Matt Fitzgerald on Restrictive Diets

A high-quality diet is a diet in which all food types are allowed, but an effort is made to avoid specific “low-quality” foods of all types and to eat “high-quality” foods of all types. For example, the Diet Quality Score system I present in Racing Weight categorizes fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, and essential fats as high-quality foods and refined grains, sweets, fried foods, whole-milk dairy products, and fatty proteins as “low-quality” foods.

We have already seen that a high-quality diet is just as healthy as any more restrictive health diet. Are high-quality diets healthier than “anything goes” diets—that is, the typical American diet? You bet it they are. For example, in a 2003 study by Swedish researchers, the diets of more than 58,000 women were analyzed for the variety of healthy and unhealthy foods they contained. It was discovered that those women who ate the greatest variety of healthy foods had the lowest mortality rate over a 10-year period, while those who ate the greatest variety of unhealthy foods had the highest mortality rate.

How Restrictive Is Your Diet?

This is an outstanding article. C-blog readers may recall my essay called Why You Are Fat. I have received a great deal of positive feedback on that one. Since writing that essay, I have done reading on various diets such as the vegetarian, vegan, and paleo diets. I have concluded with Matt Fitzgerald that they are a bunch of crap.

I follow a diet plan where I eschew fried foods, sweets, and fatty meats like hamburger while eating whole grain products, skim milk, and lean meats like poultry and fish. Then, when I read Fitzgerald's article and his low quality/high quality food categories, he was talking about my diet. It was deja vu all over again.

These crazy restrictive diets are not the answer. The answer is to eat better quality foods. The hardest thing I find about eating quality food is that eating crap is way more convenient. Eating quality food takes time and preparation. Otherwise, this way of eating works. You feel better. You lose weight. It is a no-brainer.

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