Nutrition Science
Expert: "Eat Like a Pig!"
An American pig researcher reveals why pigs understand their nutrition better than humans—and what that means for our understanding of healthy eating.
Nutrition Science
An American pig researcher reveals why pigs understand their nutrition better than humans—and what that means for our understanding of healthy eating.
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We often can't see the forest for the trees. This is especially true for nutrition scientists and people who want to apply those insights to daily life—people like you and us.
It's easy to get lost quickly. To understand this, you just need to visit your local bookstore's nutrition/health section. Five books, five different approaches.
This is the joke of our time: we know everything and nothing simultaneously. But is that really true?
Aside from the fact that we're all different and each person seems to have their own path, the question remains: isn't there some kind of bottom line—a distillate that unites even the most contradictory works in their conclusions?
That's where an American pig researcher enters the picture. He and a colleague recently published a paper titled "Eating Like a Pig to Combat Obesity." We find that amusing.
Here's where it gets interesting: because he approaches the topic from a completely different angle. In his everyday research, he doesn't work with people, but with pigs. They need to be properly "adjusted" with respect to their bodies.
Pigs are not only good research subjects, but they also resemble us humans physiologically for a specific reason: they—like us—are omnivores. The subtle difference: they don't make excuses. They roam 24/7 in the "research lab" that is the barn.
And so the pig researcher tells us about the apple in this paper. It sounds like this "nutrition scientist for pigs" with a slightly sarcastic undertone:
"Apples prove to be a reasonable source of vitamin C: one would have to eat 1375 g of apples per day to meet the vitamin C requirement."
He simply sat down, thought about it, and calculated whether an apple could make a valuable contribution to micronutrient intake. Then he adds promptly: only if you simultaneously accept 144 g of sugar (from the apple), which might not be so healthy after all.
The man has a point: we still read everywhere that fruit is a good source of vitamins and minerals. Not at all! You only have to compare an apple with 80 to 100 g of liver to understand this. Admittedly, this doesn't make the apple "not unhealthy," but it keeps us honest.
After a lengthy essay about glycemic load, (epi-)genetics, fructose, and many other topics leading up to the "healthy apple," the researcher reaches a conclusion—a distillate that surely interests us very much:
"Pigs seem to understand their own physiological limits much better than humans."
That's because although a pig has never read or heard a single piece of nutrition advice, never read a biochemistry textbook, and knows nothing about nutrition science, the pig manages to regulate itself so well that it rarely becomes ill from diet—overweight, for example. Even on a poor diet.
He concludes: "In humans, it seems we've lost these abilities." Well, who needs body awareness and a feel for yourself anyway? How old-fashioned.
What we lack is not another nutrition book. It's something else. A return to our innate understanding of our own bodies—something the pig demonstrates so masterfully.
