I was washing dishes today when it hit me that I have no plans to ever eat Top Ramen again.
I could have gotten sad about this; I suppose it's a sad thought, but I decided to try to see the bright side. I thought about all the times I got overwhelmed as a child because my little brain was overloaded with all the things there are to think about. I'd just sit and stress: "There isn't even enough time to think about everything, much less do everything!" How I've repeatedly had to fight down the panic that I wasn't where I belonged in life, because the possibilities feel endless and I can ever only be one place at once. I read yesterday that self-motivated learners discover this equation through the proliferation of free online tutorials: anytime + anywhere = never.
I guess what I'm saying is having unlimited options has never kept me happy or effective. It's actually caused me a fair amount of misery over the years. So when I find a closed door, though my first instinct is to rail and pout, maybe a more accurate response should be relief. So I can't eat Ramen. There are literally thousands of other things I can eat, delicious things that won't give me a stomachache or headache. In this, my suffocatingly endless meal choices have slimmed by one, the weight of constant choice lifted by a small but measurable amount.
"Each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up. All we need to do is stop pounding on the door that just closed, turn around--which puts the door behind us--and welcome the largeness of life that now lies open to our souls. The door that closed kept us from entering a room, but what now lies before us is the rest of reality." - Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer (I can't overstate how much I enjoyed and found meaning in this book)
Reality--and the world of real food--is large enough that placing limits, even substantial ones, will not render it stupid and boring. There are still plenty of choices I can make. Eating (more or less) Paleo has given me more than it has taken away, though from the outside looking in it sounds impossible or perhaps somewhat masochistic (at least that's how it originally sounded to me). "How can you enjoy life without cupcakes?" It's as easy as enjoying life without stomachaches, daily afternoon exhaustion, aggressive cravings.
I may eat Ramen again, and I may not. But life is too large and wonderful to spend much mental energy here, apart from a flash of gratitude that I have food to eat daily, and the privilege of making choices about what I eat. Now if only I could find the silver lining in my current limitation of having no home air conditioning, a much more pressing matter of today.
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Wednesday, 13 July 2016
Thursday, 7 July 2016
Fed Up
I wish the movie Fed Up could somehow be required viewing for Americans. It's refreshing to see an expose rather than a cover-up, news that's true and helpful rather than politically motivated or crafted to boost numbers. I've compiled and paraphrased the most shocking parts of the movie below, for your convenience.
My life and health dramatically improved when I no stopped thinking of sugary junk food as food, and began to rightly see it as an attractively-packaged, socially sanctioned poison. The form of cocaine that's allowed to be left in piles on the breakroom table at work. Dr. Robert Lustig, University of California professor of Pediatrics, clarifies: "Sugar is a poison. A chronic (not acute), dose-dependent (because it matters how much you have and there is a safe threshold) hepato- (liver) toxin."A chronic, dose-dependent, hepatotoxin. That we give to our children and each other as a reward for good behavior. The cocaine comparison is reasonable, except that it might give sugar too much credit. A Princeton University study tested 43 cocaine-addicted laboratory rats, giving them the choice between cocaine or sugar water over 15 days. 40 of the 43 rats chose the sugar. Turns out sugar is eight times more addictive than cocaine. Simple willpower doesn't go far for most people in curbing that kind of craving, and yet willpower is what we recommend to each other for healthier choices, and what overweight people are sometimes accused of lacking.
80% of the 600,000 food items sold in American supermarkets have added sugar. On nutrition facts labels, sugar doesn't have that "% daily value" next to it. If it did, people might realize that a single can of Coke has 104% of the daily recommended sugar intake for men and 156% of the daily recommended intake for women. I got these stats from Coke's website, kind of. They only provided the grams; I did the math. So if you have one Coke in a day, that means even if you have no other dessert or added sugars of any kind during any meal or snack all day, you'll still be above the "healthy" threshold for sugar, a limit which has already been manipulated to be higher than the World Health Organizations's original findings (more on that in a second). And that's just an obvious one. Added sugar is everywhere, even bread and peanut butter. Yogurt and granola, often perceived as healthy choices, have a ton as well.
In January 2004, the U.S. extorted the WHO to the tune of 406 million dollars to keep them from publishing a document about how truly terrible sugar is for your health. This came about as a direct result of the food industry's money and influence in American politics. They strong-armed the WHO into formally recommending a higher daily amount of sugar than their findings revealed is healthy.
Sugar and high fructose corn syrup have an identical effect on the body. I used to think that HFCS was worse for you, but apparently from the body's perspective they're almost identical. And artificial sweeteners cause hormonal imbalance because their taste makes the body expect sugar and prepare for it, but then it's not delivered.
To burn off the calories in one Coke, a child would have to bike for an hour and fifteen minutes. This is just one reason that "exercise more, eat less," is not a helpful recommendation for weight loss. That's the saddest part of this movie, watching children who wish they were not overweight follow the only advice they've heard (heard from their doctors) and fail miserably. They are fighting a losing battle with all their strength, climbing a ladder that's leaning against the wrong wall.
After the American Academy of Family Physicians partnered with Coca-Cola in return for research money, 20 of the physicians publicly resigned, understanding the total incongruity of the partnership. Think we can trust the "studies" that come out of that environment? Soft drink companies fund a lot of medical research, for obvious and avaricious reasons.
In 2006, 80% of American high schools operated under exclusive contracts with soda companies. As the movie put it, "it's a deal with the devil, and the students are the ones losing out." The newest school eating guidelines, revised under Obama, count french fries or a piece of pizza as a serving of vegetables. How is pizza a vegetable? Something to do with tomato paste. This is a classic example of missing the forest for the trees. It takes a willful suspension of reality to conclude that a slice of pizza is equivalent to a serving of vegetables, and it's sick that greedy adults and the U.S. President are willing to claim this, at great risk to America's children. Is it any surprise there's a massive public health crisis when stuff like this is happening?
Michelle Obama started out her time as a First Lady by starting to crack down on this exact issue: processed foods and the food industry in general. It was bold, it was overdue, and it was set to make a big difference to millions of Americans. Her "Let's Move!" campaign was named to indicate the urgency of the matter. (It wasn't named with exercise in mind). The big food lobby met with her and convinced her to pretend like exercising more is going to help with childhood obesity. Maybe she even believes that, but it's just not true (obviously... the facts haven't supported this), and it's an unethical sleight of hand to get everyone to look the wrong way instead of squarely at the food industry to demand an actual fix. The "Let's Move!" name was neatly twisted to refer to exercise.
It's a culturally-embedded myth (planted by--guess who--food advertisers) that eating fast food is cheaper for families. While no one denies that fast food is, well, faster, I can attest to the fact that there's no way its cheaper. I save up to 80% on food costs by cooking and eating at home. Fed Up shows a comparison of a price for a healthy, grocery-store bought meal for 4 and then a fast food meal for 4. The grocery-bought was about half the price. It may be difficult to eat well in America for many reasons, but price, at least as compared to eating out, is not one of them.
It may take a while for the positive changes to kick in, but someday we may treat sugar, soda, and highly processed foods the way we currently treat tobacco... not illegal, but not allowed to be marketed to kids by celebrities, not found at kids' eye level in every single checkout lane no matter the store, and certainly not sold and served to kids at school via an exclusive contract. If these changes and others like them take place, we stand to save billions or trillions of dollars on health care, a numerical indicator of the vastly improved lives many Americans would lead.
My life and health dramatically improved when I no stopped thinking of sugary junk food as food, and began to rightly see it as an attractively-packaged, socially sanctioned poison. The form of cocaine that's allowed to be left in piles on the breakroom table at work. Dr. Robert Lustig, University of California professor of Pediatrics, clarifies: "Sugar is a poison. A chronic (not acute), dose-dependent (because it matters how much you have and there is a safe threshold) hepato- (liver) toxin."A chronic, dose-dependent, hepatotoxin. That we give to our children and each other as a reward for good behavior. The cocaine comparison is reasonable, except that it might give sugar too much credit. A Princeton University study tested 43 cocaine-addicted laboratory rats, giving them the choice between cocaine or sugar water over 15 days. 40 of the 43 rats chose the sugar. Turns out sugar is eight times more addictive than cocaine. Simple willpower doesn't go far for most people in curbing that kind of craving, and yet willpower is what we recommend to each other for healthier choices, and what overweight people are sometimes accused of lacking.
80% of the 600,000 food items sold in American supermarkets have added sugar. On nutrition facts labels, sugar doesn't have that "% daily value" next to it. If it did, people might realize that a single can of Coke has 104% of the daily recommended sugar intake for men and 156% of the daily recommended intake for women. I got these stats from Coke's website, kind of. They only provided the grams; I did the math. So if you have one Coke in a day, that means even if you have no other dessert or added sugars of any kind during any meal or snack all day, you'll still be above the "healthy" threshold for sugar, a limit which has already been manipulated to be higher than the World Health Organizations's original findings (more on that in a second). And that's just an obvious one. Added sugar is everywhere, even bread and peanut butter. Yogurt and granola, often perceived as healthy choices, have a ton as well.
In January 2004, the U.S. extorted the WHO to the tune of 406 million dollars to keep them from publishing a document about how truly terrible sugar is for your health. This came about as a direct result of the food industry's money and influence in American politics. They strong-armed the WHO into formally recommending a higher daily amount of sugar than their findings revealed is healthy.
Sugar and high fructose corn syrup have an identical effect on the body. I used to think that HFCS was worse for you, but apparently from the body's perspective they're almost identical. And artificial sweeteners cause hormonal imbalance because their taste makes the body expect sugar and prepare for it, but then it's not delivered.
After the American Academy of Family Physicians partnered with Coca-Cola in return for research money, 20 of the physicians publicly resigned, understanding the total incongruity of the partnership. Think we can trust the "studies" that come out of that environment? Soft drink companies fund a lot of medical research, for obvious and avaricious reasons.
In 2006, 80% of American high schools operated under exclusive contracts with soda companies. As the movie put it, "it's a deal with the devil, and the students are the ones losing out." The newest school eating guidelines, revised under Obama, count french fries or a piece of pizza as a serving of vegetables. How is pizza a vegetable? Something to do with tomato paste. This is a classic example of missing the forest for the trees. It takes a willful suspension of reality to conclude that a slice of pizza is equivalent to a serving of vegetables, and it's sick that greedy adults and the U.S. President are willing to claim this, at great risk to America's children. Is it any surprise there's a massive public health crisis when stuff like this is happening?
Michelle Obama started out her time as a First Lady by starting to crack down on this exact issue: processed foods and the food industry in general. It was bold, it was overdue, and it was set to make a big difference to millions of Americans. Her "Let's Move!" campaign was named to indicate the urgency of the matter. (It wasn't named with exercise in mind). The big food lobby met with her and convinced her to pretend like exercising more is going to help with childhood obesity. Maybe she even believes that, but it's just not true (obviously... the facts haven't supported this), and it's an unethical sleight of hand to get everyone to look the wrong way instead of squarely at the food industry to demand an actual fix. The "Let's Move!" name was neatly twisted to refer to exercise.
It's a culturally-embedded myth (planted by--guess who--food advertisers) that eating fast food is cheaper for families. While no one denies that fast food is, well, faster, I can attest to the fact that there's no way its cheaper. I save up to 80% on food costs by cooking and eating at home. Fed Up shows a comparison of a price for a healthy, grocery-store bought meal for 4 and then a fast food meal for 4. The grocery-bought was about half the price. It may be difficult to eat well in America for many reasons, but price, at least as compared to eating out, is not one of them.
It may take a while for the positive changes to kick in, but someday we may treat sugar, soda, and highly processed foods the way we currently treat tobacco... not illegal, but not allowed to be marketed to kids by celebrities, not found at kids' eye level in every single checkout lane no matter the store, and certainly not sold and served to kids at school via an exclusive contract. If these changes and others like them take place, we stand to save billions or trillions of dollars on health care, a numerical indicator of the vastly improved lives many Americans would lead.
Sunday, 1 May 2016
Bright-Line Soda Fountains
Soda fountains probably look like this to most people:
Here is what a soda fountain looks like to me:
Maybe "poison" is too strong. Then again, most soft drinks make you weaker and sicker, with no health benefits; I'm not sure of a better word. Maybe a big "X" would have sufficed. Either way, I am not a soda drinker, largely for health reasons. When I realized that what I see when I look at a soda fountain is not what others see, I was shocked and started wondering about the distortions other people have on the world. I used to just assume we all saw the same things, and now I'm convinced we don't.
Though we differ, everyone has shorthands for maneuvering through the world, decisions made in advance to save time and energy. The legal term for one of these is "bright-line," which Merriam-Webster defines as, "providing an unambiguous criterion or guideline." They can be tremendously useful. Good habits can do a lot to make life easier and better. Routines are good for mental health and general productivity. In his Psychology: Briefer Course, William James writes, "There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half of the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all."
When I hear, "as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all," I think of advertisements. For some reason, marketers count on the fact that you'll pay attention to their ad. If you don't read it, it doesn't matter how genius-inspired the wording or picture is. So common is ignoring ads that the term "banner blindness" sprang up to describe a person's tendency to completely ignore anything that looks like an advertisement while online. Sometimes viewers even skip over a legitimate part of a website because its design looks too much like an ad. I think going blind to ads is a fabulous practice. Paying attention to advertisements is inviting yourself to feel discontented. Plus, I can't imagine the extra bother I'd have in my life if every time, say, Time Warner mailed me something, I had to sit down and deliberate the pros and cons of having cable. It makes me glad we had the cables ripped out of the apartment when we moved in. Decision: made. It's annoying enough to transport the mailers from the mailbox to the recycle bin; I don't need the hassle of reading them every week.
I like making guidelines for myself to save the time and energy spent deliberating. I have been through several iterations of this with food. "Categorically, I do not purchase baked goods at a gas station," is an old, reliable one. I'm happy with where I've landed, not that I always follow through. My eating guidelines can go out the window when free cheesecake is involved.
Of course, guidelines are always only as good as the legitimacy of the beliefs they're based on. In a way, it's uncomfortable for me to have changed my mind so many times about food, but on the other hand, I do consider my changes to be improvements. Generally, I want to make sure that my short-cuts are helping me and not hurting me. I don't want to block out a whole viewpoint just because it isn't what I expect to hear or because it's presented in such a way that it doesn't make it past my filter.
Despite its risks, this "categorical" approach has brought a lot of peace and clarity to my life. There are so many things demanding a person's attention nowadays. At any moment, a friend could reach out through texting, Snapchat, email, Facebook, Instagram, or another channel. Then there's the never-ending stream of internet articles. I daily receive more promotional emails than I am able to read, though I fight back by unsubscribing from lists as often as I dare. To keep from feeling overwhelmed, I have to make big decisions about what is important to me. It's essential to be willing to risk missing out on something and not try to "do it all." Only by categorically ruling things out can I have any measure of rest. Determining what matters and letting go of what doesn't is a challenge, but it feels so good to progress. I've found the fewer clothes I own, the more I enjoy the ones I have. It's the same with emails; the fewer I have assaulting my inbox, the better I can engage with what comes in. I've never regretted not reading all the labels on a soda fountain. I have better things to read with my 24 hours in a day.
How do you use habits and mental shortcuts to make your life better?
Here is what a soda fountain looks like to me:
Maybe "poison" is too strong. Then again, most soft drinks make you weaker and sicker, with no health benefits; I'm not sure of a better word. Maybe a big "X" would have sufficed. Either way, I am not a soda drinker, largely for health reasons. When I realized that what I see when I look at a soda fountain is not what others see, I was shocked and started wondering about the distortions other people have on the world. I used to just assume we all saw the same things, and now I'm convinced we don't.
Though we differ, everyone has shorthands for maneuvering through the world, decisions made in advance to save time and energy. The legal term for one of these is "bright-line," which Merriam-Webster defines as, "providing an unambiguous criterion or guideline." They can be tremendously useful. Good habits can do a lot to make life easier and better. Routines are good for mental health and general productivity. In his Psychology: Briefer Course, William James writes, "There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half of the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all."
When I hear, "as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all," I think of advertisements. For some reason, marketers count on the fact that you'll pay attention to their ad. If you don't read it, it doesn't matter how genius-inspired the wording or picture is. So common is ignoring ads that the term "banner blindness" sprang up to describe a person's tendency to completely ignore anything that looks like an advertisement while online. Sometimes viewers even skip over a legitimate part of a website because its design looks too much like an ad. I think going blind to ads is a fabulous practice. Paying attention to advertisements is inviting yourself to feel discontented. Plus, I can't imagine the extra bother I'd have in my life if every time, say, Time Warner mailed me something, I had to sit down and deliberate the pros and cons of having cable. It makes me glad we had the cables ripped out of the apartment when we moved in. Decision: made. It's annoying enough to transport the mailers from the mailbox to the recycle bin; I don't need the hassle of reading them every week.
I like making guidelines for myself to save the time and energy spent deliberating. I have been through several iterations of this with food. "Categorically, I do not purchase baked goods at a gas station," is an old, reliable one. I'm happy with where I've landed, not that I always follow through. My eating guidelines can go out the window when free cheesecake is involved.
Of course, guidelines are always only as good as the legitimacy of the beliefs they're based on. In a way, it's uncomfortable for me to have changed my mind so many times about food, but on the other hand, I do consider my changes to be improvements. Generally, I want to make sure that my short-cuts are helping me and not hurting me. I don't want to block out a whole viewpoint just because it isn't what I expect to hear or because it's presented in such a way that it doesn't make it past my filter.
Despite its risks, this "categorical" approach has brought a lot of peace and clarity to my life. There are so many things demanding a person's attention nowadays. At any moment, a friend could reach out through texting, Snapchat, email, Facebook, Instagram, or another channel. Then there's the never-ending stream of internet articles. I daily receive more promotional emails than I am able to read, though I fight back by unsubscribing from lists as often as I dare. To keep from feeling overwhelmed, I have to make big decisions about what is important to me. It's essential to be willing to risk missing out on something and not try to "do it all." Only by categorically ruling things out can I have any measure of rest. Determining what matters and letting go of what doesn't is a challenge, but it feels so good to progress. I've found the fewer clothes I own, the more I enjoy the ones I have. It's the same with emails; the fewer I have assaulting my inbox, the better I can engage with what comes in. I've never regretted not reading all the labels on a soda fountain. I have better things to read with my 24 hours in a day.
How do you use habits and mental shortcuts to make your life better?
Wednesday, 20 April 2016
If I knew where to find a gold mine...
When I discover something wonderful, I want to share it with my friends. Honestly, with everyone I know. Last week I got a free pair of brand-new pants at a store and I posted to Facebook as soon as I got back to my car just to tell everyone I knew in hopes they could benefit as well. This was a no-brainer because everyone likes to save money. I wasn't worried about offending anyone by offering this helpful tip.
Unfortunately, there are several more important areas where the truth is even more wonderful, but I stay quiet or hesitant instead of sharing because I am unsure how my words will be received. I compare lots of things to the Gospel. Whenever the truth is countercultural and takes a bit more work and intention, but yields something much greater in the long run, I label it, "this is just like the Gospel!" The latest of these for me is eating Paleo*. If I know something that would give my friends drastically better health, better sleep, higher and more stable energy levels, improved mood, a healthy body weight, and several more benefits, shouldn't I eagerly tell them all about it? Wouldn't it be, on some level, unloving to conceal this information when it's well within my reach to share it out? Yet, like sharing the Gospel, I am afraid that one mention of my eating Paleo to someone could feel like judgment or pressure.
I admit that I can't know that eating Paleo would work best for everyone: food allergies and all that. But I feel strongly enough that there is some absolute truth when it comes to eating well to push this topic out of the realm of, "Whatever works for you!" to "FYI, everyone: cheese danishes are never good for you under any circumstances other than starvation!" I admit I can be an absolute thinker. Someone asked me tonight if I thought eating a 100-calorie pack of cookies was an improvement on eating a full box of cookies, a step toward snacking on carrots. I had to think about my response, which came in the form of an analogy: "I feel like that's asking someone who thinks sex belongs in marriage, 'Is it better if someone only has 2 one-night-stands per week instead of 5?'" So you could say that I feel strongly enough on this topic that I am not sure how to nuance it. That makes sharing both more urgent and more challenging, as I try to remain distant and objective and tread lightly.
While I don't know what diet works best for each person, I do know that I lost about 20 pounds and a constant feeling of nausea when I learned that bread is not good for you (the rest came later). Growing up, I was surrounded by large, colorful food pyramid charts for children that put grains, including bread, in the "eat 6-11 servings a day" category. As a result, I thought I was being healthy when I made myself eat my pizza crusts, which I didn't like as much as the cheesy part. It's scary the food lies we're surrounded by. I recently recycled some old pages I'd once saved from Seventeen magazine, all about food. Their reasonable-sounding suggestions were rotten lies, but I hope they meant well. There just isn't as much money in healthy eating. Makers and marketers of processed food have an active interest in making sure people don't eat healthfully, because eating healthfully means avoiding their products! There's not as much money allocated to advertise beets as for fruit roll-ups. I'm just not sure people are aware of these things (how much our environment secretly misleads us); I sure wasn't until just a few years ago.
Growing up, I heard government recommendations that fat is bad for you and fat makes you fat. Actually, healthy fats are good for you and help you stay at a healthy body weight--even if they're saturated. The real science clashes terribly with conventional wisdom and the cultural messages about how you deserve to treat yourself with candy, cake, and alcohol, and if you don't you're super uptight and probably not enjoying your life. Not to mention the several American food holidays like the Super Bowl and Thanksgiving. Eating habits can be deeply ingrained and tend to touch several areas of a person's life and their psyche. I want to be sensitive to those realities but I still can't say, "eat whatever you want, it doesn't matter." I still think it matters a great deal.
I have not yet met someone who was overweight and also consistently eating what I'd consider a healthy diet*. However, I have met multiple people who expressed a desire to weigh less. In the moment that they mention their eating habits to me, it seems unwise or unkind to point out that the foods they think are healthy are actually contributing to poor gut health. Yet isn't it unloving not to? That diet sodas, which are highly addictive, have been definitively linked to obesity, potentially because artificial sweeteners are linked to super intense cravings that can cause overeating. That steamed edamame is, though green and veggie-like, soy and not the healthiest choice. That black beans are hard on the digestive system. That "gluten-free" is not bad, but "grain-free" is drastically healthier. I don't want people to be operating off of false information, like I was for years. Eating healthy is difficult enough without inadvertently sabotaging your own efforts.
In short, America is a confusing place to live when it comes to food messages, but the truth is out there, and lots of people like me are passionate about food and love to share what they know. If you are interested in learning more or hoping to improve your overall health through eating well, I recommend the book It Starts with Food by Melissa and Dallas Hartwig. Their ideas seem extreme to someone who's used to the Standard American Diet (SAD), thus the beneficial results are extreme as well. And if ever I should offer you unwelcome commentary on your diet, please forgive me and know that it's coming from a place of love and passion. I found a gold mine and I am trying to tell you how to get there!
*Paleo, which is to say, veggies/fruit/meat with no grains/dairy/soy/legumes... this is the quick and simple definition.
Unfortunately, there are several more important areas where the truth is even more wonderful, but I stay quiet or hesitant instead of sharing because I am unsure how my words will be received. I compare lots of things to the Gospel. Whenever the truth is countercultural and takes a bit more work and intention, but yields something much greater in the long run, I label it, "this is just like the Gospel!" The latest of these for me is eating Paleo*. If I know something that would give my friends drastically better health, better sleep, higher and more stable energy levels, improved mood, a healthy body weight, and several more benefits, shouldn't I eagerly tell them all about it? Wouldn't it be, on some level, unloving to conceal this information when it's well within my reach to share it out? Yet, like sharing the Gospel, I am afraid that one mention of my eating Paleo to someone could feel like judgment or pressure.
I admit that I can't know that eating Paleo would work best for everyone: food allergies and all that. But I feel strongly enough that there is some absolute truth when it comes to eating well to push this topic out of the realm of, "Whatever works for you!" to "FYI, everyone: cheese danishes are never good for you under any circumstances other than starvation!" I admit I can be an absolute thinker. Someone asked me tonight if I thought eating a 100-calorie pack of cookies was an improvement on eating a full box of cookies, a step toward snacking on carrots. I had to think about my response, which came in the form of an analogy: "I feel like that's asking someone who thinks sex belongs in marriage, 'Is it better if someone only has 2 one-night-stands per week instead of 5?'" So you could say that I feel strongly enough on this topic that I am not sure how to nuance it. That makes sharing both more urgent and more challenging, as I try to remain distant and objective and tread lightly.
While I don't know what diet works best for each person, I do know that I lost about 20 pounds and a constant feeling of nausea when I learned that bread is not good for you (the rest came later). Growing up, I was surrounded by large, colorful food pyramid charts for children that put grains, including bread, in the "eat 6-11 servings a day" category. As a result, I thought I was being healthy when I made myself eat my pizza crusts, which I didn't like as much as the cheesy part. It's scary the food lies we're surrounded by. I recently recycled some old pages I'd once saved from Seventeen magazine, all about food. Their reasonable-sounding suggestions were rotten lies, but I hope they meant well. There just isn't as much money in healthy eating. Makers and marketers of processed food have an active interest in making sure people don't eat healthfully, because eating healthfully means avoiding their products! There's not as much money allocated to advertise beets as for fruit roll-ups. I'm just not sure people are aware of these things (how much our environment secretly misleads us); I sure wasn't until just a few years ago.
Growing up, I heard government recommendations that fat is bad for you and fat makes you fat. Actually, healthy fats are good for you and help you stay at a healthy body weight--even if they're saturated. The real science clashes terribly with conventional wisdom and the cultural messages about how you deserve to treat yourself with candy, cake, and alcohol, and if you don't you're super uptight and probably not enjoying your life. Not to mention the several American food holidays like the Super Bowl and Thanksgiving. Eating habits can be deeply ingrained and tend to touch several areas of a person's life and their psyche. I want to be sensitive to those realities but I still can't say, "eat whatever you want, it doesn't matter." I still think it matters a great deal.
I have not yet met someone who was overweight and also consistently eating what I'd consider a healthy diet*. However, I have met multiple people who expressed a desire to weigh less. In the moment that they mention their eating habits to me, it seems unwise or unkind to point out that the foods they think are healthy are actually contributing to poor gut health. Yet isn't it unloving not to? That diet sodas, which are highly addictive, have been definitively linked to obesity, potentially because artificial sweeteners are linked to super intense cravings that can cause overeating. That steamed edamame is, though green and veggie-like, soy and not the healthiest choice. That black beans are hard on the digestive system. That "gluten-free" is not bad, but "grain-free" is drastically healthier. I don't want people to be operating off of false information, like I was for years. Eating healthy is difficult enough without inadvertently sabotaging your own efforts.
In short, America is a confusing place to live when it comes to food messages, but the truth is out there, and lots of people like me are passionate about food and love to share what they know. If you are interested in learning more or hoping to improve your overall health through eating well, I recommend the book It Starts with Food by Melissa and Dallas Hartwig. Their ideas seem extreme to someone who's used to the Standard American Diet (SAD), thus the beneficial results are extreme as well. And if ever I should offer you unwelcome commentary on your diet, please forgive me and know that it's coming from a place of love and passion. I found a gold mine and I am trying to tell you how to get there!
*Paleo, which is to say, veggies/fruit/meat with no grains/dairy/soy/legumes... this is the quick and simple definition.
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