If you spend any amount of time on social media, specifically with regards to following health and fitness gurus, it cannot have escaped your attention that when it comes to nutrition and exercise, many things are labelled as being natural or unnatural. Typically when these terms are kicked around, they invariably mean good or bad respectively. The positive sounding word "natural" gives anything thus labelled a kind of "halo" and is automatically assumed to be a good thing, where as the negative connotations of the word "unnatural" mean that whenever we apply it to something, it sounds sinister and unwanted in our diets and exercise routines.
This has given rise to nutrition and exercise programs that are supposedly more in tune with the way we have evolved, such as the paleo diet and primal movement style workouts. On the face of it, this method of deciding what we should or shouldn't do seems reasonable enough. A blackberry picked in a wild forest in late summer is more natural and likely to be better for you than a blackberry flavoured ice cream. One may also argue that performing a squat is more natural and therefore superior in many ways than a leg extension machine in the gym. So far, so good, natural wins. However, this overly simplistic method has two major flaws. The first problem is with how we define what is natural and what is not. The second is the assumption that natural equals good, and unnatural, bad, regardless of context, which is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, ridiculous.
Flaw Number One: Defining Natural
To explain the problem with the first flaw, deciding what is natural and what isn't, you have to realise that until someone invents a time machine, we can't really be 100% certain what our ancestors were up to, and even if we did, it's unlikely that early humans were doing and eating the same things in Sub -Saharan Africa, as they would've been in Central or Northern Europe. As it is now, we can look across the globe and see huge variations in diet and lifestyles in indigenous populations, so natural becomes a hugely broad and nebulous term. So broad, in fact, as to render it fairly useless when informing our decision making process. It's also worth remembering that foods that we eat now, even organic fruits and veggies, simply wouldn't have been available even a few hundred years ago. Modern farming methods and selective breeding techniques have changed foods beyond all recognition, as have the ability to store and transport them. I doubt very much that even our great grandparents would have been able to recognise many of the things we see on the shelves in Waitrose these days.
That said, we would still say that unprocessed food is generally better than heavily processed food for providing nutrients, but it still begs the question, at what point does a natural food become unnatural? How much processing do you do before something becomes unnatural? This is one of the problems we face when it comes to food packaging and labeling. How many times have you seen what seems like a heavily processed food in a supermarket that tries to redeem itself by boasting that it has natural fruit flavours? Does that natural claim making it better somehow? Almost certainly not. While it may be wise to have a diet rich in minimally processed food to maximise both the nutritional value of the food and satiety that it provides, simply looking at things as natural or otherwise doesn't necessarily help.
The same problem holds true for exercise. We might agree that a full squat is a natural movement pattern, but if I then stick a factory made barbell on your back with a bunch of exquisitely machined plates, totaling twice your body weight, has that movement become unnatural? This debate is not as absurd as it may appear, my view is that it seems unlikely that a caveman would have engaged in a great deal of heavy lifting. Maybe the odd carcass drag or carry, possibly throwing things and a spot of building from time to time, but repeatedly squatting huge weights with predetermined rest periods to elicit quadricep hypertrophy? I doubt it, and that brings me neatly into the second problem...
Flaw Two: The Assumption That Natural Equals Good
So does the natural, or otherwise, status of a food or exercise make it good or bad? In the above squatting example, let's assume that overloading a squat is unnatural, does that make it bad? The answer is a pretty resounding and obvious no in most cases. Developing strength and hypertophy by using progressive overload is not just desirable, but absolutely necessary for many reasons, not just for improving our aesthetics, but our health also. Going back to the much maligned leg extension, an unnatural movement if ever there was one, there has been a study done in which subjects performed a routine of just leg extensions and hamstring curls. The participants were elderly subjects, and their ability to stand and sit repeatedly improved dramatically over the course of the 12 week programme, as did their balance, certainly not outcomes that we would expect from performing such unnatural movements as defined by many fitness professionals. It is possible that a different training protocol would have delivered more impressive results, but still, it goes to show that unnatural is not necessarily bad.
On the flip side, running must surely be considered one of the most natural things a human being can do. Daniel Lieberman, paleoanthropologist and professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University certainly believes so, and posits that many of our adaptations, standing upright, big, strong glutes, possession of a nuchal ligament and lack of body hair, were specifically advantageous for distance running. If running is so natural, is it therefore good? The answer is complex, as it can be beneficial, but for some, this natural activity can result in pain and injury. For the record, I run, and am not for one moment suggesting it's bad, I'm simply attempting to highlight the importance of context when judging an activity.
The same goes for food. Many people have a bug up their arse about the unnatural use of pesticides, but I would argue that that an imagined bug is preferable to a real, naturally occurring one. Again, we can thank many unnatural, man made products for keeping us free from perfectly natural yet unpleasant illnesses and parasites. Some people say that vaccines are unnatural and whilst that may be true, they are surely preferable to living in a world of polio and small pox.
There are a great many naturally occurring things in this world that are good for you, but there are also a great many that will cause you harm, which works exactly the same for unnatural things as well. I could list a whole bunch of unnatural things that can be beneficial, and others that cause harm, and do the same for naturally occurring plants and movements, and in the end we would see that the natural vs unnatural categorisation is pointless and fairly academic, with very little relevance to real world decision making.
The take home message is that each individual needs to be aware that the terms natural to always mean good, and unnatural, bad, are not correct. Things are rarely that simple, rather they are either appropriate or inappropriate, depending on context. As with many things in health and fitness, things are nuanced and there are many shades of grey. Sadly in an attempt to simplify things, many people propagate black and white "rules", resulting in unnecessary debates and arguments, as well as confusion. I sincerely hope that the tone of this blog does not come across as anti natural, or that I'm against any particular form of exercise, or against a diet that results in generally healthier eating habits, it's just that their are better ways to judge what to eat and how to exercise. So use the leg press and drink your protein shakes and ignore David Wolfe and you'll be just fine.