Dear Dad,
If there was any secret to eating healthy it would be this, though not really a secret, more something extremely intuitive that most people choose to ignore.
Eat whole foods.
Whole foods dissipate the confusion surrounding nutrition debates and arguments. Whole foods are the reason that a vegan, vegetarian, regular omnivore, carnivore (yes some people only eat meat…I just don’t have enough time to write down that rabbit hole), or any dieter in-between can all make health improvements while seemingly subscribing to vastly different food consumption patterns. No matter what type of eater you call yourself, if you eat a diet significantly comprised of whole foods health improvements will follow.
A whole food is one that is in it’s original state—a banana, spinach leaf, grain of rice, black bean, cashew, even a chicken breast or filet of fish. Whole foods are nutrient dense, filling, fresh, and delicious. Unfortunately, a majority of what people eat are not whole foods. Instead, people gravitate to “food-like” substances that have been so processed they bare no resemblance to their original food source. Food-like substances are high in calories, low in nutrients, stale, and only taste good because of added salt, sugar, fat and other chemical products.
I heard one champion marathoner comment that when his kids ask for a snack he always lets them eat it as long as they can name the original food source it derived from. Apple? Easy, an apple is the original source of an apple. Goldfish Crackers? Gummy worms? Little Debbie Snack Cakes? Bologna? Nearly impossible to name their original food sources. As it turns out, many substances barely have an original food source at all and were just made in labs. I happened to look at a bottle of Ms. Butterworth “maple syrup” left behind in a hotel fridge to find the following ingredient list for the product.
WATER, CORN SYRUP. CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: CELLULOSE GUM, CANE SYRUP, SALT, CARAMEL COLOR, SORBIC ACID AND SODIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVATIVES), ASPARTAME, PHOSPHORIC ACID, ACESULFAME POTASSIUM, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, LACTIC ACID, MOLASSES, SODIUM HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE, MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES
What in the— that is not food! It’s a science experiment loaded with sweetness. Keep in mind “real” maple syrup is one ingredient: tree sap. Goo from a tree, a plant, boiled down. Now, I’m not saying maple syrup from a tree is a health food by any stretch but it is food, and not a potion! Think of what you eat throughout the day. No, really think about it. Is it food?
Just because something is edible does not make it food. Just because a substance is packed up pretty, marketed to you, and infused with flavors that make your brain go bizerk—doesn’t make it food. Food is food. It’s grown from the ground and it’s delicious.
The problem with processing is that food companies get involved with ulterior profit motives and manipulate foods into “food-like” substances that are nearly irresistible. Food companies don’t care about your health. They might slap a “health claim” on the box because you care and it’s all the more reason for you to purchase their product. The 30% less sodium Doritos, diet sodas, fat-free cheeses, wheat crackers, candies, and the like were all made with you in mind! Someone in lab smiles every time a bag is finished and the food companies’ bank accounts grow by the day. All foods processed by a company are done so with the idea of making it soooo tasty (addictive) that you buy more at a quicker pace. The combination of salt, sugar, and fat, is precisely manipulated to light up your brain while providing very little nutrient density. Therefore, you eat, eat, and eat, yet derive little nutritional value and by-pass your biological fail-stop to alert fullness.
If you ditch the ultra processed foods and rely mostly on whole foods for your diet than it is guaranteed that your health will drastically improve! This is the best diet advice in a nutshell. The problem with subscribing to a “diet label” like vegan, vegetarian, keto, paleo, Atkins, carnivore, is that food companies, smart as they are, have invented food-like products to fit every umbrellas. There’s keto this, and vegetarian that, making the market full of various “diet” junk foods. Therefore, it’s possible to be an extremely unhealthy anything if you rely heavily on processed foods.
In 1980, Whole Foods Market opened in Austin, Texas. The founder was a man named John Mackey, who understood the health benefits of whole foods and co-opted the term for his grocery stores! Whole Foods Markets is a great place to buy whole foods but not all foods in Whole Foods are whole foods (say that 5 times fast). As a helpful tip when shopping any grocery store, shop the outside walls where the fruits, vegetables, and butchered items can be found. The inside isles are filled with packaged non-foods that companies want you to eat. (The fruits and vegetables sections at Wegmans and many other stores are actually tiled to make loud racket as carts roll across them as a scheme to drive shoppers to the smooth surfaced interior isles where the larger margin $$$ processed items are located). It’s time to think about what you eat and not just follow the norms set by industry.
At the time Whole Foods Market launched, no one believed that the stores would generate much business. In a recent interview Mackey described the sentiment of most industry. “You guys are just a bunch of hippies, selling food to other hippies and I don’t think there is a big market for it.”1
This week, unleash a little inner-hippie, and eat whole foods.
With Love,
JSR
