Modern Eating Is a Mess: A Frank "TED Talk" by Dr. Kim Drolet

(My honest take on digestion, bloating, and modern diet confusion)

Please silence your cell phones, your calorie or protein counting apps, your meat worries, and the voice in your head that keeps asking, “Should I stop drinking coffee?”

Let’s just stop with the madness!

We are living in the most food-confused era in human history. This is the first time where millions take synthetic vitamins while standing in front of refrigerators and cabinets with food from various seasons, climates, and historical epochs, saying words like “nothing sounds good” or “there’s nothing to eat,” all while holding a cell phone that might end up DoorDashing you ice cream in 10 minutes.

We Are Control Freaks and Information Processors

(…and it’s wrecking our digestion)

I can’t blame us. As a species we are creative, information-processing machines who excel at controlling our environments. We are so good at this that in the last 50,000 years we’re the only species (except for the dogs we bring) populating just about every piece of the globe and every climate and environment. We are truly incredible at analyzing, constructing, adapting, controlling, and surviving!

In modern times, there is a lot of information to digest (pun intended). It’s overwhelming. In this situation, it’s not surprising we are looking for some mythical “best diet.” And, in our Western duality, we often look for a “good/bad” dichotomy, when the real world is mostly shades of gray. We want the perfect diet. The perfect list. The perfect combination of foods at the perfect time in the perfect quantity. And we want it to align with research, our culture, our trauma, our microbiome, and our astrology chart. All our problems would be solved.

Meanwhile your digestion is like, “Girl, please. I just wanted a bowl of soup.”

Every week a new study drops:

• Coffee is good!

• Wait! Never mind! Coffee is bad!

• Meat is killing us!

• Except for the carnivore people who claim to be thriving and growing back their baby teeth.

• Gluten is the devil!

• Unless you’re in Europe, where apparently wheat is magical fairy dust that harms no one.

Honestly, how does anyone keep track?

🍲 We Have Overcomplicated Eating Into an Olympic Event

(and our digestive systems are exhausted)

Here’s my personal and professional opinion, based on decades of personally watching my own digestive system fight for its life, and for the last 15 years, helping people as a doctor of Chinese medicine specializing in digestive health, bloating, and gut function:

We have absolutely over-engineered the simple act of eating.

Your ancestors did not sit around a fire debating whether lentils were “inflammatory” or whether they should be intermittent fasting for autophagy. They ate what was available. They probably had days they ate better than others. Sometimes they likely ate too much. Sometimes they probably didn’t have much. It wasn’t perfect every day. They cooked it the way they knew how. They likely sat around a fire gossiping, complaining, joking, and living their lives.

And shockingly… it worked. Here we are, hundreds of thousands of years later. You don’t need to repeat the difficult times of our ancestors, but you can try to catch their vibe again.

Humans across history have been healthy on wildly different diets:

• Traditional Inuit, thriving on diet based on seal and whale and marine mammals

• Millions in India, lifelong healthy vegetarians for centuries

• Traditional Okinawans eating a "carb bomb" of mostly sweet potatoes and rice

• Mediterraneans bathing their food in olive oil and wine

• 
  

The point? There is no single perfect human diet.

🥦 The Only Two Universal Rules

(Backed by history and digestive sanity)

I’ve boiled it down to two simple truths that would make sense 500, 5,000, or 50,000 years ago:

1. Eat Real Food.

Food that will actually go bad if you leave it out.

2. Eat It Fresh.

Not transported-ultra-processed-lab-stabilized-chemically-enhanced nonsense.

Cook it.

Bless it.

Sit down.

Eat it.

Preferably with people you like (or at least tolerate).

3. The Exception to Fresh (because life is gray, and there's always exceptions to rules!)

Fermentation and natural preservation methods are wonderful ways that help food last longer. What we do now (chemical stabilization, industrial additives, synthetic preservatives) is NOT the same thing.

Aim for food preserved using drying, salting, fermenting, smoking, aging, and other time-tested techniques. Not chemicals you can’t pronounce and your body certainly doesn't process well.

🍖 Meat: The Most Politically Divisive Ingredient on Earth

Is meat good?

Is meat bad?

Is meat fine but only if it’s pasture-raised and listening to classical music?

The answer: Yes. It’s fine. No. Too much is bad. And also, it depends.

If you're laughing, me too! Our species has been eating meat for hundreds of thousands of years, so of course, it's fine! But we've gone a bit nuts about it lately and we don’t need the protein-loading, macro-tracking obsession of modern diet culture and the meat industry.

Meat is:

• cultural

• historical

• contextual

• and nutrient-dense (aka, it's "gooey"!)

You don't need meat necessarily, but if you’re eating cold salads every day, organic or not, it’s not going to cut it. If you eat meat, great. If you don’t eat meat, great. Either way, aim for foods that give you the “goo”. What is "goo"? I think of it as the richness, nutrient dense, with healthy fats and other qualities that nourish the body (in Chinese medicine: Jing, Blood, Yin, and Yang). Meat is a shortcut to those qualities, but it is not the only sources.

Meat should be used:

• strategically

• respectfully

• in moderation

• with traditional food wisdom

Not as a protein competition.

🌀 The Real Problem: Our Emotions and Minds

(The missing link in modern digestive health)

Here’s some spicy, uncomfortable truths I’ve learned: A huge percentage of modern digestive problems is not caused by food.

Many digestive issues begin (or are exacerbated) with emotions, trauma, stress, and chronic tension.

When the mind can’t process something, the body tries to push it downward into the gut. If the mind can’t digest emotional load, the stomach and intestines end up carrying that burden.

And then, we try to fix digestion by:

• tracking foods and food diary

• doing allergy tests

• cycling through diets

• worrying

• Googling symptoms

• cleansing

• over-controlling every bite

Which tightens the gut even more.

It’s the world’s worst feedback loop.

Your digestion is basically saying: “Girl, can I just have a bowl of soup?”

This is why:

• a calmer mind

• simpler meals

• gentler routines

• and sometimes therapy

…can improve digestion more than the 47th book on the microbiome.

Most people with digestive problems or even food triggers don’t have “allergies.” They have weak digestion that is temporarily unable to process certain foods. That’s a treatable pattern in Chinese medicine.

If you’ve “tried everything,” spent thousands on supplements, detoxes, or food allergy testing… this is likely you.

🥢 My Advice Is Simple (and life-changing)

Simplify.

Simplify again.

And Turn. Off. Your. Brain.

Eat like a human, not a laboratory experiment.

Eat like someone who could survive in any century and still feel good.

Use wisdom from cultures who’ve been doing this far longer than we have:

• community

• simple ingredients

• time-tested cooking methods

• moderation

• seasonal eating

• and even occasional, excessive, celebration meals

You don’t need a perfect diet.

You need a calm system.

You need real food.

And for the love of everything holy… stop Googling “is broccoli toxic” at 2 AM.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

I’ll be here all week, reminding you to drink warm water and chill the hell out.

Dr. Kim Drolet, DACM, LAc