High quality diets are those that contain the essential nutrients required by an individual for correct metabolic function. In addition, high quality diets must be absent of metabolic poisons such as sugar and other fructose containing molecules, and possess high fibre to starch ratios from their carbohydrate component. A growing body of evidence in the nutritional literature shows that traditional diets are of high quality diets because they contain a high density of essential nutrients and an almost total absence of sugar. In addition, traditional diets contain only unrefined whole grain sources of carbohydrates which provides a high fibre to starch ratio. The modern Western diet is the antithesis of the traditional diet, because it contains high amounts of sugar and refined carbohydrates and low amounts of micronutrients and fibre. It is unsurprising therefore that such low quality nutrition is consistently being linked to the lifestyle diseases that are increasing to epidemic proportions in the developed nations who eat these junk diets.
In a recent study published in the Journal of Nutrition1, it was reported that diet quality was inversely associated with known cardiovascular risk factors. The data, taken from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001 to 2008, measured the quality of individuals diets with 24 hour diet recalls and rated them according to the 2005 Healthy Eating Index. Following regression analysis, the data showed that diet quality was inversely associated with body mass index, waist circumference, diastolic blood pressure, C-reactive protein, total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and metabolic syndrome. As diet quality increased across quartiles, high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol also increased. Subjects with the highest quality diets were 34% less likely to be obese or overweight, 35% less likely to have increased waist circumferences, 26% less likely to have elevated blood pressure, 35% less likely to have metabolic syndrome and 21% less likely to have low HDL cholesterol levels.
These results support previous data to show that high quality diets may prevent Western lifestyle diseases. The interesting finding in this study was the inverse association between high quality nutrition and a lower body mass index, waist circumference and being overweight. The current paradigm in allopathic medicine states that weight gain is caused by a positive energy balance that results from too much energy or too little exercise. This ‘eat-too-much, do-too-little’ hypothesis of weight gain can be found in most nutritional and medical textbooks. However, evidence does not support this theory, and this explains the almost total failure of forced calorie restriction to cause long-term healthy weight loss in overweight subjects as well as the anecdotal evidence that ‘dieting’ does not work. The only successful way to cause weight loss is to improve the quality of the diet, by reverting to a nutrition plan based on the principles of traditional diets. This then allows reversal of the metabolic damage caused by overly processed ‘Western’ foods.
