The Magic Pill is a documentary on the Keto diet available on Netflix. The Keto diet basically is about returning to how we naturally ate before industrialization of food, specifically, eating more fat and less carbs.
My take on The Magic Pill is there is significant merit in the overall principles. Yet, it could of helped its cause by being more objective in its presentation.
On fruit… There is NOTHING in any study that verifies fruit is a problem; and, by leaving it out, they contradict the “natural foods we ate for thousands of years” principles. To be sure, they didn’t demonize fruit in this. But, they basically excluded it from the list of things to embrace. I’ve heard others speak of it as just another source of carbs, ignoring that it is very low on the glycemic index. The whole theory on carbs causing diabetes is in part premised that the carbs are high on the glycemic index, flooding the body too fast with glucose, which is why countries that eat a lot of rice, high on the glycemic index, tend to have a high diabetes rates. It also ignores the many healthy benefits of fruit, including the obvious vitamins, live enzymes you can only get from fresh fruit, and many unknown nutritional properties we are just beginning to realize helps our health. Long live fruit! I would say, instead of getting rid of carbs, go back to how we ate carbs for thousands of years. Eat fruit!
One misnomer of theirs is how people used to be fit. That is true. But, they went with the assumption it was solely because of diet. The primary reason we were all once fit is because we didn’t work in offices and have cars!!! Work on a farm all day without gas powered equipment or landscape, and you’ll be a lot more fit than if you work in an office. Note that even in high labor fields machines are replacing human labor, so even farmers might be getting less exercise today if they sat on a machine all day. Prior to modern living, each day was filled with exercise we no longer get. Today, you need a gym membership.
That said, I believe evidence has been mounting to support some of their dietary claims. You just have to view it as a pendulum as people can go from one extreme to another. EVERYONE in the debate is guilty of making false assumptions. One may have more truth than the other. But you have to ask what assumptions they are purporting.
Saying “I’ll listen to you when you have 40,000 years of research” in the beginning was childish.” No one has 40,000 years of research. They should of cut that from video. On top of that, they had the people GUESS what killed people before infectious diseases. No one knew! They guessed “old age”. But, no one presented real data.
For the record, infectious diseases have ALWAYS killed people. They called that pestilence. As long as there were cities, pestilence killed people. We have been building cities for thousands of years. It is natural for us, beginning with villages, and growing to markets and ports, to create cities.
One thing I learned is the average person makes over 1,000 false assumptions per day. We’re wired to do this so we can make quick decisions in a world of unknowns. Drive at night in a now blizzard on a country freeway with no lights and no traffic other than you. If you make it home without going off the road, ask yourself how you did it. Were you always 100% sure what the outcome of every decision would be? Did you always know where the road was going?
I first learned this as a computer programmer when I was a kid, where your bugs in the first few years are primarily caused by your own incorrect assumptions. Once you realize how true it is, you’ll get better at identifying them in every discussion. The better you get at identifying assumptions, the quicker you can get to the truth.
I do strongly believe society has become way too dependent on pills. and, taking pills to solve problems caused by poor diet is ridiculous. That was one of the core things in The Magic Pill I agreed very strongly with. The obvious conclusion is that we can impact our health a lot by changing our diet.
My principle is eat what i want. But, if something is more healthy, simply try to eat more of it. If you eat more of something healthy, you’ll end up eating less of the unhealthy things. This is how you can grow without the issues of a restricted diet, where you’ll binge or fall back due to craving. If you have cravings, just try to fill them with something more healthy. Don’t get religious about absolute abstention. I identified drinking pop half the day, every day, as a health concern. Yet, I’ll drink it on occasion, and overall replace it with something else i love in the meantime that is less harmful.
That is how I approach Keto. Give up my pasta, pizza, etc,…? Heck no!!! But, why not cut out carbs that I don’t really love, like junk food or processed meals, and eat more healthy fats I enjoy? I don’t believe we can eat too much fruit and vegetables. So, I load up on the ones I love, and prepare them in a way I enjoy, which sometimes is adds just olive oil and salt, and other times butter and cheese. Every step we take towards better health adds up.
Being happy in the process drives you to continue. Learning what is healthy, and what isn’t, is the beginning of that process. Find healthy things you love! And eat more of them.
