A: You have raised an important issue, one that I have thought about very much, and never really solved. In order to learn something, you have to have a question. Until a question occurs to you, you have nothing to push against. I have never been able to figure out how to make people start to have a question that they feel they need to answer. A second problem that I have never solved is how to replace people's fearful health-nut mindset with a hedonism that requires truly feeling well for its actualization.
I do have some very definite ideas what the optimum human diet is, because I have been doing trial-and-error experimentation for several years, and some of the parameters are quite obvious, as well as being contrary to the general nutritional advice now promulgated. But my experience is that I have needed an experimental attitude at every step, because unforeseen difficulties will come up at every step no matter what you try to do, and there is no way to give a simple recipe.
The first step is learning how to produce a more-or-less accurate dietary record. For me this meant weighing everything until I could estimate quantities accurately; learning how to keep the details of meals in my mind for long enough to get them down accurately; and figuring out exactly which foods I was recording.
The second step is to look at the analysis of a period, say one week, 21 meals, to see if anything seems odd. If some numbers seem too low see if there are foods you love that you can eat more of. If some numbers seem too high, see if you can substitute foods, and if it makes any difference. It probably won't make any detectable difference to the way you feel, but at any rate, you need to know where your nutrients are coming from in your diet.
Now you need a question. For me, after I wrote the program and fooled around with it for a time, I was disappointed that, if anything, I actually felt worse after all the effort and study. I had gradually done more or less everything you are SUPPOSED to do, less meat and fat, more whole grains, lots of fruits and vegetables, etc. I was discouraged, and in a fit of perversity, started to eat more meat and fat. I instantly felt a lot better. My eyes were suddenly opened that I needed an experimental attitude, and not a blind following of other's dietary prescriptions.
Now I had questions. What if I eat a lot of fat and little carbohydrate? Do I want more protein or less? What is the optimal level of each of the polyunsaturated fats? How much saturated fat do I want and which ones? Which vitamins and minerals do I need to supplement?
After I formulated a question, I researched it as thoroughly as possible and assembled whatever different foods or supplements I needed. After I knew the results, I researched it again in light of my personal experience. If I saw a benefit, I frequently retested other nutrients and strategies to make sure I didn't miss some aspect of the problem. The key to this process is to be especially observant and curious when an experiment turns out contrary to what is expected. And one of the oddest things about experimenting with your own nutritional requirements is that when your diet is mostly all wrong, changes seem to not make much of a difference; but as more and more nutrients are corrected, the results of significant changes become strikingly obvious. Also, when I started these experiments I assumed I would eventually discover various options, so that if I wished, I could emphasize mood over physicality, for example, because I would understand the tradeoffs. This was completely wrong. There were no options whatsoever. There was only one single self-intertwined optimum to be discovered and any deviation from any of its facets caused unpleasant consequences.
Designing experiments is not exactly a snap because you have to keep most of the variables constant and vary only one or two of them. But here is a clue. You can keep your diet constant as an average over a longer period of time and not worry about day-to-day variation. You probably do this already. The scientific method is not about putting on a white coat and buying a lot of glassware--it is about asking a question and trying to construct a circumstance in which the natural world has to answer that question. Nutrition questions all hinge on raising and lowering nutrient values in the diet and what happens to your own body when you do so. The only way to do it is to eat some fundamentally different foods than you have been eating so that the numbers change, but not all the numbers at once.
The two aspects for each nutrient, pursued independently, are which nutrients make some kind of noticeable difference when their quantities are changed, and then for each beneficial change noted, what is the optimal amount of the corresponding nutrient? There are around 35 nutrients that need to be looked at individually and in combination, and it is a formidable problem because human nutritional requirements are more intricate than most people realize. Those who are sure that it is just a matter of "common sense" are invariably those who have not attempted to figure it out at all. Nevertheless, to the extent that you make a variety of minimally-processed real food the basis of your diet, the vast majority of nutrients will be taken care of adequately because the plants and animals that make up our food share with us so many of the same metabolic pathways and so much of the resultant chemistry.
The ultimate goal is not that every meal be perfectly planned by a computer program, but that you can feel the various dietary strategies, deficiencies, and excesses. You use the computer program to verify that you are actually following a particular strategy, and one by one, you sort out the variables that are relevant to you. My position in a nutshell is that there is so much humbug that passes for nutrition "information" that one had better find the personal nutritional effects that are so big that one can tell the difference before considering all the minor effects that one is supposed to accept on faith. I want individuals such as you and me to figure it out, rather than leaving it to the various groups with profit and social control agendas. And I have made it easier for you than it was for me because in retrospect, I can see the five areas that I had to explore, although when I was doing it, I frequently got lost in the terrain:
Much of the art consists of watching oneself in a disinterested, depersonalized way. When you see someone whose senses are vividly alive, is active and getting into mischief, and who seems to have a deep reservoir of spirit and strength of will, you know you got the feed ration right! One of my most innovative thoughts was to realize that the quality of my immediate experience--that parade of feelings, thoughts, and sensations when I am not doing anything, no one needs my assistance, and I am not putting any kind of "spin" on it--is a direct view of my nutrition. In consciousness, nutritional problems manifest as worries, anxiety, forebodings, longings, nostalgias, existential loneliness, etc.--in other words, extraneous emotional background noise covering up the stunning quiet details of life. And when we are not enjoying what we are doing because we do not feel truly well, we go through mental contortions to try to find "meaning" in it.
Then there are some basic techniques, all so simple that the explanations will seem pleonastic. Having great respect for your body while at the same time understanding its limited ability to translate its physical processes into words, you hold the thiamin supplement and say "Thiamin!" and then swallow it. The following morning you ask "Thiamin! Do you want it?" Your body now knows what thiamin feels like and will let you know "yes" or "no." Most of the time, the answer will be "no." Now doesn't this sound absurd?
Or, you find yourself obsessing with some anxiety over something needlessly. Instead of continuing the pointless internal discussion, you analyze what you are feeling. What was it about the previous or penultimate meal that left you without sufficient strength to surmount this difficulty? Perhaps you sign onto the internet and read about cortisol, and try to relate it to diet. Then perhaps you form a hypothesis and think of an experiment to check it out.
Or, you establish the ritual of eating a can of salmon every five days, and watch to see if you can tell the difference--in your mental state, in your skin, in the way something feels in your body. If you feel nothing, you discontinue the ritual. If something positive happens, you continue the ritual. You also ask, How does this compare with twice as much or half as much?
Or, your lower back hurts. You have felt this intermittently and you go back in your mind to correlate the presence or absence of this symptom with your changing dietary routines. Then an idea strikes. You have never felt this when supplementing folic acid, only when not supplementing folic acid. You test out the hypothesis. Yes, folic acid makes the problem go away, or No, the problem is not related to folic acid.
The final technique, and the most important, is to immediately gratify any food desire, whether or not it fits in with any plan. You may take clues as to what nutrients you are overlooking, or you may just require a change from the routine, but only in an atmosphere of perfect freedom will your body cooperate with this kind of experimentation. You are not a martinet. You are caring for your favorite exotic pet, yourself.
As a result of this experimentation I made the following changes to my usual diet: