Are There Really Any Bad Foods?
Posted by Janelle Brown on
It’s been interesting to me as I have posted my pictures for the #10DayCookChallenge how many comments I have gotten about food choices I shoulda, coulda used.
Should any food really be demonized?
And yes, of course there are always better nutritional choices we want to make based on our own individual bodies and even individual beliefs about how the world works. But after spending almost 40 years on one different diet or other I have to wonder if there is really any kind of demon food. I feel like I am inundated all my waking hours with new information about nutrition and diet. It feels like there are lots of voices and lots of noise. Maybe it is because we have so many options available now through grocery stores, on-line retailers, co-ops and farmer’s markets etc. for feeding ourselves.
Is the abundance of choices and food a luxury, a curse or maybe both? Can you imagine someone homesteading on the frontier, scratching away to have enough food to not starve through the winter, arguing about brown rice, white rice, cauliflower or quinoa?
I think we all fundamentally grasp that calories are not created equal. 100 calories of cookies are not the same as 100 calories of vegetables, right? But I’m beginning to embrace the idea that there must be balance. A balance for long term sustainability of a clean eating plan. In our current carbohydrate phobic society, it seems that eating any kind of grain, including brown rice, is like committing treason. Everyone knows you should eat cauliflower, right?!? But guys, brown rice has many nutritional benefits. And honestly, I’m not here to argue the different nutritional superiority or inferiority of different food choices. My point is to advocate sanity and balance. Does having a little bit of rice at dinner help you not get into the cookies two hours later. Does adding a sweet potato or other sweet tastes in the meal to keep you from hitting the ice cream at 10pm. Or maybe you are the type of person who benefits from upping the fat content in your meal and using the cauliflower rice.
The next evolution in my health journey will be figuring out my perfect balance is. I embrace only one constant. Vegetables should be front and center on any meal. What goes with the vegetables is what’s up for discussion.
Let’s stop demonizing one food or another. Let’s think of food choices as just that, choices. Options to be adapted and modified to our personal needs and preferences.