My Journey to Healthy Eating
I had a long struggle with acne since my younger teenage years and had little luck with preventing it. Over time, I began to realize that there was a direct connection to foods I was eating and my next break out. After realizing this, I started developing this short observation list which has now become my general rules for healthy eating. While following these simple rules, I've consistently noticed having more energy, much less oily build up on my face, forehead, and back, and in general, feeling much better overall.
- Eat less sugar
- Eat less breads
- Eat less processed food
- Eat less food in general
- Eliminate seed oils as much as possible
Over time I started to realize that all of these points hinge on eating less processed food as the root concern. Our modern diet in America seems to have no staple food but refined sugar. Most of us seem to consume a large quanity of processed foods relative to the healthy foods we eat. I recently heard it said that one "cannot eat too much steak," as an example of how we can't over-consume natural food sources. In my experience, I've never been able to eat too much salad either!
Several months ago I discovered a helpful app called Yuka which identifies and rates foods 0-100 on the nutritional value of the food, the presence of additives, and the organic nature of the product. Through using the app, it hasn't taken long to discover that whole classes of foods we are accustomed to eating, are really not good for our health. Through this, I've started to discovered that our whole model of eating and foods really needs turned on its head and we need to start from first principles in making these decisions on what to put into our bodies. When we start to have a long term health goal in mind, it will radically change our eating decisions now.
Update 01/13/2026
Since I wrote down these thoughts several years ago, I discovered that folic acid should be on my list of things to avoid also. In the US, since 1998, in order to prevent neural tube defects in infants, all bread products are required to be enriched with folic acid, with the exception of some harder to find whole wheat products. Folic acid is the synthetic form of methylfolate, which is a form of Vitamin B9. The issue is that around 40% of the population has a genetic variant that can't metabolize the synthetic form, and the rest of us that don't have this variant don't process it very well. The proper solution is to either supplement with 5-MTHF (the active form of folate) or to eat foods high in it such as berries, leafy greens, legumes, and liver.
The next step for me, and one that I have been growing in curiosity about it nutrition density in our food sources. Modern day agriculture mono-crops seem to be the law of the land due to economies of scale. Being market driven drives agriculture to run with the method requiring the least amount of labor in efforts to save costs, resulting in endless pesticide and herbicide application, and yet more mono-crops. I think the assumption for a while has been that this is all ok, but we really haven't seen this story unfold yet. Soil around the country is rapidly being depleted and somehow we expect the plants to grow the same quality of foods for us that they grew in years before? With all these thoughts in mind, I think the proper direction to head in eating healthy is transition from the commodity markets to local foods from farmers we know and trust as well as by growing our own foods in our backyards. I think a helpful direction could be to focus on a couple types of foods to grow instead of buy and see what it takes to get there!