More on Dosing

A few posts ago, I talked a little bit about dosing.  About that same time, I also posted this picture on the FC Facebook page:


**The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison. -- Ann Wigmore

Just to be upfront -- I'm not a huge fan of turning eating into a complex, all or nothing, can't stay on top of the current research so why bother, medicalized version of the behavior many of us enjoy.  But I think there is something beneficial about considering our food choices as having a direct correlation to our health (which, of course, they do).

Why do I not stomp my feet in frustration and lament the world isn't fair because I am allergic to aspirin?  It's just a fact -- a relatively important one -- that I need to remember to tell my doctor.  --Not a moral judgment on me.  One aspirin is too large of a dose.

Why then do we fight tooth and nail with arguments like "I only eat half of what my husband does and HE doesn't gain a pound!  It's not FAIR!"

Apparently, the dose of food you chose it too much for you (if you find yourself gaining weight).  It's not a question of morality or fairness -- it's just a fact that needs to be dealt with.

The right amount of food is of benefit to your body. Whole foods, fresh foods, and relatively unprocessed foods are better staples of a diet geared for health than are highly processed, sealed in packaging, so full of preservatives it may never go bad foods.  (but to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever died from eating a Twinkie -- even one deep fried in Fair oil)  There must be an appropriate dose to processed foods.  We can eat some of them and suffer no long term negative consequences -- we just can't eat them for every meal for years on end and suffer no negative consequences.  It appears the dose is somewhere in between.

So give it some thought?  How would the optimal dose of something leave you feeling?  If it were a medication, wouldn't you want it to leave you feeling better than before you take it?  Wouldn't that be a great way to tell what the appropriate dose of food for you?  If you walked away from the table feeling better than when you sat down -- mentally and physically -- wouldn't that be a great clue?

So how do we determine that dose?  Hmmmmm.....let's give that some thought.