I have a strong work ethic with voracity for interpretation and understanding of all things nutrition, biochemistry, and biochemical research. I was initially interested in Nutrition during high school when I was trying to improve physical performance and health through diet modification. I am fascinated with the field of sports nutrition, diet modification, and supplementation to improve performance, health, and longevity. I frequent numerous online resources on fitness, diet (including implementations of an ancestral diet in the modern world), and scientific journals.
I believe many illnesses and diseases can be prevented and/or alleviated through healthful diet adherence. Nutrition is a major interface between the environment and human genomics, and acting to improve diet can render us less susceptible to disease.
I believe that we, Americans, have a pragmatic view on nutrition; we tend to pick and choose findings from clinical research and apply it dietary guidelines. However, the media, the department of agriculture, and various groups founded on dietary principles all skew individuals’ views on holistic nutrition. I believe that anthropological research from our distant hunter-gatherer ancestors poses a more inclusive model of obtaining health and longevity through diet. Humans have been evolving for ~2.2 million years, and many components of modern diet have been introduced within the last ~10,000 years—a blink in the context of our evolution. Many diseases of civilization, in my opinion, can be alleviated through adherence to a more ancestrally based diet on which we have thrived on since our earliest existence as a species. When we extrapolate data from research on Neolithic dietary agents such as expeller-pressed seed oils, grains, and genetically modified bioactive food components, we tend to obscure the most powerful data of all: our survival as a species on a diet based on meat, vegetables, and fruit.
Many of the current dietary paradigms praise avoidance of a diet high in calories derived from fat and cholesterol. But, at the core, these canons are flawed as most are based on a hypothesis, The Lipid Hypothesis, that has been scientifically rebuked by numerous studies. Unfortunately, people tend to believe that saturated fat in the diet leads to obesity in a rather straightforward pathway, and that increased dietary cholesterol will make us more susceptible to heart disease. Many accepted paradigms and beliefs are refuted through large meta-analyses, but current nutritional organizations disseminate select research while denying other research. I think a diet based strongly on anthropological data, biochemical research, and controlled studies will improve our current paradigms.
