A Common Question: Is This Food Healthy?

This is a question I get frequently and a lot goes into the answer with some follow up questions such as: Is it being compared to another food? Do you consume this food frequently? This can get very confusing because a lot of unhealthy foods are marketed as healthy.

Everyone's body is different, something might be unhealthy to one person but might be healthy for another. But here are some things to keep in mind about general rules to tell if something is healthy:

1. Ask yourself if this food existed over 150 years ago: it's important to remember what's evolutionarily appropriate for us to eat. Our hunter gatherer ancestors consumed plants, fruits, nuts, went out and hunted for our food whether it was fish or other meats. This is what our biology accepts as food. The packaged foods that are new to us contains ingredients that our bodies don't biologically accept, which is why we've had such a huge rise in chronic illnesses the last 100 years. Some examples are cereals, PB&J sandwiches, plant based meat brands like Beyond Meat, and crackers. So if you can hunt, fish, find this food in a garden, or growing on a tree then it is definitely healthy. Anything outside of those categories makes that food questionable.

2. Does it have a long ingredient list?: the more ingredients a product has, the more processed it is. Also, more likely than not those ingredients contain chemicals, additives, or preservatives that our biology generally doesn't accept. Some products contain around 20 or more ingredients. Whole foods such as bananas, steak, or blueberries don't have an ingredient list. A good rule to follow is a food is ok if it has 5 or less ingredients.

3. Can you pronounce the ingredients? Do you know what they are?: You wouldn't consume something you're unaware of right? If you can't pronounce it, most likely it shouldn't be going into your body. When I go shopping I usually spend more time looking at the ingredients than anything else. The chemicals in our food are approved by the FDA but that doesn't necessarily mean they're okay to consume. It's also important to note that a lot of the ingredients that are approved in our country are banned in most European countries. There could be a connection there as to why we have higher rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc.

4. Is there a health claim on the package?: If there is one this is mainly about marketing tactics and not about actual health. The big food companies are more concerned about the money being made and don't take health into account. On the Cheerios box we've all seen the label "heart healthy" or "lowers cholesterol". We don't see claims like that on avocados, which we know are healthy. Anything like this or similar is something to stay away from.
   
   

Some options with packaged foods are better than others. A tricky one I notice a lot is yogurt. A lot of people consider this a healthy option but with yogurt they try to sneak in a lot of added sugars with not as much protein. In this case look for something with little or no added sugar and more protein. I'm also not saying to avoid packaged foods completely because there can be some benefits. One of them is that packaged foods are known to have a longer shelf life. However, if your goal is food quality and being overall healthy then I would suggest limiting the amount of processed and packaged foods.