The ONE thing.
Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit.
What’s the simplest, easiest ONE thing that you can do to have good health? Forget all the diets, forget the food pyramids, plates and intake guidelines, forget what your doctor or nutritionist is saying, and think about it with some common sense. Here’s the answer: have your diet be mostly comprised of WHOLE foods (plants and animals). That is, foods that mother nature packaged for us, not the food manufacturers. You need only follow your instinctual cravings for WHOLE foods and you will have good health. That’s all. You don’t have to read or follow anyone else about the subject of nutrition, and you can stop reading the rest of this too.
You are made of what you eat.
Literally. Obviously. Yet nowadays unfortunately, that point needs constant reminding. Your body’s biology has this miraculous mind-blowing intelligence to break down the food you consume into building blocks used for the continual construction and renewal of your miraculous being (24/7/365). Craziest part is, this constant automatic metabolic process happening requires no conscious effort on our parts. What does require conscious effort is deciding what to feed this incredibly complex living machine that runs on an ancient near-perfect code of program: our DNA. WHOLE foods mostly go in alignment with our DNA (there is some nuance with dairy and grains, topic for another time) while modern processed foods mostly go against it. That is, WHOLE foods allow us to thrive, which allows our DNA to run unhindered and efficiently, while processed foods cause all kinds of chronic inflammation and metabolic stress through toxins and compounds never naturally occurring in nature (like trans fats in vegetable oils and margarine) that cause bugs to occur more frequently in our DNA code. Bugs more often = cancer cells more often (1,2). No bueno.
What do WHOLE foods consists of?
It’s a wide variety including fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, wholegrains, seafood, animal products like meat and dairy. There are obviously more foods that can belong in this category (kefir, kombucha, spirulina, honey, etc.) but you have the common sense for identifying that. If you shun everything else outside this category, your health will not suffer and you will thrive. Of course, the occasional treat will happen and you should then savour it wholly. Your cravings for certain WHOLE foods is your beacon for what your body needs at the time, depending on what you are going through (e.g. adolescence, pregnancy, athlete). Most health problems arise when people are not having enough WHOLE foods, and are having too much processed foods. Simple right?
A Comparison
Our primal hunter-gatherer human ancestors, 50,000 years ago, were not inundated with options for what would fill their bellies. Their option was the environment. And the environment would train them to source for WHOLE foods that contained the perfect bundle of nutrients to promote their overall wellbeing. They would perish otherwise, so they ate everything around. They hunted any game they could find, foraged for any berries, plants, critters, and root tubers, and maintained superb physical health (3). Until they got mauled by a bear or died from broken leg or an infected wound. They lived well and then dropped dead. Typical order of the natural world.
The modern man on the other hand is completely inundated with options for what he can put in his belly. Going into supermarkets nowadays becomes a hardened mental trial of picking between poisons and antidotes. Instead of picking standard fare from Nature, the modern man opts for the shiny tags on food packages - added 16g protein, or extra calcium and vitamins! He has lost his instinctual senses and developed a perverted taste for chemical concoctions that appeal very highly to the reward centres in his brain (mmm coca-cola~). These foods appeal to the senses and provide a quick dose of energy, but often have no nutritional value in building and maintaining the body. Although the natural selective forces (like the ability to gather food) are long past us, we ignorantly subject ourselves to an insidious slow death of a thousand cuts (or pills).
Is it any wonder that the modern man is now almost certainly doomed to perish to one of these four (heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, stroke)?
The Definition of Heath
An important question we should all be concerned with: What is health?
Here’s a good definition of health (4) from WHO:
"Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
Notice I italicized the words complete and absence. In the modern era, how many of us can attest our lives to this definition and live by example? Look at the people around you and the habits they have. How many of them are worthy of the definition of health?
Summary
The ONE most important thing for your health is to eat mostly whole foods. Shun processed foods (anything with more than 3-4 ingredients should raise your eyebrows).
“Eat well - only the best fuels go into a Formula One car.”
— Jerry Moffat, top British climber in the 80s
Are you a Formula One car or are you becoming a rusty neglected Pinto?
References
Singh N, Baby D, Rajguru JP, Patil PB, Thakkannavar SS, Pujari VB. Inflammation and cancer. Ann Afr Med. 2019;18(3):121-126. doi:10.4103/aam.aam_56_18
Tristan Asensi M, Napoletano A, Sofi F, Dinu M. Low-grade inflammation and ultra-processed foods consumption: a review. Nutrients. 2023;15(6):1546. doi:10.3390/nu15061546
Pontzer H, Wood BM, Raichlen DA. Hunter-gatherers as models in public health. Obes Rev. 2018;19 Suppl 1:24-35. doi:10.1111/obr.12785
Health and well-being. Accessed April 22, 2026. https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/major-themes/health-and-well-being
