Food fads and contradictory dietary advice/studies

[Glenn MacGrady]

This affects eating everywhere including canoe trips.

In my lifetime, I've read so many inconsistent dietary studies, reports and advice, often with clickbait headlines. Things that have been reported to be good and bad, some reversing roles every few years, include:

fat
protein
carbs
(which are the only three macro food groups, leaving nothing to eat). more specifically:
coffee
eggs
butter
salt
wine
sugars
certain sugars
saturated fat
cholesterol
seed oils
starchy foods (rice, potatoes, pasta)
dairy
non-organic dairy
all meat
red meat
plants with alkaloids, glycosides, toxalbumins, oxalates, lectins (numerous food plants)
avocado
"processed" foods (whatever the heck that means; butchering is a "process")
etc.

Then there are various and nutritionally conflicting diets:

vegetarian
vegan
carnivore
keto
low carb
low fat
low protein
paleo
mediterranean
dash
and likely the worst of all, sad (standard american diet)

On top of this, medical doctors rarely are educated on dietary and nutritional matters. And long-term RCTs are essentially impossible for the study of nutritional interventions on humans.

We are on our own. To do dietary research and make nutritional decisions. Pick your . . . eh . . . poison, so to speak.

So . . . what to eat on a canoe trip (or anywhere else)? I don't fish, but I think eating fish, nuts and forageable leaves and roots should be healthy.

 

[Erica]

I once ate everything I could get my hands on a 28 day canoe trip, from fried fish to chocolate bars, and lost five pounds.

 

[Tryin']

Your appetite will tell you what you want, your performance will tell you what you need.

Our bodies are pretty darn good at handling poor choices, from broken bones to smoking to processed food to coal dust.

Chronic overconsumption is usually the main driver behind "problem" foods.

Enjoy it all, moderate your intake better than me, and live life.

 

[Robin]

I started keto the day after Christmas, loosing 35lbs since. My goal was to loose weight to help me stay Mobil with my weak hamstrings. (50-50 chance the weakness was caused by statins prescribed to me in 2014, a well documented risk of statins)
When compared to last year, my blood work showed many improvements, and a recent PET scan showed vast improvements to my bone cancer from 6 months before.
While many fall off the keto train, I’ll never eat carbs or sugar again.
For camping, since I’m unable to portage, my back country canoe trips will have the benefit of a wanigan and small cooler. My breakfast will be 4 of my own chickens free range eggs and 4-6 slices of thick bacon, dinner will be a steak, fried chop meat, pork or chicken, all fried in butter in a cold handle frying pan with a fried in butter vegetable ( squash, cabbage, broccoli asparagus) and maybe a salad.

 

[gumpus]

I think of diet kind of like exercise. I think it's important to have a strategy since that implies that you have taken personal responsibility for your health. But I wonder if the actual strategy is as important as just choosing any logical path and making adjustments (sometimes trying new things) as you go.