There are countless diets that will tell you how to eat healthy. Some focus on avoiding certain foods, others on nutrients and on a perfect balance. What unites them is that they might work in principle, but are hard to follow in reality. You should rather focus on building a relationship with food and not needing spreadsheets and a nutritionist to live a healthy life.
The 3 simple rules mentioned here are from the book “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan. A very nice read about how the Western Diet came to be and why it missed the point coinciding with worsening physical health in the West. So let’s just right in then:
1. Eat food
As simple as it sounds, it’s probably the hardest of the three. You might say you know what food is, but is a bread that contains 15 ingredients really a bread? What about frozen pizzas? Let’s not start talking about sweets and chips. As this change of mindset might be difficult, Michael Pollan gives 3 simple rules to distinguish food from food-like items:
Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t eat
While humans didn’t change a lot, the items on the grocery store shelves for sure did. Most cereals, milk products, sweets and so on shouldn’t really be considered food. They overstimulate your taste sensors with one main reason – for you to buy more of them.
Stay away from products with more than five ingredients
Bread, pasta, tomato sauce and so on are some examples of simple foods that are often injected with a multitude of unnecessary ingredients to increase shelf life and enhance taste. However, those additives are not only unhealthy for you, but also damaging to the environment in one way or another.
Avoid “healthy” foods
Healthy is almost always a marketing word, which ranks the said item on some questionable criteria. Margarine was advertised as healthier than butter, but we know it’s not. Low-fat healthy products often contain too much added sugar to make the product have any taste.
2. Mostly plants
Prioritize plants, especially leafy
There is no doubt plants are good for your health. The exact reason is not widely agreed upon, but there is no denying it. Plants provide us with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. You don’t need to fully exclude meat from your diet, but having a variety of fruits and vegetables provides your body with what it needs.
You are what you eat
Plants absorb nutrients from the soil, so the better the soil, the better the end result. This means healthier and tastier fruits and vegetables. Plants would absorb toxins and pesticides, if there are any to begin with.
The same principle is also true for animal products, where the results are exaggerated, since the toxins are more concentrated, the higher on the food chain you go. Bad soils result in bad grass, which is fed to cows, which are then milked. And here we are not talking about feeding cows corn-based diets, which is definitely not natural and healthy for them.
3. Not too much
As mentioned in the last point, high quality ingredients do make a difference and as such are worth the price. And eating less, or to say properly – enough, means you can buy those foods on the same budget. Added bonus that you don’t overeat on cheap engineered food-like items.
If you want to build a lasting relationship with food you need to treat it properly. Eat at a dining table, share meals with friends and appreciate the actual food.
One more sure way to cut on processed foods, while giving you independence, confidence and tasty meals is to cook for yourself. You are in control of what and when you cook, which ingredients you put in and how much you actually eat. Try the PlanBite app to get help with all steps of cooking at home.
Summary
This blog post is inspired by and is not an exhaustive description of the ideas in the book, but rather a short summary with some additional thoughts. It aims to share the main point across and inform more people about it.
Having a healthy diet is not about optimizing for nutrition or what else, but is about following basic principles and building a lasting relationship with food.
So go buy some organic, seasonal ingredients and cook something delicious and tasty at home. Share it with friends and appreciate how rewarding those things can be.
Photo by Jacopo Maia on Unsplash.