressed to the max and definitely not your healthiest self, then I hereby give you permission to give yourself permission to take a freaking day off!
Now I am not here to advocate the “food pyramid” or any such nonsense. I am not saying that you should eat at our lovely roadside establishment with the golden arches every day, or that ignoring your niggling digestive symptoms or crippling PMS, and washing them down with cola and ice cream is going to help you, of course not. But neither is getting stressed out about absolutely every food you consume.
You see, food is about so much more than just the body, and our bodies are also wonderful things so long as we support them. If we go back to those peanuts and their potential contamination with aflatoxins (which btw can also be on other foods, other nuts, figs, cocoa beans, maize etc) we also see that a healthy gut microbiome is the fastest way to ensure they don’t get inside the body at all (if you don’t class the digestive tract as “inside the body”, which it sort of isn’t but that’s a whole other post). So if you generally eat a healthy diet rich in prebiotic fibres (the food for the friendly gut bacteria), essentially fruit and vegetables, then the chances are your body can also handle a few peanuts here and there.
The same goes for supporting the liver to detoxify a few additives and alcohol and pollutants etc etc. If you feed it a wide variety of fresh foods packed with essential vitamins and minerals and packed with antioxidants, and don’t overload it with work (alcohol, smoking and vaping, highly processed foods, lots of medications) the chances are, it can handle it.
So where am I going with this rant?
I see two very divided worlds when I foray into the land of “the news” and social media. I see a lot of poor, yet “official” advice around what is or isn’t healthy for us, I see a lot of clever marketing that makes you think that products and supplements are good for you, and/or that you “need” them (which usually isn't true, certainly the latter aspect). But I also see the opposite of this with - honestly quite scary - versions of the truth that really make people want to stop eating (breathing, living) altogether through fear.
Can we not find some middle ground? Some common sense? Can we not make choosing healthful foods a little less complicated and downright stressful? Yes, yes we flipping well can!
I recently did a fascinating and brilliant training course with Liz Butler of Heart Source, which really reinforced - with the back-up of quantum science - what I think we all know intuitively and instinctively (if we tune into our bodies), and that is that food is about so much more than just the body – it’s the trilogy, the body, the mind and the spirit. If a food is “healthy” for your body but you hate eating the disgusting thing (your mind) and/or it doesn’t sit with you ethically (hello factory farmed meat or almond water filled plastic boxes flown halfway around the world, your spirit), then guess what, it’s probably not actually that good for you after all.
So please, eat real foods wherever possible, cook as much as you can from scratch, choose organic when you can afford to, limit the packaged processed options and take-out, but for goodness sake, if you find joy in a handful of peanuts every now and then, please don’t worry about eating them and starve yourself of that pleasure (unless you are allergic of course, definitely don’t eat peanuts if you are allergic to them!)
With love,
Catherine x
PS. This was post was also part-inspired by the awesome Eva Humphries aka Wholefood Warrior’s recent post on black pepper, so check her out if you want some more down-to-earth sensible advice and great recipes.
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