Your Dinner Choices Could Be Deadly
You are what you eat!
Maybe that’s why so many of us are totally unhealthy!
Everyone eats a little differently, to be fair – but lately we’re seeing a concerning trend in the average diet! Regardless of differing tastes, cultural preferences, or even food allergies, not only are we eating much more than ever before, but we’re eating much more junk food than ever before! Over-processed food full of simple sugars & calories, with little to no nutritional value is the go-to for so many of us – that can’t be good, right?
Right!
“Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980 and most of the world’s population now live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight ”
We’re seeing the “that can’t be good” all around us; obesity is a full-blown pandemic! And, what makes this pandemic even more dangerous is that it’s affecting our youth – in 2019, the World Obesity Federation estimated that there would be 206 million children under the age of 19 struggling with obesity by 2025, and by 2030 there would be 254 million obese children (Jebeile et. al, 2022)! We can argue about the “why?”, but the recent increase in quantity & decrease in quality of our meals seems to be especially impactful.
When it comes to managing our weight, the equation’s fairly simple: energy in versus energy out! In real world terms, our focus shifts to what we’re eating & what we’re doing! Gym bros might be more familiar with this concept than any of us! When they want to slim down, they start counting calories & eating a little less; when they want to bulk up, they eat a lot more & lift a little heavier. What we’re starting to see is that not every bulk is created equal… Maybe the “dirty bulk” is a little dirtier than we originally thought.
A group of scientists out of the Babraham Institute are pointing to their recent research done on proliferating yeast, with implications that food quality & composition might be even more important than we’d all realized! Of course, we all understand that nutrient dense foods are the best for us – healthy carbs, healthy fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, fiber; you can’t beat that stuff! I could write at length on the importance of all the available macro- and micro-nutrients but I think we generally get the point – eating healthy foods will make you healthy! What we’re seeing in our food lately is a lot more of the simple, easily digestible, and potentially dangerous, form of sugar. Enter glucose.
In the Babraham Institute study, the researchers were able to show that yeast cells that were fed glucose displayed significantly more signs of aging and age-related breakdown than yeast that was fed galactose, a less available sugar with a slightly different chemical structure. Galactose is produced by our bodies and also found in milk, beets, & avocados! These dietary changes had significant effects on young yeast cells that lasted throughout the lifespan! According to lead researcher Dr. Dorottya Horkai,
“We show that diet in early life can switch yeast onto a healthier trajectory. By giving yeast a different diet without restricting calories we were able to suppress senescence, when cells no longer divide, and loss of fitness in aged cells.”
Now of course, humans are much more complex than yeast, but this is as good an indicator as any – a bad diet could really ruin your life! So, why are we letting our kids eat such awful, high-sugar foods?! Especially when we consider that the study also found that making those dietary changes in old yeast made no significant difference!
“Crucially, the dietary change only works when cells are young, and actually diet makes little difference in old yeast. It is hard to translate what youth means between yeast and humans, but all these studies point to the same trend - to live a long and healthy life, a healthy diet from an early age makes a difference.”
To Dr. Houseley’s point, it’s pretty difficult to say what’s young for humans; so it’d be crazy to say at your age – whatever it may be – that it’s a lost cause to fix your diet! That being said, don’t risk it either! When it comes time for bulking season, the research is saying we might be a little better off keeping it clean!
It doesn’t take any special study to know that dietary choices when we’re young are gonna impact our dietary choices as we get older. What we’re starting to realize now is that if the dietary damage is done too early, there’s no coming back!
So, all in all, it’s much safer to say, you are what you ate!
Works Cited & Further Reading
Fox, A., Feng, W., & Asal, V. (2019). What is driving global obesity trends? Globalization or "modernization"?. Globalization and health, 15(1), 32. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-019-0457-y
Jebeile, H., Kelly, A. S., O'Malley, G., & Baur, L. A. (2022). Obesity in children and adolescents: epidemiology, causes, assessment, and management. The lancet. Diabetes & endocrinology, 10(5), 351–365. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-8587(22)00047-X
Horkai, D., Hadj-Moussa, H., Whale, A. J., & Houseley, J. (2023). Dietary change without caloric restriction maintains a youthful profile in ageing yeast. PLoS biology, 21(8), e3002245. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002245
Kozioł-Kozakowska A. (2023). Adequate Nutrition in Early Childhood. Children (Basel, Switzerland), 10(7), 1155. https://doi.org/10.3390/children10071155
