The Law of the Vital Few
There exists an engineering and scientific principle, really more of an observation, that 80% of problems arise from 20% of the causes, and also 80% of rewards come from 20% of the time spent. A few examples: 20% of patients incur 80% of healthcare costs, 80% of manufacturing errors occur in 20% of car parts, 20% of citizens own 80% of the land, and 80% of diet-related health problems result from 20% of the food ingredients consumed. It is called the Pareto principle (after the Itallian economist Vilfredo Pareto), the 80-20 rule, or the principle of factor sparsity, and it applies to a wide variety of natural and artificial systems--including ecosystems, electrical and computer systems, software, biological systems, and more.
The reasons for the disproportionality of return to investment are that not all factors are equally influential on the outcome of events and causes in complex systems nearly always contribute to multiple effects and tend to "clump" with overlapping effects. When applied to a dietary system for example, this means a relatively moderate set of fundamental changes to dietary intake can result in a greatly improved profile of both monitored and unmonitored health-related physiological parameters, with improvements disproportionate to the cost of changes made. Likewise, 80% of waste can be reduced by changing 20% of the most wasteful practices.
Which 20%?
The 80-20 rule comes with a caveat, however; it is important to identify which factors under your control are most fundamental so that the cost-to-benefit ratio can be minimized. Microsoft and Apple have a host of often very expensive tools for this purpose, including quality control monitoring, customer feedback, beta testers, expert reviews, error reports, etc, so they know exactly where to concentrate their efforts. At home with limited resources, an individual must rely on other organizations or groups of individuals to perform this function in the form of published literature from reputable organizations. Enough nutritional literature exists, overlapping in enough areas, that is is possible to establish a list of basic food nutritional problems and identify the most fundamental 20% that are likely complicit in 80% of healthcare costs resulting from dietary deficiencies (upwards of $300 billion/year in the US alone according to the NIH, not including lost productivity due to diet-related diseases and disorders).
Top 20+ Risks Posed by the American Diet
Below in order of approximate relative severity of impact are a couple dozen dietary factors that I believe are most important concerning individual health. Many of these factors are interrelated, forming a web in a may-dimensional space when connected with relevant nutritional parameters, and when improved in combination with one another, they can result synergistic improvement of multiple regulatory systems relevant to overall health and well-being.
Minimizing all of these causes of diet-related disease within practical limitations using all resources available represents 100% effort. By reducing some, others will be reduced by association, so efforts to improve naturally result in compounded benefits. The principle is self-similar, so addressing the most fundamental 20% of the remainder of problems always brings you 80% closer to maximum benefit, regardless of the absolute amount of factors left to improve. The first handful (5-6) is a reasonable representation of the 20% most problematic causes.
- Excessive Consumption of Biologically Costly Foods
- Genetically Modified Foods: [1]
- Nutritionally Sparse Foods
- Lack of Diversity (Particularly of Raw Foods)
- Too Few Prebiotics and Probiotics
- Animal-Based Foods
- Refined Foods
- Excessive Use of Hydrogenated and Saturated Oils
- Large Portions / Overconsumption
- Excessive Use of Concentrated Sugars
- Excessive Salt
- Excessive Fat
- Excessive Use of Wheat
- Too Few Antioxidants
- Partial and Unbalanced Foods
- Not Enough Fiber
- Unsustainable Foods
- Overcooked Foods
- Use of Isolated Vitamins and Supplements
- Excessive Ingestion of Insecticides, Herbicides, and Fungicides
- Food and Water Contamination by Heavy Metals
- Excessive Intake of Man-Made Contaminants
- Packaged Foods
- Artificial Additives and Sweeteners
- Lack of Processing Alternatives to Heating
Inefficient Changes
Many changes are in fact only perceived changes because they don't effect output physiological parameters with much, if any, cost efficiency. This is mainly because they represent changes mediated by a large number of products with small variations along a very few dimensions of formulation, such as the many varieties of a single flavor of juice or canned soup, each set with very similar but slightly different nutritional or flavor profiles and none of which are fully optimized to maximize health benefits. Many of these changes are induced by fads or marketing and often fail to demonstrate a justification for the additional cost. These may not be completely without merit, but they are not among the most cost-effective dietary improvements. Additionally, they may simply exchange real health risks in an effort to minimize perceived risk (e.g. diet soft drinks). Examples of perceived dietary improvements with very mild or adverse effects on overall health:
- Changing to organic dairy
- Changing from refined salt to unrefined sea salt or Himalayan salt
- Drinking commercial vitamin water
- Eating soy cheese instead of dairy cheese on some sandwiches
- Replacing all meat and dairy with soy
- Reducing salt intake from 5000mg to 4500mg daily
- Changing brands of isolated vitamin formulations
- Eating 6 turkey burgers rather than 6 porkchops
- Drinking diet soft drinks instead of regular
- Using Splenda, Equal, or "raw" sugar rather than sugar
- Switching to organic potato chips
- Choosing a product with 20% less sugar or fat
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5 comments:
What do you think about the Paleo diet? I've heard very little about it, but what I understand is that it proposes reducing grains in favor of more animal products and vegetables.
Animal products cannot be part of a fully optimized human diet. They are too calorically dense (nutrient sparse). They are also heat-treated, rendering the proteins (and enzymes) denatured and the native probiotic strains nonviable. The end result is a lot of stomach acid (often resulting in heartburn) to break them down and then a flood of amino acids in the blood that trigger the release of calcium from the bones to balance the pH. It's meat and dairy that cause osteoperosis, kidney stones (calcium from bones and dairy), and gal bladder disease (usually animal cholesterol deposits), in addition to the well-known links to heart disease, hypertension, and several types of cancer.
The urge to consume animal products is a kind of drug-seeking response from a lifetime of consumption. They all have very acidic ashes, meaning they must be neutralized with ALOT of calcium hydroxide in order to maintain blood pH.
As far as the diet goes, if a diet has a name, that is the first red flag. The best possible diet is something like "complete and balanced calorie-restrictive macro- and microbiotically whole-food 100%-raw veganism with optimal nutrition and diversity". Such a diet can capture all the benefits of all other diets with a minimum of their faults from a nutritional perspective. It would very hard to come up with a diet that stuck to the spirit of that description and was ultimately unhealthy long-term, as long it was truly balanced.
Also, sprouted grains share similar nutrient profiles with fully developed vegetables but contain more enzymes and are partially predigested by the germination and growth reactions. Most dietitians don't distinguish between cooked grains and sprouted raw or lightly steamed grains and tend to demonize all of them, probably because the dietitians grew up on cooked food and were never exposed to a variety of grain sprouts and assume everyone else cooks them also.
Often if anti-nutrition factors are found in a vegetable food, it's because it's not being prepared for consumption properly, as is the case with most soy in this country (which should be fermented). The answer is not animal foods, which I consider lazy and self-destructive on many levels, but rather assuming a more intimate and effective relationship with our food wherein we consume a wider variety of vegetable matter in a way that minimizes metabolic stress without drastically altering the chemical nature of our foods.
Thanks for the thorough response. I know my diet isn't where it should be, and your posts help keep me thinking about what I put in my body.
Np. Thanks for the questions. I'll post something about vegan "meats" soon, since it's not all that intuitive to go about replacing real meat and dairy in the diet without becoming protein deficient. Suddenly deciding to avoid all meat--or something equally drastic--without a game plan is likely to do more harm than good. Small steps work best for most people unless you pay a professional to put something balanced together for you. There are probably those kinds of services out your way if you wanted to start further ahead.
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