4/16/2018 0 Comments Healthy food? Healthy eating?We have been constantly bombarded with various recommendations on healthy food and healthy eating, since childhood. To many, it is almost considered as a moral code to follow: if you want to live a long and happy life, eat healthy; if you want to be a respectable citizen, eat healthy; if you want to raise good children, eat healthy yourself and make sure to feed them healthy food too. It is no doubt that eating healthy has always been a topic of interest in different cultures and through different time periods, but it is of particular concern for people in modern societies, who strive for longer lifespan and more fulfilling lives in general.
If you take a closer look at the various claims/advice for healthy eating, you may realize that it differs drastically from time to time. Development of modern nutritional science certainly plays an important role here, but so do people’s lay beliefs that originate from folk wisdom passed down from generations above, and messages overflowing in the mass media, mostly generated by food manufacturers. Given so many different sources of information and a far-from-thorough system to validate all the information, it is no wonder that many modern people may be at sea when they hope to eat healthy. Should I go for “low-fat” diet? Should I go with gluten-free? Should I start a vegan diet? Here I may reveal some unfortunate truths for people longing for advice on healthy eating. Naturally, we hope there is a “rule of thumb” that we can abide and get a good outcome, but it does not seem to be the case when it comes to nutrition. Sure, World Health Organization (a.k.a. WHO) has recommendations on how much carbohydrate/fat/protein to consume every day, but even that guideline is based on a very specific population (i.e. an average human being who exercises and uses mental energy at an average level). Almost no one is exactly the same as “an average human being”. For example, people who do lots of labor work (e.g. farmers, construction workers) or work out very often for long periods need food that can sustain longer, such as fatty food and salty food, though both are viewed as “should be limited” by the guideline. Fatty food contains more energy per weight unit than other types of food, thus helps to sustain longer workout periods. Salty food can replenish the large amount of salt that human body loses in heavy sweating, as well as promote drinking larger quantities of water to help the circulation. This example may be counterintuitive and a little to the extreme (after all most of us do not exercise that much), but I just want to illustrate the point that the guideline is mainly a guideline, not a golden standard, and everyone needs to figure out what type of diet is most suitable for their lifestyle and body needs. Another unfortunate truth about healthy eating and healthy food may sound even more striking at first: there is no single “healthy food” in the world. In other words, no food is “healthy” by definition and by itself. According to the WHO definition, good health is “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Therefore, when we say some food is “healthy”, what we really mean is “eating this food will help to reach the state of good health”. In a sense, we hope that certain food (e.g. tofu, fish, quinoa, acai, olive oil, or whatever other “healthy food” that is in fashion) is like an elixir or panacea that as long as we keep eating it and eat enough of it, we can have good health. Sadly the world is not so simple. Every food contains a certain amount of nutrients but probably lacks other nutrients that human bodies need. Tofu, one of the most well-known “healthy foods”, is indeed a good source of protein, and traditionally prepared tofu provides some calcium as well, but it has very low carbohydrates and dietary fibre, with no Vitamin D or Vitamin C. As a result, if someone wants to base his/her diet solely on tofu, s/he may likely experience Vitamin C/D deficiency, and may have problems with defecation. You may certainly argue that no one would go to such an extreme, and a diet mainly consisting tofu but complemented with other vegetables and maybe salmon/tuna (good source of Vitamin D) is pretty good. I agree, however, this does not mean that tofu can be called a “healthy food” by itself since it is not the case that eating more tofu is always better. The point here is, no food is a complete food that provides every nutrient that the human body needs in the correct amount. The conception some food is healthy may lead to a misconception that “the more I eat healthy food, the better”, when a healthy diet should be balanced with different nutrients and a large variety of food. The marketing campaigns by many food companies often highlight what benefits their food can provide without mentioning what nutrients their food lacks, creating an illusion that their food is absolutely healthy. The truth? Ask the owner of the company whether s/he is willing to go on a diet for a month of only consuming their company’s food products. The second point above is also related to the first point that no food is by definition healthy for everyone, since different people have different body needs. If you have grown plants before, you can easily see that different plants need different amount of water, sunlight, potassium, etc. Too much light for plants that like shades (like Scindapsus) can be suicidal; too much water for plants that prefer drier soil (like cactus) will drown them in no time. Thus we can’t say “sunlight is healthy for plants” or “water is healthy for plants”. How is cultivating our own good health different from that of cultivating a healthy plant? Not really. So there is no bible to follow. If you want to cultivate your own good health successfully, design your own balanced diet based on your own body needs. The guidelines provided by nutritional scientists can be used as a general principle to start, but to make it work for you, you have to be your own dietary consultant
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