Is Nutrition a Martial Art?

You can defend yourself from a mugger, but can you defend yourself from...   cake?

This thought first occurred to me a few weeks ago while working on the Taijiquan vs. Krav Maga article a while back.  I had never really thought about it before but, here in America at least, you are significantly more likely to be killed by disease rather than by an assailant.  That got me to wondering, if a martial art is something meant to protect us, could proper nutrition be considered a martial art?

Now, I'm sure there are scoffs and guffaws and such from some of my readers out there, but bear with me.  Let's examine the definition of a martial art.  Now, the Random House Dictionary defines it as "any of the traditional forms of Oriental self-defense or combat that utilize physical skill and coordination without weapons, as karate, aikido, judo, or kung fu, often practiced as sport."  I find this definition lacking, as it leaves out western martial arts (Boxing, Savate, Fencing etc.), non-traditional arts (Krav Maga, Jeet Kune Do, CAMBO etc.), weapon oriented martial arts (Kali/Escrima etc.) and, arguably, arts which have de-emphasized the combat aspect like Taijiquan.  So what would a better definition be then?

The Unofficial Martial U Definition of "Martial Art"

I say unofficial primarily because, being human and all, I may miss something here or inadvertently exclude an art.  For argument's sake though, here's our working definition.

Martial Art - A reasonably unified system of armed and/or unarmed principles of self-defense and/or combat for the purposes of protecting oneself and others, eliminating enemy combatants, developing oneself physically, mentally and/or spiritually or participating in sporting events or demonstrations.

Again, I'm sure I've accidentally left something out, but that's a much better definition, in my opinion, than the restricted one given by Random House.  So let's look at it in terms of nutrition.  Right off the bat, I'm not sure if you could necessarily consider principles of nutrition to be 'unified.'  Everyone seems to have their own opinions of what is most healthy, or the best nutritionally speaking (ourselves included) so it may be hard to consider nutrition as unified.  That being said, you could also look at various diets and theories as to what's best nutritionally as different 'schools.'  Problem solved.

What about the rest of the definition?  Well, you could hardly consider nutrition as an armed system for eliminating enemy combatants (unless they have food allergies or you take the time to sharpen a bunch of carrots), and nutrition as a system for the purposes of participating in sporting events or demonstrations is shaky as well (eating contests may count).  However, for the parts of the definition that don't quite fit nutrition, there are a few that more than make up for it.

The first key part to look at is the "developing oneself physically, mentally, and/or spiritually" section.  While food may be a religious experience for some, we're going to disregard the spiritually part for a moment here.  How does food affect us physically and mentally?  I almost feel like I shouldn't even have to answer that.  Your body composition, as well as how healthy you are, is about 80% diet and 20% exercise.  What you eat determines the levels of almost every element in your body, including very important things like Insulin, Testosterone and other hormones.  What you eat directly affects your metabolism, it affects how well your brain functions, it affects how well you sleep, it affects how well you concentrate, what your body consumes for energy, how quickly you recover from a workout or an injury, your weight, your eyesight, inflammation, cancer, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes...   everything. What you do, or don't, put in your body has an enormous impact on everything relating to your physical and mental well-being.

Therefore nutrition is, in many ways, the most effective way to develop yourself physically and mentally.  "Alright," you might say, "but you've forgotten something, no matter the application; be it sport, combat or self-improvement, it specifies it as still being a form of self-defense.  How is nutrition self-defense?"  To answer this, I'm going to pose my own question...

What's Really Going to Kill You?

You may have run across it in the article that inspired this one, but let's take a look again at the mortality data for the United States from the Center for Disease Control:

1. Heart Disease 26%
2. Malignant Neoplasms (Cancer) 23.1%
3. Cerebrovascular Disease 5.7%
4. Chronic Low Respiratory Disease  5.1%
5. Unintentional Injury  5.0%
6. Diabetes Mellitus  3.0%
7. Alzheimer's Disease  3.0%
8. Influenza & Pneumonia  2.3%
9. Nephritis  1.9%
10. Septicemia  1.4%
11. Suicide  1.4%
12. Liver Disease  1.1%
13. Hypertension  1.0%
14. Parkinson's Disease  0.8%
15. Homicide  0.8%
16. Pneumonitis  0.7%
17. and so on....

The highest one on the list that can not be helped by proper nutrition is number 5, Unintentional Injury.  On the entire list, there are only three (Homicide, Suicide and Unintentional Injury) that aren't able to be prevented, or at least hindered, by proper nutrition.  It can even be argued that Suicide can be at least partially mitigated through proper nutrition due to things like the direct link between depression and obesity, and the severe hormonal imbalances that can be cause by eating the wrong things.

So, assuming you succumb to one of these top 16 causes of death (which you probably will) if we compare the percentage of people who die from something that can be mitigated or prevented through nutrition (77.1%) with entirely physical non-nutrition related causes of death (5.8%) and leave out Suicide entirely since it can be argued for both categories, we find that your odds of dying from something that could have been helped by eating better are 13.29 times higher than dying of something that could not have been prevented through nutrition.

That means that you get significantly more return safety-wise for your time invested by eating properly than all the hours spent training in a martial art.  So, arguably, if you have a friend who couldn't defend his way out of a paper bag but who eats properly, and you are a highly skilled martial artist whose idea of a good snack is a couple of Twinkies or something from McDonald's, than your friend is actually doing a better job of defending himself than you are.

The problem, in my opinion, is that as a society we've come to trust our food sources too much.  Now, I don't mean to sound like a hippie or a conspiracy theorist, but do you know what goes into all the stuff we eat?  Do you realize all the chemicals in things like prepackaged foods, gummy bears, microwaveable sandwiches and all the other processed stuff most people eat?  Do you realize the kind of stuff that gets sprayed onto the vegetables you eat, or injected into the animals you consume.  For that matter, do you know what they feed those animals?  Did you know on many occasions farming companies strike deals with other food companies to get things like defective gummy bears en masse, which they then force feed to the cattle to finish them off?

All of this garbage (which I consider poison, honestly) being fed to you is stamped with a smiley face and presented to you with promises that it's perfectly safe.  I think this sort of lulls people into a false sense of security.  I mean, which seems scarier - a guy with a knife in a dark alley, or that big leftover hunk of cake sitting in the refridgerator?  Everyone's going to say the guy with the knife, because he represents an immediate threat.  If you go look at our list of causes of death though, you'll find that statistically speaking the cake is far more deadly, and you are in far more immediate danger from it than coming across some seedy stranger.  It is no exaggeration to say that if you eat garbage than what you eat is killing you.  You should be more scared of having Twinkies in your house than firearms, since the Twinkies will kill you first.

That is why, in my opinion at least, Nutrition certainly qualifies as a martial art (or at the very least a form of self-defense).  I would even go so far as to say, statistically speaking, it's the most effective system of self-defense.

So What Do I Do About It?

Learn.  Like I've said before; everyone, including us, has their opinions on what is most healthy nutritionally speaking.  While we certainly think we have it right, like with martial arts I encourage you to go out and try as many different things and develop your own opinions about what sounds correct, what actually works for you, and what you want to do.  Try and remember next time someone offers you a big hunk of cake, or you walk by the pints of ice cream in the store, by not eating garbage you're not restricting yourself - you're defending yourself.

Do you think Nutrition could be considered a form of self-defense?  What is your definition of martial art?  Do you keep an eye on what you put into your body?  Let us know in the comments.

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