There’s No Quick Fix for Living a Healthy Life

If I could pass on any message from my book Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, it is to take a more considered approach to one’s body. That means more considered eating.  People are pretty good about considering what they eat, but I don’t know that they take it all the way through the body.  

I don’t want people to obsess, because it’s not good to obsess about your digestive tract. But there’s also a tendency in our culture to single out one nutrient or ingredient as a quick fix.  If I just remove this from my diet everything will be fine and I’ll feel good.

But really what you want to do is just steer yourself toward whole natural foods instead of just eating a crappy diet and then saying, “Oh, but if I take out gluten everything will be fine.”  Well what if you just took out all the crap and replaced it with real fruits and vegetables and grains and things that are good for you?  That’s a better approach than looking for a quick and easy fix that will still allow you to eat Snackwells all day.

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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