The Way of Enlightened Hedonism
In the last installment I introduced the concept of “Enlightened Hedonism” as the guiding principle for defining a healthy diet (this principle will also be applied to all other questions of health and fitness.) Let me explain how this principle is applied.
A hedonist is someone who is dedicated to pleasure seeking. In this case that would be the pleasure that is afforded by food. It isn’t really necessary to explain that eating is one of life’s great pleasures, right? And to prescribe a diet that strips pleasure from food and eating (as many do), well, that’s just wrong. You know the joke—The diet won’t make you live longer, it will just seem that way. No, if we’re going to talk about how to eat right, the first principle must be pleasure.
But isn’t that precisely what’s wrong with our diets today? We eat mindlessly, seeking immediate gratification, without regard to the health effects of what we eat. That’s where the “Enlightened” bit comes in. The formal definition of enlightened includes, “having full comprehension of the problems involved; free from ignorance and misinformation.”
Exactly. To be an enlightened hedonist, one who achieves both pleasure and health through his or her diet, you actually have to know a few things. Not a lot, but a little bit. And you have to have a reasonably full comprehension of complexity of the problem. And most importantly, you have to purge yourself of the misinformation that you undoubtedly harbor. This is the hardest part. You’re going to have to abandon beliefs that you hold dear and that you may have held for most of your life. Your journey to enlightenment begins now.
First, we need to ask the question: How is it that I hope to benefit from a particular dietary regimen? The list of possible health benefits include:
I. POTENTIAL HEALTH BENEFITS OF DIETARY REGULATION
A. Lose or control weight
B. Prevent or delay onset of chronic disease (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, cancer)
C. As a result of #2, extend your life
D. Improve athletic performance
E. Improve energy, function, overall sense of well-being
F. Treat a specific malady (e.g., arthritis)
Second, we ask this question: What are the different ways that I can regulate my dietary regimen? That list looks like this:
II. POTENTIAL MODES OF DIETARY REGULATION
- Regulation of the ratios of macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, fat)
- Use (or non-use) of nutritional supplements
- Avoidance (or non-avoidance) of particular food groups (e.g., dairy, grains)
- Regulation of the proportion of calories from plants vs. animals (or avoidance of all calories from animals)
- Use (or non-use) of organic vs. conventional food products
- Avoidance of highly processed or “unnatural” food products
- Regulation of sugar, salt, caffeine, and alcohol.
We could certainly add some more detail to this, but I think these two lists quite comprehensively cover the possible benefits and possible approaches to achieving those benefits. Thus, what we are really asking this: In what ways can I regulate my diet per Modes A – G, ?to achieve Benefits 1-7?
Damn, this enlightenment business is getting complicated. At a minimum we have 42 permutations of diet regulation and health benefits. But you do need “full comprehension” of the problem to be enlightened. The good news (which is also the bad news) is that science provides definitive answers to only a few of these questions. You’re not going to have to memorize a 42-cell matrix of study results. But there is enough science available to allow us to make informed, or enlightened decisions for most of these issues.
How do we answer all these questions? Well, how did we answer the question (described in previous posts) about the value of the low fat diet? Is it that we finally realized that it’s simply a stupid idea? No, there was nothing stupid about it. At the time it was proposed it was as good guess as any and it was a perfectly plausible hypothesis. Is it that we finally know that the optimal diet is Paleo? No. We know no such thing. We will examine the Paleo approach in due course but there’s nothing that we actually know about the Paleo diet that undermines the low fat diet.
The reason that we have confidence in the conclusion that a low fat diet is not optimal is that we finally applied appropriate scientific methods to its study. That is, we have experimental studies, randomized clinical trials, that have tested the low fat diet and found that it doesn’t work. That’s how we know. (Of course we didn’t need science to tell us that a low fat diet gives us no pleasure.) And that’s how we will approach all of these questions. We will first ask if there is any experimental evidence and what that evidence tells us.
As we explore these various issues you will probably be delighted by some of the answers—Yes, bacon is good food. And you will be dismayed and even appalled by some of the answers. ?I’m not going to spoil the fun by giving those away. (Hint: those bottles of vitamin supplements in your cupboard…maybe not such a good idea.)
But I think in the end you’ll find that they way of Enlightened Hedonism is pretty rewarding if you choose to follow it. You’re going to feel good and you’re going to eat a lot of damned good food.
Solcana Fitness 