We live in a health conscious age. With so much information about dietetics and nutrition around, we should all be thin and healthy with no problems. But as Michael Pollan pointed out, all this nutritionism (breaking food down for classification into its nutrients and pieces) has led to confusion. Butter is good! Butter is bad. Avoid eggs. Eat flax seeds! Rice is good. Everything white is bad!
I think its a clear sign of this confusion that a book titled “eat this, not that” has been a best-seller. So I’ve decided it is time to chime in my piece, and tell you the things you may think are healthy, but really aren’t.
1) Yogurt
Not all yogurt is bad. Just most of it. I know a lot of commercials lately have been sharing the “amazing health benefits” of probiotics. The problem? Most store-bought yogurts are low on the beneficial bacteria and high in the sugars. The vast majority have high fructose corn syrup (HFCS: that’ll have to be another post all in itself) and those that avoid this often use aspartame. Anyone who has had real yogurt (that is, fresh made yogurt, by a person, not a store) knows that it is fairly bitter and a little bit nasty. It also goes bad very, very quickly. To avoid this, companies have to use all sorts of things.
2) Salad
Okay, I lied. Salad is good. But how we eat salad? Bad. If you have a chance, look on the back of a salad dressing bottle. Serving sizes are usually 1-2 Tbs. And this is the most we’re supposed to use on an entire salad. We actually tend to use more like 1/4 or 1/3 cup. Now, I am weird and like fresh bitter greens oftentimes. But most people? Salad is gross without tons of dressing. So skip the fatty topping, and eat something like stir-fry instead. That way, you can keep the veggies but slim out the additions.
3) Wheat Bread
Stay with me on this one. There are two main reasons wheat bread isn’t as healthy as it should be. First, most wheat breads are not actually whole grain wheat. 100% wheat is not the same as whole grain wheat is not the same as standard wheat. Wheat bread can even be as little as 10% wheat flour, and the rest bleached. This merely makes it not as good as we thought, rather than bad. Which brings us to the second point: most breads have a lot of questionable stuff. Since when do I want citric acid (which is a corn derivative usually, and not citrus, fyi) in my bread? Or HFCS? And why on earth would I want to eat something that can sit on my counter for two months before it molds? Those things aside, many breads are high in oils and sodium, putting them in the realm of bad. I want to post a bread recipe soon, and show you that homemade bread is not something that was left in the 50s. It has advanced, along with everything else, and with very little time and cooking skills is totally possible.
4) Soy
This one will possibly get me yelled at. It took me a lot of research before I took a stance on this particular issues. I don’t want to delve into all of the nitty-gritty scientifics here, but in short: soy can mess us up in several ways. There is the whole “imitates estrogen” thing, there is the “low levels of testosterone” and the “causes various cancers”. Then there is the various acids it releases and changes within your body, which essentially create poisons. I do, however, differentiate between fermented and unfermented soy products. Tempeh? Fermented, doesn’t do the same acid stuff, in moderation, I’m okay with it. Tofu and soy milk? Unfermented. Does all the aforementioned bad stuff.
5) Almost any drink but water
People hate this, but only because they know it is true. Americans drink 60% of our calories. And we need to stop. The soda, the “juice”, the “teas” and “coffees”. Tea and coffee without a ton of stuff added are fine. That is what all those studies cover linking coffee with lower risks of heart disease, and tea with elevated mood chemicals. Add a ton of milk and sugar and who knows what else? Suddenly, you are drinking the adult version of candy. Feel free to do so, just don’t lie to yourself about it. Incidentally, switching to mainly water is one of the best ways to save money and completely help your health, with no personal risk or harm. On the topic of juice, all I have to say is “don’t”. Fruit is good because of the fiber. If you’re not eating it, its just sugar. And don’t even get me started on fad superfoods. Yes, there are foods that will help your health. But all things in moderation. Seriously people.
6) Beans
Okay, only the canned ones. And moreover, only the canned ones with sodium. If you look at a standard can of s&w black beans (my favorite if I must used canned) the can contains a whopping 70% of your daily sodium. The healthy alternative? Use a crockpot and make a batch of beans with very little work. All this requires is knowing the night before that you’ll use beans the next day. I’ll do a “how-to” post on this later.
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This is a sample of where my blog could go/ a blog that could spin off from this one. Please give feedback on how you feel this fits in with the “grand scheme of things”. Also, image isn’t mine. From VeganSteve over at flikr.
