Too Much to Know About Healthy Eating?
To Eat Healthy, Eat as our Grandparents Did
I just read about a Canadian study that examined whether people have changed their eating habits because of the recession. The findings, unsurprisingly, found that those on the lower end of the economic scale were cutting back on meals and healthy eating habits than those with more money. Duh.
But there was a finding in this study that did jump out at me. It showed that close to half of the survey participants said that there was “too much to know about healthy eating.”
Have we lost our common sense? Or have all the “experts” made us doubt our natural instincts? By turning healthy eating into a science, with advice on vitamins and nutrition, what should be an enjoyable, simple act now seems out of our reach. So here’s my suggestion on how to regain your food common sense.
A good place to start would be to cook like your grandmothers did (assuming they were good cooks!) They used fresh ingredients that weren’t terribly expensive, they didn’t rely on processed food, and they probably cooked seasonally and locally because there wasn’t the degree of food transport that we have today. A few other simply guidelines would be to limit your fats and portion sizes but don’t exclude them or skip meals. Eating out was a luxury, so most meals were cooked and eaten at home. Finally, look for balance in all of your food groups. If you do these things, you’re well on your way to fulfilling the scientific recommendations without the effort.
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4 Responses to “Too Much to Know About Healthy Eating?”
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I don’t think the problem is with science. I think the problem is the availability of too many food choices. This causes two problems. First an informed person aspiring to eat healthily has to be aware of the nutrtional attributes of more individual foods. The second problem is that much of the food that is available is relatively similar so the actual nutritional differentiators are more dificult to discern.
I would venture to say that when grandmother was cooking for the family there were not that many butterlike spreads out there. There was probably just butter.
I’m not entirely sure if I agree with you on this one. I think in so many areas of our lives there is an unavoidable information overload. Each month you’ll find a different piece of “pseudo” scientific nutrition advice and recommendations for a healthy lifestyle in what I would imagine are dozens of magazines, local newspapers, morning talk shows, etc. So it seems as though there’s too much to keep track of to figure it all out.
On the other hand, I agree that there is an abundance of food choices, and marketers make it their business in recent years to load those packages up with pseudo scientific claims about their nutritional value to make them seem healthy (as I discussed in yesterday’s post).
So, do you feel the selection of butterlike spreads is a good thing or a bad thing? Personally, I could stick with just butter, sometimes sweet and sometimes salted.
I’ve always been a proponent of butter and I appear to be still alive.
I think your point and my point have an underlying commonality. Today we are an overloaded society whether in information, food.or activity Everything comes so fast too. Look at the concept of blogging. If there were no Internet how many people could you share your opinion with and how many less opinions would a person have to evaluate. We live in an age of speed and volume. We can do great things with that power but the simple healthy meal may be a casualty of the time in which we live.
You might be right, but I hope not.