How to “eat for health”: Back to basics
Food rules are everywhere: these foods are ‘good’, these ones are ‘bad’, eat this but not this, combine A with B but not with C. Does anyone else’s brain hurt? Or is it just me? How about we stop getting lost in the weeds and just go back to some universal basics on how to “eat for health” instead!
How about we stop getting lost in the weeds and just go back to some universal basics on how to “eat for health” instead!
A pretty undeniable fact is that, in terms of the ‘standard diet’, we have all become overly reliant on certain ingredients: namely wheat, meat and other animal by-products, sugar and salt. And what’s worse, we have become used to consuming them in often heavily-processed forms. Eating ‘out of a packet’ in one form or another has become the dangerous norm, and much of the time, even when we think we are making a healthy choice, we’re really not. For instance, many cereals with wholegrain and heart-healthy claims conveniently make no mention of the obscene amounts of added sugar in the mix. In an ideal world, our ingredients should not have ingredients! Meaning that, if you’re going to have cereal, the only ingredient should be the cereal grain itself, no preservatives, no sugar, no added flavours or colours.
Eating ‘out of a packet’ in one form or another has become the dangerous norm, and much of the time, even when we think we are making a healthy choice, we’re really not.
As Kris Karr has said “If it’s made in a lab, it takes a lab to digest” (“Hungry for Change” – www.FMTV.com). This also applies to ‘free from’ foods. Say you decide to remove gluten from your diet. You go to the supermarket, head for the health food section, and proceed to choose a variety of gluten-free products from the shelves: a gluten-free bread, some gluten-free cookies, a gluten-free wholegrain cereal, and a gluten-free frozen ready meal. You’re not having any gluten, so you’re making healthy choices, right? Not necessarily - check the ingredient labels. You will undoubtedly see some form of sugar, a variety of gums, stabilisers and preservatives, alongside the use of naturally gluten-free flours such as rice and corn.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not berating ‘free from’ food manufacturers and their products – many ready-made products are good quality and so very helpful, especially when first starting out, or when you want to take a shortcut or are trying to suppress a craving without falling completely off the wagon!
[Pre-packaged products] contain other ingredients that are at best low or devoid of nutrients, or at worst, actively pro-inflammatory and irritating to the gut.
But when such products become staples in our diet (thus replacing real, from-scratch meals), then it becomes a problem. While they may be gluten-free (carrying on the above example), they contain other ingredients that are at best low or devoid of nutrients, or at worst, actively pro-inflammatory and irritating to the gut. If you instead mix your own gluten-free flours, you can create much better, more healthful versions of these products, and avoid the extra stabilisers, gums or preservatives that pre-prepared foods tend to have.
As for meat and animal by-products: I am not vegan, or even vegetarian, and animal foods have played an important role in helping me eat for my own health, however, that doesn’t mean I don’t aim to eat more plant-based foods than animal foods! Indeed, as a global society, our consumption of animal foods is so much higher than it used to be, with many people having some kind of animal food multiple times throughout the day: milk at breakfast, burger at lunch, cheese sandwich at dinner etc.
[Plant-based eating] doesn’t mean giving up non-plant options, just increasing plant-based ones.
It’s for this reason that I think many of us would agree that at the very least, we can all make an effort to eat more plant-based foods. This doesn’t mean giving up non-plant options, just increasing plant-based ones, for a better balance and a wider nutrient profile. From a psychological standpoint, it helps to focus on what you are adding to your diet, rather than what you are eliminating/avoiding. If you are new to this, you may well be amazed at the number and variety of ingredients, in addition to those which you have been used to buying and using.
Also, the inclusion of a wider variety of ingredients, not only offers us a wider variety of nutrients, but helps combat that other fairly recent phenomenon that seems to be becoming increasingly prevalent: food intolerances and allergies. When we eat the same 6 or 7 main ingredients on repeat, we increase the likelihood of becoming intolerant to one or more of them, which in turn triggers our immune response and can in certain individuals become a key part of a devastating cascade of events within the body, resulting in autoimmune disease.
MICHAEL POLLAN’S RULES FOR EATING
Michael Pollan has famously said: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”. He takes this even further in his book Food Rules, where he enumerates some basic yet essential ways to ensure you are eating as well as you can, including:
Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognise as food.
She may not have specifically recognised things like quinoa or açaí, but would still be able to identify them as real foods!
Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
The specific number of ingredients you aim for is arbitrary, but the more ingredients in a packaged food, the more processed it is.
This rule of course does not apply to a long list of ‘real’ ingredients in a recipe!
Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions - honey - but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food".
In a nutshell…
Eat REAL food, the kind without massive ingredient lists.
Stay away from processed foods or food that comes in a packet - ‘process’ foods yourself in your own kitchen instead, cooking from scratch as much as possible. Meal planning can be super helpful for maintaining this in the long-term. Get started with this free Meal Planning Bundle!
Increase your consumption of plants and plant-based foods.
“Eat for health” by including a wide variety of ingredients, colours, and thus nutrients.
It doesn’t need to be complicated, start simple and go from there.
Don’t forget:
Digestion starts before you even open your mouth! Making your meals visually appealing, and taking a moment to consider and appreciate the meal before you, kicks off the mental portion of the digestive process (the cephalic phase) – a step that often gets overlooked.
And remember to chew well – you can’t absorb all the goodness of your carefully-considered meal if you don’t break it down properly at this first mechanical stage of digestion!
Enjoy!