Trying to design a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle, we find ourselves facing a big challenge – the Pollution Crisis. The foundation of what we once considered a healthy diet is being shaken to its core. It’s time to ask ourselves: how do the toxic chemicals in our environment change everything we know about eating well?
As a health coach deeply invested in Environmental Health and Lifestyle Medicine, I’ve witnessed a significant shift in our understanding of what constitutes a healthy diet. This shift is essential in an era where environmental toxins are an ever-present reality. The European Food Safety Authority’s groundbreaking congress on risk assessment of nutrients versus contaminants in 2022 sent a clear message – we need to rethink our approach to food.
In the past, foods like fish, eggs, dairy, and animal butter were considered essential components of a healthy diet. They provided vital nutrients and sustained our well-being. However, in today’s world, they come with an alarming warning: a heavy load of environmental chemicals. These once-praised foods now harbor a concerning amount of toxic chemicals, a consequence of the environment we live in. It’s time to update our dietary knowledge.
The Mediterranean diet, celebrated for its health benefits, was studied in an era blissfully unaware of the impending pollution crisis. Most studies comparing it to the Western diet, known for its unhealthiness, only reinforced its benefits. But in light of today’s Pollution Crisis, we must view the Mediterranean diet through a different prism.
To construct a healthy diet in today’s world, it must meet four vital criteria:
1. Nutritional Adequacy: A healthy diet should provide us with all the essential nutrients our bodies need to thrive. It should be a source of vitality and strength.
2. Minimized Exposure to Environmental Chemicals: Given the prevalence of environmental chemicals, a healthy diet should prioritize foods that contain the least possible amounts of toxic chemicals. We must actively seek to reduce our exposure.
3. Compensation for Toxicity Exposure: Recognizing that we can’t entirely avoid exposure to environmental chemicals, a healthy diet should incorporate elements that help our bodies counteract the harmful effects of these chemicals. It should be a form of defense against the invisible threats that surround us.
4. Environmental Sustainability: We cannot ignore our responsibility to the planet. A truly healthy diet should leave the smallest possible carbon footprint and it should align with the principles of environmental sustainability, minimizing the release of CO2, minimizing the water footprint, and the chemical pollutants associated with it.
In this evolving landscape, the definition of a healthy diet is changing. We need to rewrite the narrative of what a healthy diet means, re-evaluating our conclusions after including the evidence we have on the risks of exposure to environmental toxic chemicals. This is the only way to honor our scientific identity, by not letting our biases blind our scientific evaluation.
