The Beginner’s Guide to Healthy Eating

Editorial

“There’s just too much information for me to keep up.” This is our most common assault to logic when it comes to eating. This sort of surrender does no good; and, it can do a great deal of harm to our health. So, let’s try to make sense of the madness together.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” This wonderful piece of reductive wisdom comes to us from food ethics writer Michael Pollan. In a New York Times piece that spawned a best-selling book on our obsession with healthy eating, the author tried to cut through the absolute overload of intelligence we’re force-fed every day on eating.

We’ve all heard the logical about-turns before. Red wine is good. Alcohol is bad. Eating animal fat will end in DEATH. Vegetable based trans-fats will send you blind. Chocolate is good. Sugar will send you quickly to your grave. Blah. Blah. Blah.

Let’s go back to the Pollan reasoning for a little bit of sense.

In the piece, Pollan immediately goes on to say, “Well, actually. It’s much more complicated than that.” However, the mantra is a great way to maintain a balance that would be considered admirable by our fabulous food Nanny, Nutrition Australia. 

It’s broadly agreed by dieticians and medical science that eating a variety of plants and plant-based foods is good for you. This does not mean you must immediately transform into a joyless vegan whose palate greets nothing racier that brown rice wrapped in misery. What it does mean, however, is that you should acquaint yourself with the Healthy Living Pyramid and perhaps rethink the proportions of what you are currently eating.

This does not mean a hair-shirt diet. This does not mean that you must, for all time, farewell butter, ice-cream and, mmm, bacon. What you do a little of the time to your gut is not so important. What you do most of the time will govern your health.

A great-aunt of mine used to say, “Everything in moderation. Even excess.” I actually like this axiom more when it comes to eating than the Pollan quote. It helps me remember to eat plant foods, which will guard against many ills, most compellingly, cancer. And, it helps me remember that every now and then, it is okay to have just a little of what I fancy.

Another helpful maxim in maintaining a diet of which you doctor would approve is this: if it took a lot of human energy to produce in, it’ll take a lot of human energy to expel. Think about food in a state-of-nature scenario. For example, an apple requires little action from a human. He can just pluck it off a branch. A pig, on the other hand, requires a good deal of energy to chase, kill and butcher. And chocolate ice-cream? Well, first you need to harvest cacao beans, milk a cow, separate the cream and... oh, goodness, I just think I’ll take the apple. This way of thinking helps you remember to avoid processed foods.

In the Pollan piece, we’re introduced to a new kind of eating disorder. One, he suggests, that has claimed the souls of many. “Orthorexia” is the obsession with eating only “healthy” things. And it’s this obsession that fuels fortified breads, vitamin-enriched cereals and other things in packets that claim to be “super foods”.

The natural, less-processed option is always best. If it comes in a packet and, most particularly, if its list ingredients you can barely pronounce, eat it only rarely. And, heck, if it’s chicken nuggets, don’t eat it at all. Now that stuff will kill you.

Okay. It won’t kill you. If you must eat cartilage, gizzards and feet whizzed up with trans-fats and salt and wrapped in simple carbohydrates and fried in more trans-fats, go for it. But go for it very occasionally.

Now. Go pluck an apple. And eat your greens.

Helen Razer, Citysearch