It is easy to see a link, I’d say a strong link, between well-being and lifestyle. And as part of that, a strong link between well-being and healthy eating. Not just in the long run – eat well and prevent cancer and other chronic disease in 20 years time. In the short term too – eat well and feel light and energised, smart and strong today.
So what is healthy eating? That’s the tricky bit. Should I be vegetarian? Or paleo? Is fat good or bad for me? The fundamental issue with all this is that in the simplistic era of TV ads and political slogans, people are being taught to react to black or white statements. Fat is bad. All of it. The war against fat! And now carbs are bad. Everything is low carbs and high protein. Let’s all hate carbs, shall we?
Reducing a complex subject to a short slogan like message for the masses creates wrong perceptions and unbalances. Good food is matter of culture first, and when culture lacks, matter of education. Poor food education as a child will create us a great deal of issues throughout life. If mum and dad buy you very sugary junk like cereals when you are 3 years old, and take you to a low quality, child-friendly burger chain as a treat on a sunny Sunday, you’ll be conditioned to loving the really sweet junk cereals at breakfast. You’ll actually think they really taste yummy. And you will always continue to treat yourself to low quality, dubious-tasting junk burgers later in life.
And packaged food multinationals know it. Or maybe not? They employ hundreds of marketing and product specialists to engineer your children cereals, from the right amount of ingredients to the colours of the packaging and the type of advertising campaign. They use market research specialists, PR specialists and a whole range of consultants. It is fair to think these hundreds of well-paid specialists working at and for Big Food inc. know one or two things about you, your children and the psychology behind eating. Or maybe not. Maybe the score of highly educated and hard working corporate types behind your cereal brand is not trying to make you hooked on their products. I am such a cynic hey!
If you didn’t inherit a food culture from your well-meaning parents, you love your junk food treats and are too busy and overwhelmed to make any sense of the slogan like messages the media throws at you everyday, how do you start learning about real food?
1- Get rid of 95% of ready to eat, industrial packaged food. Better 100% if you can. Only buy whole food ingredients.
2- Make sure you understand if there are any issues with your gut and digestion, or if you have any sub-clinical imbalances that need to be addressed with a short term specific regimen. Do you get evening headaches? Feeling fatigued? Consider getting some expert advice here, go see a nutritionist.
3- Eliminate or greatly reduce foods that you know you don’t handle well (trigger foods) – if you eat cheese or white bread you get bloated? Self-awareness applied to nutrition will go a long way.
4- Eat good portions of high-quality proteins, healthy fats and low GL carbs at every meal, with plenty of vegetables and fruit.
5- Live happy and content.
The best diet is no diet. Or the high-quality, whole ingredients, balanced diet. A food culture can’t be bought at the supermarket but some focus on food will change your life.