Macon Magazine

February/March 2025| maconmagazine.com 103 I f you're a millennial like I am or you're from a generation prior, you likely remember the USDA food pyramid. The pyramid was divided into six sections based on different groupings of foods, with the top group labeled as the foods the USDA recommended that we eat 'sparingly' – fats, oils, and sweets – and the bottommost group labeled as the foods we should eat the most of – bread, cereal, rice, and pasta. I could say a lot about both of those, but perhaps that will be a future article. Anyhow, I recently came across the testimonial of a person that made me change my perspective on two of those food groups: vegetables and fruits. The food pyramid recommended that we consume 3-5 daily servings of vegetables and 2-4 daily servings of fruits (Note: One serving is equivalent to a half cup of cooked vegetables). However, this individual consumed more – much more – than those recommended amounts of plant foods, and believes that it transformed her health and helped her experience significant recovery from illness. Her name is Terry Wahls, and she's a physician and a professor. In brief, Dr. Wahls was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system and is associated with debilitating issues such as numbness and tingling, vision problems, trouble walking, and more. Within three years of being diagnosed, she was significantly impaired and confined to a wheelchair. At that point, she began to make a series of healthy lifestyle changes to see if they would make a difference, along with the conventional medical treatment she had been receiving. Among those lifestyle changes she made was consuming nine – yes, NINE – cups of vegetables a day, largely consisting of leafy greens, but also including other colorful vegetables and mushrooms. To her surprise and delight, she began to see her condition improve significantly, to the point that not only was she eventually able to ditch her wheelchair, but also, she began biking to work every day. Let's talk a bit about those nine cups of vegetables. If one serving of vegetables is equivalent to a half of a cup of cooked vegetables, then that means that Dr. Wahls was eating as many as 18 servings of vegetables every single day! That's a huge difference from the 3-5 servings that the USDA used to recommend. Outlandish? Perhaps, so. But the fact that Dr. Wahls was able to experience such a benefit from ramping up her vegetable consumption, to me, makes it worth considering how we approach eating vegetables. The vegetable food group is arguably the most nutrient dense of all food groups. From cabbage, to sweet potatoes, to onions, broccoli, and more, vegetables come in all kinds of shapes, textures, and colors, and they provide tons of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients that keep our bodies healthy and help us avoid disease. Vegetables are also very low in calories, especially the non- starchy ones, which means that you can consume a lot of them without being concerned about gaining unwanted weight. Compared to grains, vegetables are significantly higher in nutrients and lower in carbohydrates, which, to me, makes a decent case for us to consume more vegetables than grains, in contrast to the food pyramid. So would it make sense to consume way more vegetables than the food pyramid recommends? I think so. It's worth noting that the USDA food pyramid was adapted from a Swedish food pyramid developed by their National Board of Health and Welfare. The pyramid was created during a period in the 1970s when food prices were particularly high, to promote a healthy diet that was reasonably priced. That said, I can imagine that, while the way of eating suggested by our food pyramid was of reasonable health quality, it wasn't necessarily designed for optimizing health, or, in other words, for maximizing health. These days, I am all about health optimization. I don't just want the bare minimum of things I need to sustain my life and health; I want to be in the absolute best health possible. Therefore, in addition to various other health practices that I follow such as strength training, interval training, and deep breathing, I also aim to consume 8-12 servings of vegetables each day. While I emphasize the leafy greens such as lettuce and cabbage, I also make sure that I include the various other colors of vegetables such as carrots, onions, and sweet potatoes on a regular basis. The cool thing about it is, I actually have found over time that I desire vegetables more, especially after I have allowed myself a period of indulgence. Are you ready to reconsider your approach to vegetables? We've all heard "eat your vegetables" growing up, but examples like Wahls are enough to stimulate some deep thinking about what it means to eat enough vegetables. While consuming vegetables was surely not the only thing that contributed to her recovery from MS, her overall radical approach to optimizing her health is enough to make me evaluate my approach to my own health. I hope you'll be working on getting those vegetables in this year! "The vegetable food group is arguably the most nutrient dense of all food groups. " Shawn McClendon is an ACE-certified personal trainer and owner of Back to Basics Health and Wholeness LLC, an organization dedicated to empowering people to take control of their health and avoid lifestyle disease. He runs a YouTube health and fitness channel, writes on health and fitness topics at shawnmcclendon.com, speaks on health and fitness, and has authored several health/fitness books.

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