The Face of Healthy Eating

Being three weeks and three days into 2012, I am curious as to how many are still holding onto their New Year's resolutions.  People make numerous resolutions, but one of the most common seems to be making changes towards a healthier lifestyle, either through exercise, diet, or both.  January tends to be an extremely busy month for any gym and I'm sure there are more "healthy" foods are in homes this month more than any other.  Having not blogged in several months, I figured now would be a good time to post some thoughts about healthy foods in hopes to help individuals understand what healthy food looks like.

I often get the question, "Is (insert random food here) good for me?"  If only I had a dollar for every time I got asked that.  This post is an attempt to hopefully clear up some of those questions about the "health status" of foods.

Perhaps the easiest way to determine the health of food is to not think if the food is healthy or if it isn't, but rather to determine how healthy the food is.  Look at the health of foods on a spectrum and not just a "healthy food/ not healthy food".  With so many food choices, it's not all black and white.  It's actually closer to a scale of gray.  When looking at food like this, we can determine how healthy we actually want to be and which foods will fit this lifestyle.

On the healthiest end of the spectrum, I would take Michael Pollan's advice and say to "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much".  It really is that simple.  We often try to make eating healthy much more complicated than it really is.  If you want to be the healthiest you can be, take this advice, apply it, and know that you are making the best choices possible for yourself in terms of healthy eating.  By eating this way, not certainly, but it's probable that you'll stay clear of numerous health problems, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.  I guarantee you won't have a problem with obesity either.  Since health is often defined as the absence of disease, I would consider this the healthiest way to eat.  As Americans, where we run into problems with this is it's not always convenient.  As a society that's constantly on the run, it's hard to follow this lifestyle because it takes time to actually cook and prepare the foods and most people just don't eat at home anymore.  Now I don't suspect everyone will go clear their pantries and only go buy plants every few days and eat them, so I will try to help give some realistic suggestions on how to eat healthier.

Here are some thoughts to help you make the best possible decisions when it comes to eating:

1) Eat food.  Like I mentioned above, if you have to ask if a food is healthy, know that it's probably not the best choice.  Nobody ever asks if broccoli is healthy and no one ever asks if squash is healthy.  However, people sometimes ask if peanut butter is healthy.  Do I consider peanut butter unhealthy? No, but when comparing it to broccoli or squash, it may not be the healthiest choice.  The more natural the food is (or less processed), the better.  The healthiest foods typically won't have food labels on them.  If a food does have a label, take a look at the ingredients.  If those ingredients include a long list of unpronounceable words that sound like something that should be in your shampoo, then it's probably not healthy.  Typically, the more unpronounceable ingredients in a food, the more processed/ less natural it is. 

2) Eat vegetables.  Vegetables = plants.  We already know this is the healthiest way to eat.  The more vegetables/ less other food we can eat, the healthier we'll be.
3) Consume REAL meat.  If you've read my post about 30 days as vegetarian, you'll understand what I mean about eating real meat.  Most meat we find today in our grocery stores and supermarkets are from animals that were all filled with hormones and steroids, antibiotics, and corn, which is all unnatural to animals.  Watch Food Inc. if you want to learn more about this.  By eating real meat, what I mean is to find local meat that is preferably grass-fed and raised naturally.  This insures you're getting the best quality.  There are much greater nutrients in these animals because they graze on green grass all day instead of corn.  If we want to do our best to eat healthy, then we need to make sure the animals we are eating are healthy.

4) Avoid health claims.  If a food has to put health claims in large writing on the front of a box to prove how healthy it is, it's probably not the healthiest choice.  Also, low-fat doesn't always mean healthier option.  Often times, these can be less healthy because when the fat is taken out, it is processed with more sugar or sodium to help the flavor.

5) Eat to live.  Don't live to eat.  Understanding this is the most important part of eating healthy.  Food (especially carbs) is a fuel to give us energy.  Therefore, if all we typically do is sit at a desk all day and then come home to sit on the couch and watch our favorite tv shows, we probably don't need too much energy and should eat less (again...especially carbs).  If we are extremely active, this gives us the luxury of eating more to fuel our body.

These are just a few simple ideas to hopefully help put healthy foods into perspective.

So next time you're standing in the isle of a store debating how healthy a food is, be honest with yourself and compare it to plants or vegetables.  This could help you make smarter decisions about how you fuel your body.