Real Food Versus Pills

Is keeping it real always the best way to eat? It depends on your goals… and your life. MF investigates the benefits of using a bit of artificial intelligence in your diet. 

- Joel Snape

“Eatfood. Nottoo much. Mostly plants.” This advice from food writer Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, is short, memorable and – on the face of it – pretty sensible. Twinned with a couple of his other dietary commandments – “Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognise” and “Don’t eat anything you can’t spell” – it’s become the go-to advice for anyone who wants to keep eating healthy and easy. But is it really that simple?

For one thing, there’s compelling evidence that “real” food isn’t as real as it once was, its nutritional value leached out by selective breeding, factory farming and over-processing. For another, pills and powders have never been more advanced, and the best ones harness decades of scientific research into best-practice nutrition to help you top up on nutrients that are nearly impossible to get elsewhere.

And as a man interested in fitness, your needs are likely to be a bit different from those of the more, shall we say, couch-loving gentleman. So based on the evidence, do you need supplements in your life? Can they ever be better than the real thing? Andmight the day come when you can live on them exclusively?

Round1 TheProblem WithFood

Basics first: if you’re going to exist entirely on “real” food, it’s still worth paying attention to where it comes from. Studies comparing wild plants with their shop-bought counterparts, for instance, make worrying reading. One species of wild apple has 100 times more phytonutrients than the Golden Delicious in your basket, and wild dandelions and potatoes have similar advantages over their selectively-bred supermarket brethren.