What Really Is Healthy Eating?
The discussion about what constitutes healthy eating has to include all people, not just a small circle of privileged individuals that do not acknowledge the reality most others have to live in.
What Is “Unprocessed Food”?
I’m pretty sure that Andrew Wilder of eatingrules.com is a pretty swell guy with his heart in the right place. I also believe that he has the best intentions when encouraging people to eat “unprocessed” foods, as he thinks that is the way to be healthier.
Yet I have more than once wondered about his definition of unprocessed foods and while I’m sitting here typing this, I eat some dried dates, pondering if they would pass Andrew’s “kitchen test”. That test is his way of deciding if a food is unprocessed or not: if you can’t make it in your own kitchen, it is processed and should therefore be avoided.
That strikes me as a definition as wishy-washy as they can be. If you own a $50,000 kitchen equipped for even the latest in molecular gastronomy, what you can and cannot prepare is a lot different from what the guy with the kitchenette coming with a mini oven and portable double burner on top can handle.
Going back to my dates, I’m pretty sure in spirit they are within Andrew’s idea of “unprocessed”, but his kitchen test they don’t pass. Simply because I can’t sundry dates, due to the lack of sun heat they are dried with in their home country of Algeria.
Are You Eleanor Roosevelt?
Going over Andrew’s blog we also learn how to ferment our own mustard, what the steps are to prepare sauerkraut right from the whole cabbage and we get a course in the essentials of canning. Andrew also often references food enthusiast Michael Pollan, who over at his site tells us that families just have to think a bit more like Eleanor Roosevelt to be able to enjoy shared meals every night.
All that is swell, but where do I take the time from for hours of mustard making? Or how do parents that both have to work multiple minimum wage jobs find a chance to share a common time slot with their children, each night, to eat together?
Are those who lack time and money excluded from eating healthy?
The truth is that only people with the time and resources, and having those usually means being financially rather privileged, can go for this style of living. It is no coincidence that many food bloggers are stay-at-home moms or have high-paying jobs that leave them with ample spare time. The food blogging single mother of two who has to fend for herself by juggling a job at Wal-Mart and another at a dry cleaner is a rare specimen indeed.
Keep It Simple
All this does smack of some elitism, as it leaves out the reality most people have to live in. It sets the bar to “healthy eating” much too high and needlessly so.
It is pretty well documented that obesity is one of the leading causes of death in western societies. Combating it doesn’t require complicated rules about processed and unprocessed foods or instructions on how to make your own mustard. It would be enough to educate people about energy balance and weight management.
There is in fact no indication that a person of normal weight, eating foods that in some circles would be coined “processed”, is unhealthier than his brethren eating organic, “unprocessed” food. Quite to the contrary, a large independent study just recently found that the advantages of organic foods are negligible.
Pictures courtesy of Joe Buckingham and Jason Scragz.
8 Comments
“It is no coincidence that many food bloggers are stay-at-home moms or have high-paying jobs that leave them with ample spare time.”
Hah, reminds of that South Park episode “Smug Alert”. I just drive my Prius since I’m so concerned about the environment unlike most people – Good for youuuuu! – Thaaaanks!
Yes, there is some truth to that.
Whilst what you say is true, some of these rule of thumb eating rules sort of work. Grain processed to the point of being pure starch is arguably less healthy than so-called whole-grain, all other things being equal. Someone avoiding the more processed foods and choosing foods containing whole-grain over white flour, fresh veg over tinned and so on is likely to get a more nutritious diet. From that angle it seems like a reasonable idea.
Heavily processed foods such as readymeals tend to contain a lot more salt, sugar and sat/trans fats than the same homemade meals as far as I can tell.
Likewise Michael Pollan’s major food rule “eat food, mostly vegetables, not too much” is a decent rule of thumb that if followed by the average obese westerner would likely result in weightloss and better health.
At their basis, yes, these ideas have some merit. It just seems they have evolved to humongous doctrines leaving those in the most dire need of understanding nutrition far behind.
Definitely there are some rules of thumb that can benefit anyone’s endeavors to eating healtheir; low salt, more veggies in proportion to others, etc.
I think, however, that is an appeal to common sense which ignores the pith of the problem; on the one hand, time and stress management in an increasingly arduous schedule, and leisure and purchasing power that can be devoted to “healthy eating”. Couple that with the fact that food technicians and marketing have mastered the art of understanding demands, which only goes hand in hand with stress – the convenience and “pleasurably relaxing” effects of sipping that coca-cola while delving into that sumptuous big mac, at low cost passed right into your lap in the car.
I think simply saying that, hey, people are eating salty foods and shouldn’t, is describing the symptoms of the problem. We should be rather exploring why people make the decisions they do. We have it to the point where people argue that apples taste better before than they do today. That’s like saying the taste of water has suddenly lost its flavor since the later 20th cenutry – it is no doubt that our neurological standard for sugar and salt has sky rocketed. It’s a similar process with alcohol levels or pills for sleeping (even melatonin).
Yes, I agree. It is that whole picture that counts. People make choices that seem sensible to them, no matter how preposterous they seem to a bystander, and simply condemning these choices in isolation of circumstances won’t get us further.
I think that’s a great definition of unprocessed foods. Some cereals will fall in that category, while some will not. The same holds true of a “treat” food like ice cream. Technically, I could make vanilla ice cream with unprocessed ingredients, but I would find it difficult to make Moose Tracks ice cream because of the processed ingredients in that flavor of ice cream. All vegetables, fruits, whole grains, natural meats, and minimally processed dairy foods count as unprocessed in his (and my) definition.
Well, I couldn’t make ice cream, because I lack an icecream machine. Would your icecream brought to my kitchen then count as processed? 😉