The Weird Stuff Healthy People Eat
Dear Natural Health Solutions Reader,
Last night for dinner, my wife Laurie made an extraordinary meal of organic chicken livers sauteed in duck fat, with a lovely Korean bok choy kimchi on the side.
For breakfast this morning, along with my nearly quotidian low-carb scramble of eggs and kale, I tucked into my new fav: a stringy, viscous, Japanese fermented soybean product known as natto.
A young friend recently told me that he had never eaten liver, but had “smelled it cooking once — I thought I would hurl.” And a quick Internet survey reveals that Americans describe natto as smelling like “sweaty feet” or “burning inner tubes,” with a taste that evokes “death itself.”
So I realize these eating habits make us unusual.
But — and this is a vital point — one reason we selected these foods is because they are nutrient dense. Research indicates that when people consume nutrient-poor foods, they overeat.1
That’s possibly due to the body’s desperate attempt to obtain its required macro- and micronutrients from a deficient source.
Conversely, animal liver is arguably the most nutrient-dense food one can eat. A modest 4-ounce serving provides 300 percent of the daily value (DV) for vitamin A and 54 percent of the DV for vitamin C.
Liver is also a rich source of dietary cholesterol, sparing your own liver from overworking to produce this vital nutrient.
And my daily 46 grams of natto contains roughly 600 micrograms of vitamin K2, a compound that’s in short supply in the American diet and absolutely vital for bone strength, cardiovascular health, and immune function.
The extraordinary nutrient density of these foods explains why relatively small portions satisfy us in a way no huge bag of chips can. And there’s no point in being coy here — consumption of these foods (and the calories they contain) is also somewhat self-limiting because the flavor is challenging.
Deep in my psyche, I wish bear claws, Doritos, or Cap’n Crunch were as nutritious as liver, bok choy, or natto. The blandly sweet/salty, vegetable oil-drenched foods that many Americans eat almost exclusively are indeed tasty.
But they aren’t nutritious, and the upside is we’ve found that even though new foods can be — to be honest — a bit off-putting at first, they can quickly become favorites.
That’s why it’s interesting that a Cornell Food and Brand Lab study recently published in the journal Obesity suggests that adventurous eaters may be healthier than the picky masses.2
The nationwide survey of 502 American women showed that those who had eaten the widest variety of foods that are uncommon in the U.S. — including seitan (a fermented soy product), beef tongue, Korean kimchi, rabbit, and polenta — also weighed less.
“Our results indicate that food neophilia, or a more adventurous eating style, is associated with a lower BMI in our sample of young women,” the researchers wrote.
When compared with nonadventurous eaters, these women rated themselves as:
- healthier eaters
- more physically active
- more concerned with the healthfulness of their food.
“Adventurous” is looking like it’s the place to be if you want to be healthy.
After about a week of digging daily into its beany, stringy morass, I began to feel that no morning was complete without a natto fix, eau de smelly feet notwithstanding.
This afternoon, I’ll head to my local Asian grocer to buy another week’s supply.
Brad Lemley
Editor, Natural Health Solutions
Citations
1. Adam Drewnowski and Nicole Darmon. The economics of obesity: dietary energy density and energy cost. American Society for Clinical Nutrition. 2005
2. Latimer, Lara; Lizzy Pope, and Brian Wansink. Food Neophiles: Profiling the Adventurous Eater. Obesity, 2015