The Malnourished Obese

You're probably thinking to yourself, how can someone who is obese be malnourished? Isn't that an oxymoronic statement?

When you think of malnourishment, you likely have a picture in your mind of gaunt marasmic children in subsaharan Africa, and certainly they are malnourished, they are undernourished. When you look at an overweight or obese person however, you see they have plenty of fat stores, plenty of reserves, plenty of "nutrition."

Still, there is another term called overnutrition, and overnutrition is malnutrition.

The foods that the majority of people are eating are dead foods. Of course their dead! People don't usually eat the leg off of a living chicken. But, the nutrients that are in the foods they are eating are either non-existent, or are so processed as to be unrecognizable.

I'm about to start reading the book "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. The premise being that we don't eat what comes out of the earth anymore. We manipulate it, taking all the nutritional benefit out of it and replacing with lab-isolated shadows of its original content.

As an example. When wheat is pulled from the earth, its outer husk is full of bran (fiber), B-vitamins such as folate, B12, niacin, etc, and very healthy monounsaturated fats. Yet, there are numerous elements, nutrients, and chemicals that have not yet been isolated or discovered. These undiscovered wonders contribute to the overall health of that plant in a syngergistic manner.

When the husk is taken off, and the wheat is hulled and bleached, and turned into white flour, it is only a small fraction of its former self. Nutrients, vitamins, are added back in fortification. So, essentially, we are eating nutrients.

We no longer look at food in a holistic fasion. Rather what we see and what we eat are nutrients. Nutrients. Nutrients. You see a claim on a box of cereal, full of vitamins and minerals, it's practically a multivitamin and of itself. Is that the way that raw ingredient came out of the ground? No...

Basically, in our country, the majority 2/3 of people are feeding themselves nutrient lacking foods with a very high caloric density. Therefore, they may look well-nourished, but take on look at their biochemical assays, their laboratory tests, and they are deficient, malnourished in many areas.

Don't judge a book by its cover, especially when looking at people. Our nation's people, may in fact, be just as malnourished as those in Subsaharan Africa, and I know that is an extremely strong statement. While they die of infectious disease over there, we die of chronic disease over here. Both are diseases that are exacerbated by diet.

Once I finish reading "In Defense of Food," I will be sure to post my thoughts.

In the meantime, I continue my work in designing public health proposals for improving our country's health status and food supply. An ongoing process. One which I look forward to discovering and sharing with the public.

Also, on a side-note, I will now be the cardiac dietitian/heart transplant dietitian at UCLA medical center...leaving my post as the general medicine dietitian after 2 years and 8 months. This will be interesting...