What is “healthy”?

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what foods are good for you. When talking with people I often hear foods referred to as “healthy” and others as “not healthy”.

“Don’t eat bread, its ‘not healthy”
“I bought these crackers at the health food store; they are organic and ‘healthy’”
“Fruits are high in sugar so they are ‘not healthy’”
“I ate a salad for lunch because its ‘healthy’”

Ah, it’s so confusing. And rightly so, because what is considered “healthy” for one person may not be “healthy” for another. One person may be dieting and trying to lose weight; another may be lifting weights and trying to gain muscle. One person may have a gluten allergy; another may be trying to eat all organic foods in order to avoid pesticides. There are so many aspects to healthy – we could discuss this all day and still not be done.

But here is my basic healthy/not healthy list (take it with the proverbial grain of salt as your own dietary needs and goals will vary)

1. High fructose corn syrup is not healthy. Avoid or eat every little.
2. Trans fats are not healthy. They are not naturally occurring; they were created to extend the shelf life of food products. Avoid them.
3. “Good fats”, i.e. olive oil, avocados, omega-3s, are healthy, but they are fat. It is easy to consume more calories than you need is your fat ratio is too high, so keep it in balance.
4. Fruit is healthy, but high in natural sugars. It can increase your overall caloric intake without much substance. Pair fruit with protein. Limit fruit juice and dried fruits (see #1 about HFCS – watch out for it in juice and dried fruit)
5. Pre-package foods are mostly “not healthy”. I like how this article put it
   “It’s easy to slip something unwholesome into a box of packaged crackers. It’s pretty hard to slip it into soup I make from scratch out of simple ingredients I bought at the farmers market.”
   I read somewhere that we shouldn’t eat anything our grandmothers wouldn’t recognize as food, I think that is a good suggestion (depending on your grandmother of course).
6. Most restaurant size portions are “not healthy”. Try to eat smaller meals more frequently.
7. Salad ingredients are healthy, but many salads at restaurants are not. Pay close attention to the dressing (amount and caloric value) and the cheese, croutons and nut add-ins. Again it’s all about balance.
8. Organic products are “healthy” but only in the sense that they don’t contain the junk (pesticides, herbicides, hormones, etc..) found in their non-organic counter parts. So an organic apple is healthy because apples are healthy, but organic potato chips are still potato chips and no more healthy for your waist line than regular potato chips. This article describes this point much better than I can.
9. Soda pop isn’t healthy, ever. It has zero nutritional value.
10. Ignore labels that say “Low-fat” or “Trans-fat free” and so on. Here is why:
    “Experiments showed that putting a “low fat” label on food caused everyone, especially overweight people, to underestimate its calories, to eat bigger helpings and to indulge in other foods.”
    Read more at nytimes.com.

There are so, so many more aspects of healthy eating and food specifics that we could discuss. The more I type, the more confusing it gets. But there is good information out there, keep searching and reading. And when in doubt, eat whole, natural foods, not things that come in packages.