Intermittent fasting - Response to Yotam Ottolenghi
I like Yotam Ottolenghi a lot. He’s a great writer and the essence of his recent article in The Guardian dated 22 March ‘I tried intermittent fasting, and hated it. This is why we need to ditch the diets and go back to basics’ is spot on. There’s just one problem with it and I believe it to be a fairly major one.
It probably rings true for the majority of Guardian readers; people like him, or me, whose parents did regularly cook wholesome food and who have access to, and even a limited understanding of, real food and what it is.
Unfortunately there is a large percentage of people for whom this isn’t true. Those who didn’t grow up with a positive example of healthy cooking and eating wholesome foods, those who grew up with UPF’s and sugary drinks as the staple. And who therefore have no understanding of what Yotam, or myself, might think of as eating ‘normally’: a meaningless word in any context but particularly in this one.
What Ottolenghi says about overthinking what we eat is absolutely right. I know from both personal experience and that of those around me just what a profoundly negative effect overthinking and over-planning food intake can have. It’s what can sow the seeds for eating disorders, even mild ones, at any age. What he fails to mention is that nutrition (or let’s simply call it food, if we don’t like that term) education is the absolute key here. It underpins everything. It’s not enough just to say “cook/eat real food”. This phrase is meaningless for most people, as I have seen time and again in clinic and when giving workshops on what to eat and why.
We absolutely do need to stop “for one second and (allow) ourselves to ignore all this noise” but his advice to “instead follow the well-established routines we grew up with surrounding cooking and eating” is a massively problematic statement. As is “we know best what we need to eat – and when. The food our parents cooked for us, the meals we made together, the things that come naturally, instinctively, as we walk into the kitchen”. Both of these statements presuppose we all had the same upbringing and experience with food growing up.
As a nutritionist all I can say is, I wish. Over the past 15 years of my nutrition career I have been consistently surprised by what educated people who want to improve their health consider a good diet and how what to me are really simple alternatives are to them completely shocking and are often refused.
What we were brought up eating is what tends to stick with us forever. The complexity of the emotions which are tied up with food and how we eat are so profound, and most people don’t question the food they were given in childhood, no matter what the “science” now says. Yotam hints at this himself when he writes that “the food we eat, the meals we enjoy, are all part of our very particular cultures, culinary traditions and circumstances.” So if the culture or circumstances you were raised in was fast food several times a week then that is the food you turn to, those are your traditions. This is one explanation for the continuing predominance of UPF’s in most UK kitchens.
Food is complex, yes, but it’s really our physiology that makes the world of nutrition so complex, which Ottolenghi mentions. Research suggests (because research can only ever suggest) that no two bodies use the same nutrients in the same way, and that is where the real complexity lies. The reality is that the solutions he talks about just aren’t on the radars of the majority of people, they don’t have the same solutions that he does.
Similarly, with “joyful, intuitive cooking”, I have met few people outside of the food industry, and some within it, who would describe preparing meals as either. There are those who find, or learn to find, the joy in cooking but it is not intuitive to most. My experience over the past 15 years has suggested that we don’t “all know these things”. Sadly, so many of us don’t know what is best to eat – or when, because so many had parents who didn’t cook for them, for whatever reason, or who relied on tins, packets, cartons and take aways.
Yotam is a chef. This means that creating things in the kitchen comes naturally and instinctively to him. I’m both a professionally trained chef and was fortunate to have a wonderful example set by both my parents when it came to cooking, so I am lucky enough to share that natural instinct. My husband is also a chef, having started his training aged 15, and when I started my most recent business giving cooking workshops focused only on really simple cooking techniques, meal preparation and planning weekly menus, he simply couldn’t believe there would be a market for it. He just couldn’t envisage anyone needing such simple strategies because, like Yotam, he assumes everyone knows these things. The truth is that even in generally middle-class, Guardian-reading, well-off Bath, they don’t.
In an ideal world, where everyone was brought up in a household where good, wholesome food was prepared daily and where thousands of ready meals and deliveries didn’t exist, Yotam’s advice to “ignore all this noise, and instead follow the well-established routines we grew up with surrounding cooking and eating” would be sound. Unfortunately, a huge amount of education is still needed before we reach this point.
I’ve found that the simplest, often most ‘obvious’ things help people the most. Make a meal plan, without fail, every week. Do it monthly if you prefer but do not go into the week without having, even loosely, planned what you’ll prepare each night. Allow yourself a day when you don’t cook; there are enough high-quality ready meals available for this not to be a problem. Don’t stray too far from your comfort zone. Choose the meals you and your family like to eat the most and then tweak them ever, ever so slightly to make them more nutritious, even marginally.
The emotions we have for the food we eat are powerful, treat them gently.