In another article we discussed why there is so much nutrition confusion, why different books and nutritionists give recommendations that are not only different from but sometimes the opposite of others. One of the reasons is that they too often attempt to come up with one-size-fits-all advice. But we’re different, and one size does not fit all.
Yes, there are recommendations that nearly all nutritionists make, and these would apply to almost everybody: eat eat a good variety of natural unprocessed food, and avoid food additives, sugar, white flour, and fried foods. But apart from these general recommendations, there’s a huge variation in what constitutes an optimal diet for a particular person at a particular time.
Each of the diets, books, and bits of advice works…for some people. There are people who do better on one diet and do worse or have no result on another, depending on what was keeping their own particular body from working optimally. For others, any diet is an improvement on the way they were eating previously, and will thus yield positive results, at least initially. Each of these diets has a kernel of truth in it, and they all have validity. The problem comes when they are promoted as the one best diet for everyone.
Everyone’s nutrient needs are different, based on individual differences, existing deficiencies, health challenges and illnesses, and toxic burdens. One-size-fits-all dietary advice is like expecting my eyeglasses to correct your vision; even if we both have blurry vision, we need a different prescription.
Allergies and sensitivities
Allergies and sensitivities are an obvious example of dietary differences. People with health issues are more likely to have such sensitivities, which can be both cause and effect of the health problems. For example, some but not all people have some degree of gluten sensitivity, and these people would benefit to some extent from a gluten-free diet. Many people react to foods such as eggs that would be healthy for most people. The CAM detox diet removes all foods short-term that are most likely to be problematic, and then allows for their individual and gradual reintroduction. So although the 8-day detox diet is pretty much the same for everyone, the diet you ultimately end up with might differ in many ways from someone else’s.
Nutrients
One size doesn’t fit all with regard to amounts of nutrients required, as well. The range of nutrient requirements can vary hugely. This makes any pronouncement about how much of what is needed by the average person pretty meaningless. For example, the Recommended Daily Allowance of vitamin C is said to be 60 mg per day for the average person. This is like saying that the average adult should weigh 150 pounds; even if we can assume that this is statistically true, it’s meaningless for any individual.
One issue with nutrients is that two people might take in the same type and amount of nutrients but will actually get different amounts from what they take in. Some people digest, absorb, and utilize nutrients differently, or more or less efficiently, than others. Some people, mostly those who are pretty healthy to begin with, can get all their nutrition from a healthy diet, while others need supplements for optimal function or even to get well in the first place.
Semi-individualized diets
Some nutritionists recognize that dietary needs are not one size fits all. Accordingly there are books recommending different foods depending on blood type, body shape, Chinese or Ayurvedic medicine profiles, and other differences by group. The fact that there are so many semi-individualized diets across cultures indicates a wide acknowledgment that there is indeed no one universally ideal diet. Their approach is at least a good start.
The fallacy in their thinking lies in the idea that, of all the many attributes that make up a person, only one – the one they are writing about – is the all-important determinant of the one best diet for the individual. Granted, some people have had considerable success with these diets, but these programs are not the whole story.
Although such semi-individualized diets might be useful, advice from a nutritionist such as those at CAM, geared to your particular health and nutritional issues and based on testing, is much better.
Stage of life
Adults usually don’t want to gain weight and often want to lose it, and they have much different health conditions and nutritional needs than children for whom growth and development are central. Some experiments done on adults appear – although probably inaccurately – to show benefits of a low-fat diet. But then these results are applied to children, with the result that children, who need fat for their growth and brain development, are limited to low-fat and nonfat milk and other foods. The nutritional needs of a young growing child and an overweight 60-year-old man with heart problems are not only different, but likely to be opposite in many ways. Gender as well as age influences optimal diet.
The best diet for you?
There is not only not one perfect and correct diet for everyone, there’s not even one perfect diet for you. There might be a perfect diet for you today, but your nutritional needs will likely be different a month or a year from now. In fact, assuming that you ate mostly one kind of food for breakfast, your nutritional needs might be different this afternoon.
As an example of an individual’s changing nutritional needs, take a person on the Standard American Diet – with the appropriate acronym SAD, which could more accurately stand for Substandard American Diet. She goes on a drastic diet and gets better, mostly because she has eliminated toxic foods and added nutrient-rich ones. She reasonably assumes that this is proof that this is the optimal diet for her and continues to follow it. A year later she is still on the same diet, but now she has deficiency symptoms, and adding back some of what she had given up a year previously could restore her to health, at least for now.
The bottom line
Nutrition, as with health in general, is a complex subject, and is certainly not one-size-fits-all. If it were, then only one point of view would be valid, and only one book on the subject would be needed. This is clearly not the case.
