The "Health Food" Myth
What, exactly, is health food?
A lot of the boxes, bags, and bars lining grocery store shelves and freezer sections, proclaim themselves health foods. The boxes are covered in marketing claims that sound good, but are precisely worded not to violate federal requirements. “Supports liver function” or “heart-healthy” are a couple of these marketing terms. They are myriad.
Big food companies get to make those claims if they add a vitamin or mineral to the food that has been shown to be good for the organ or function mentioned. And they only add it because it doesn’t exist in the food product they’re selling, or, if it ever did it was stripped away in the processing.
Let’s take the example of white flour. While flour is not a whole food. It’s a processed, refined food. It started out as wheat, and then it was hulled, and stripped of its bran and stripped of its germ, leaving only the endosperm. That’s the part we eat when we consume white flour. No protein. No fiber. No B vitamins. No Iron. Just empty calories, really. It’s like eating the dressing, but leaving out the salad.
And then, because the grain has been so stripped, nutrients have to be added back in artificially, to make up for those lost in the refining process, so people living on white bread and white flour and white rice don’t die of malnutrition. So they add in iron, some of the B vitamins, folic acid, etc.
The whole grain is far superior. The fiber in the bran, the protein and nutrients in the germ help the body process the carb-rich endosperm. All the parts of the grain work together as a symphony to nourish the body. The nutrients in a whole grain are far more appropriately absorbed and used by the body than those artificially added later.
If you just eat one part of the plant without the others, there’s no symphony. There’s just a discordant imbalance. And when our bodies are out of balance, we get sick.
For a food to be “healthy” it pretty much has to be whole. Not stripped down and then artificially “enriched” and packaged in a box and stamped “HEALTHY.”
And there is not a lot in grocery store boxes, bags, or bars that is whole. But there are a few things.
What whole foods are NOT in the produce section
Old Fashioned or steel-cut oats. Whole grain flours and whole grain brown rice. (Here’s a list of all the rices that are whole grain from Forks Over Knives)
In the freezer section, there are some “Eat Meati” brand filets that mimic steak or chick’n as nearly as a vegan would want them to, made entirely of mushroom roots, and three of the “Real Veggies” brand burger patties, the Purple Roots, the Black Bean, and the Sweet Potato varieties are oil-free, whole plant food based, and tasty.
Sometimes I’ll buy frozen French fries or hash browns as time-savers, but only if they don’t have added ingredients. Just potatoes.
Of course frozen fruits and veggies are excellent choices, but I avoid those that are seasoned or flavored or sauced or sweetened.
Applesauce marked “natural” and “unsweetened” is an excellent option. For other canned/jarred fruits, my quest is to find those “packed in water.” “Packed in their own juices” really means packed in a fruit juice concentrate. Again, if I want the juice, I eat the fruit. So “packed in water” is best, and the most difficult to find.
We buy fruit preserves instead of jelly or jam, unsweetened, just the fruit and some pectin to make it gel. We get natural peanut butter where the only ingredient is peanuts. We get Ezekiel brand breads and English muffins. We buy ketchup and mustard and pickle relish (he likes sweet, I like dill) and pickles, and a very small amount of canned vegetables in low or no sodium varieties. We keep those minimal because the canning process cooks out a lot of the nutrients. Frozen veggies retain more. Fresh, even more yet.
Then there are minimally processed items like tofu (soybean curd,) tamari (a mild soy sauce,) and nutritional yeast (a de-activated yeast fermented with molasses.)
Sour dough bread, because it’s fermented, is included in a whole food plant-based lifestyle as the benefits of the fermentation outweigh the high gluten bread flour with which it’s made. I mean, I wouldn’t eat it every day. Well, I would, but I choose not to.
We’ve also discovered a couple of breakfast cereals with excellent ingredients lists in our local food mart That’s literally its name, “The Local Food Mart.” The brand name for these is Vitabella.
That’s about all I can think of that comes in a box or a bag.
Healthy food is real food
The more easily you can identify the food or its ingredients, the healthier it is. What I mean is, when you look at a carrot, you know it’s a carrot. When you look at a carrot cake, you can’t tell it was made from a carrot. You see what I mean?
My favorite cookie recipe uses raisins, grated apple, oatmeal, a few walnuts, and several other ingredients. When I eat a cookie, I can see and taste and feel the texture of the raisins, the apple, the oats, the walnuts. Its source ingredients are still identifiable.
The produce section is the most honest section in the grocery store. Everything is exactly what it looks like. A potato is a potato, a cabbage is a cabbage, an apple is an apple. That’s where we do the majority of our shopping.
Organic
When times are normal, we buy as much organic as we can find, and only reluctantly use the non-organic stuff. My main concern is pesticide exposure. And even then, some pesticides are allowed under the organic certification program
I halfway trust the “Certified Organic” label. The growers must meet the conditions set to use the label, and if they’re found to be dishonest, they can be fined and lose their right to use the label ever again or for a period of time.
I only halfway trust it, because it’s run by the USDA, which just had its funding cut by a billion-with-a-B dollars, and its staff cut by tens of thousands. By now, every requirement has likely been dropped or soon will be, and anyone who writes a big enough check to you-know-who will be able to call itself “certified organic”. The term will be little more than a bought and paid for marketing tag, just like the “dolphin safe” label on tuna.
So there’s that. I don’t think all that has happened yet, though, so for now, I buy organic when I can find it and when I can afford it. I love buying from local farms, and especially from local organic farms. I can talk to the farmers and I trust them. I’m fortunate to live in a rural area. 90% of the farms around me are animal farms, dairy and beef, but the other 10% grow crops. Wish we could flip that.
“Organic” sometimes means “fertilized with actual manure instead of chemical fertilizer.” So you must be diligent about washing everything. Personally, I make my own compost and fertilize with that. I feel better about that.
Non-Organic
Even when I can’t afford organic, I still buy buttloads of fruits and veggies every week (while dreaming of planting an orchard, and grape vines, and strawberry patches that produce all year long somehow, despite our New York winters. I want a greenhouse.)
Fresh produce is the best produce, even during the off season, when it’s being flown across the country from California or Florida, or in the good times of yore, from Mexico and Chile and Columbia and Brazil. It travels a bit, but It’s still the healthiest food we can be eating, even if we’re consuming it a week or more after it’s been harvested.
As rankings go for “health foods” check this out:
Fresh fruits and vegetables are always better than frozen, even if they’re days old.
Frozen fruits and vegetables are always better than canned.
Canned fruits and vegetables are always better than ultra-processed foods.
Whole grains are always better than refined grains.
Brown rice is always better than white rice.
Whole grain flour is always better than white flour.
Maple syrup or date paste or raw sugar are healthier than refined white sugar
Soy milk is (probably, IMO) better for us than nut milks
Nut milks are WAY healthier than dairy milks
Whole foods are healthier than processed foods
Minimally processed foods (tofu, soy sauce, canned veggies) are healthier than ultra-processed foods
EVEN ultra-processed plant-based foods are less harmful to our health than animal proteins
*WASH your produce thoroughly, physically brushing or scrubbing to remove contaminants RINSE your rice until the water runs clear.*
What about the bars?
I’ll be experimenting with some bar making of my own soon, and will be back with success & failure tales and a recipe when I settle on what works best.
I’m thinking oatmeal, peanuts, almonds, walnuts, raisins, cashews, pecans, a little maple syrup…
Maybe I’ll get to that this weekend!
Perfection is overrated
I’m not perfect at this. Every now and then I eat a bag of potato chips, or a handful (or several hands full) of dark chocolate-covered almonds, which are dairy-free, but full of oil. Probably coconut. I’m never going to be perfect. Now that it’s summer, I suspect my exercise quotient will increase a lot, because of lawn and veggie garden work. I get lazy and my BP creeps up. I correct myself and it goes back down.
But I’m convinced the elimination of animal proteins from my diet has added years to my life and life to my years, even with my fumbles and foibles. I think doing the best we can is all we can ask of ourselves.
Being happy is as crucial to good health as eating well, I’m convinced of that as well. So go be happy and eat good food!
Got books?
Let me rephrase…
Got page-turning, heart-racing, unputdownable books?
