Over the years, many different trendy diets have come and gone, sometimes within months. As the history almost always repeats itself, many new ones will appear in the future. Some diets may have a solid scientific background behind as they aim for people to achieve better health by reducing inflammation, boosting immunity or reversing type 2 diabetes. However, most of the fab diets lack the basic scientific foundation despite of their great popularity, especially those that target weight management. Such diets are heavily promoted by “experts” who built their career on social media as “nutritionists”, sponsored by greedy brands looking to maximise profits. “Buy these fabulous supplements or teas and you will rapidly lose weight”, for example. More often than not these “influencers” come up with miracle diets.
Cookie diet, dukan diet, Atkins diet, Beverly Hills diet, cabbage soup diet, alkaline diet or fit for life fatten up the endless list of diets. A list which can compromise people’s health, while it lines the pockets of the “experts”. Although I dislike the word diet as it naturally implies a restriction while I believe more in healthy lifestyle habits, I recently came across a new type of diet while I was reading one of the latest books by Dr Mark Hyman – Food Fix. It called my attention as many of their principles and rules matched my Natural Foods Revolution philosophy for protecting people health and environment. But what I liked the most were his open rules to serve as guidelines and not as a strict regime. Hyman promotes “peganism” or pegan diet, a diet that combines principles of the popular paleo and vegan diets. “You can’t go wrong following these principles. And any unbiased scientist who has read the scientific literature on nutrition would have a hard time arguing with these guidelines”, Hyman stated in this book.
Twelve principals
Pegan diet promotes consumption of non-starchy vegetables with grass-fed organic meats and low mercury fish. The diet encourages to eat a high amount of plant food, more than 70%, and to put some restriction on fruit with a high glycaemic index. Of course, ultra-processed food made with refined flower and oils is out of question. There are some restrictions with dairy, but the diet is widely open to products made from milk like cheese, especially the one made of organic goat or sheep milk. The American author summarises twelve Pegan diet principals as follows:
Stay away from sugar
Eat mostly plants
Easy on fruit
Stay away from pesticides, antibiotics, hormones and GMO
Eat foods containing healthy fats
Stay away from most vegetables, nut and seed oils
Avoid or limit dairy
Think of meat and animal products as condiments
Eat sustainably raised or harvested low-mercury fish
Avoid gluten (eat gluten-free whole grains sparingly)
Eat beans only once in a while
Eat for you and for the planet
All these principles have been extensively explained in Hyman books. A good way to summarise and simplify Hyman work is using his own words: “If God made it, eat it; if man made it, leave it”. For those who don’t believe in God, the quote will be as follows: “If nature made it, eat it; if man made it, leave it”.
