Firstly, and most importantly, remember it’s your body, your life, your choice.

As with everything else in life to make a good choice you firstly need a sufficient level of knowledge and understanding to make an educated choice. Knowledge most certainly is power so go get some! Read books, blogs, papers, listen to podcasts, audio books, etc. You will find that the more you learn the more there is to learn, and once started, your journey will never end and will take many paths and changes of direction.

Now the more knowledge you gain the more conflicting concepts and ideas you will be exposed to. You will find yourself having to assess and critique to sort the wheat from the chaff and decide what is worth investing your precious time and money into. This is not always easy but it is definitely important.

I’ve put my engineering hat on and tried to systemise the methodology I use when assessing a new food, exercise, lifestyle choice, etc. To keep things simple I have used the word Thingamabob to describe any new food, exercise, lifestyle choice, etc that you are evaluating.

It’s a 5-stage process and described briefly in the following high quality flowchart. Lengthier descriptions of each follow. In reality this systemisation is an oversimplification and you’ll need to adapt it to suit a particular problem. Hopefully it is a useful framework though to encourage you to make informed decisions about what you do with and put in your body.

Check the currentscience/medical advice. Here you need to do your research and look for any positive or negative results. If there is convincing evidence pointing to negative effects then this Thingamabob should be carefully considered and the Thingamabob may need to be thrown in the bin. If the current science suggests there are benefits outweighing any potential negatives then go to the next stage. If the current science is inconclusive or non-existent then I would also suggest proceeding to the next stage, don’t worry there are other filters coming up to help remove the rubbish!

This is my favourite filter and I would argue the most effective, this will definitely stop any rubbish sneaking through. What I do here is look at the idea from an evolutionary perspective. Assuming that our genes have evolved based on lifestyle and dietary models that have been practised for 200,000 years and in order to be all we can be and get the most out of our genetic code we should honour this heritage, does this new idea fit this model. Have ‘we’ as a species always done this, eaten this, etc in some form, and is this Thingamabob likely to result in a positive expression of my genetic code based on the above. If the answer is no then bin it, if not, proceed.

This will depend on personal preferences and circumstances as everyone will be in a different position, with different priorities. This is where you weigh up the potential benefits based on everything you currently know against the expected costs (could be time or money) and decide whether it’s worth the initial investment, if the answers no then out it goes, if it’s a yes then please continue.

If your Thingamabob has passed through all of the filters then it’s probably worth trying. With anything new I recommend you give it an initial trial and be as scientific as possible in order to help decide whether this new Thingamabob has rocked your world or not. Try to start from a baseline, decide on some metrics you can record and then give the Thingamabob a go for a period of time. The required period of time will vary and you may be able to get some guidance from your earlier background research. As a general rule of thumb 30 days is a good time period to start to see some differences form diet/lifestyle choices. So you give it a go and see what it does. If you experience any negative side effects then you may need to call it a day and send the Thingamabob to the bin and this is a result in itself. If you complete your initial test then it’s time to try and assess your results and decide whether to incorporate this Thingamabob into your life. You can revisit the cost benefit balance now that you have first hand experience and a new piece of n=1 scientific research to consider.

If the Thingamabob has passed through your filters and your initial test then it’s probably worth adopting it into your lifestyle. I say probably because everything is a choice and sometimes you may just feel that even with everything you now know and the actual benefits experienced you just can’t be bothered, and that’s ok, so long as you’ve made that conscious choice. You’ll want to decide how you are going to adopt this Thingamabob, is this going to form part of your daily routine, is it once a week/year/month Thingamabob, or just something for a rainy day. Again you can make this decision based on everything you now know, and you can change your decision whenever/wherever.

That’s it! I’ve tried to keep the described system as generic as possible so you can apply it to whatever Thingamabob you may wish to consider, but in order to demonstrate the system in action and maybe describe my ramblings a bit more specifically I’ll run through an example below, I’ll use the example of a nice cup of Bone broth.

So you were at your friend Dave’s house recently and he offered you a cup of his latest favourite drink, bone broth. After you’d recovered from the initial shock of being offered boiled up animal remains you politely declined and the conversation moved on. Later during a period of reflection you started to wonder whether ‘crazy’ Dave had found a magic bullet (or was in-fact crazy).

Stage 1 Check the Science – You get online and do some searching. You soon discover that bones contain an abundance of minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, zinc, and amino acids such as collagen, gelatine, glycosaminoglycans, glycine, proline, glutamine. You also find research that suggests there may be benefits such as improved skin elasticity, bone and joint health, gut health and brain health. Sounds good, in fact the more you research the more you discover but you’ve got enough to satisfy your curiosity for now, what’s more you haven’t uncovered any negative effects other than the same risks associated with poorly raised meat and you’ve already cleaned up your supply.

Stage 2 – So there seems to be a bit of science suggesting potential benefits, and certainly no published negative effects to be concerned about so time to apply the evolutionary lens. Does this fit in with our traditional lifestyle/dietary model as per the last 200,000 years or so. Upon consideration it seems perfectly believable that ancient man would have wanted to extract all nutrients from the animal we know he would have been eating, and boiling the bones is a simple effective method of doing this so yeah this sounds like a fit. A bit of additional research quickly highlights the fact that it is widely accepted that bone broth has been an integral part of many if not all traditional societies and cultures so yes you’ve looked at this idea through an evolutionary lens and it holds up, on with the process..

Stage 3 – Time for a quick cost/benefit analysis. So you have an idea from stage 1 that there are a number of potential benefits and the nutrients in the broth should provide your body with some of the building blocks it requires. You price up the cost of some bones form the local butcher and the means to boil them in water for a day or two and it looks like the cost is pretty low. So low cost with benefits that appeal, sounds good so lets continue.

Stage 4 – You’ve given this some careful consideration and decided there’s no good reason not to give this a shot so it’s time to put your body on the line. You call in at your local butchers and ask for a few offcut bones, you’re in luck, he’s just butchered a cow so gives you a bag for free. Back home with your kill and you check online for a good recipe. Before you know the kitchen is filled with the smell of boiling bones (I’m not going to lie this isn’t for everyone!). Two days later your broth is ready for tasting. You pour yourself a small amount and SLURP it all down. You may at this point decide that this is the most disgusting thing you have ever tasted and there is NO WAY you will ever be letting that cross your lips again! I that’s the case then that’s your result, you’ve tried but its not something you can adopt. Lets assume for the purposes of this example that you find it surprisingly tasty and fulfilling (which I assure you that you may) so you decide to incorporate it for a month. During the next month you have a mug of boney goodness each day and make a note of how you feel before, after, any changes to your body and bodily functions you may notice during the month, etc.