These days, everyone is throwing around the word healthy as if it's going to go out of style. Companies slap the word on their products and watch their sales soar and it's convenient for consumers to purchase a product based on front-of-package health claims, rather than reading the label.
Traditionally, the term healthy meant a person was in a state of good physical and mental well-being. Let's google it!
"The general condition of a person in all aspects. It is also a level of functional and/or metabolic efficiency of an organism, often implicitly human" 1.
We don't eat something healthy. We eat something nutritious and it makes us healthy. So how did healthy come to describe our food?
The advertising industry could be to blame for the word's misuse. The word healthy became synonymous with nutritious simply because it was marketed to us that way. Now lets google nutritious!
"Nutrition (also called nourishment or aliment) is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary (in the form of food) to support life" 2.
Nutrition is the action and health is the reaction. Though the words have come to mean the same thing in the food packaging world, healthy and nutritious are not interchangeable terms. You wouldn't call someone nutritious for the same reason we shouldn't label our food healthy.
That being said, products are currently mislabelled this way. We must learn how to decipher nutritious items from imposters using more than a company's empty prepackaged promise.
What's In A Name?
It has become fashionable for companies to label their products healthy because of some of its content. A box of granola bars may read healthy and it may contain nuts and seeds, which are indeed health promoting, but reading the label could expose taste enhancers such as glucose (sugar) and sodium (salt) in large quantities, preservatives to prolong shelf life, or the box has simply been sitting on that shelf for months. The granola bar is not actually nutritious.
The best way to insure your diet is nutritious is to eat foods in their most natural state. Our bodies can digest them efficiently and have been doing so for millions of years.
Consider an apple. An apple you pick off the tree and consume immediately contains more nutrients than an apple that is picked, then shipped to a grocery store, which contains more nutrients than an apple that is picked, covered in wax, stored in a factory, then shipped to a grocery store, which contains more nutrients than an apple which is picked, waxed, stored, juiced, mixed with other ingredients and preservatives, then shipped to the grocery store.
Eating foods in their most natural state (think fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains) is referred to in the health and fitness industries as eating clean. Such foods are nutrient dense so we are satisfied eating less and stay fuller longer. These foods also take less energy to break down, so our bodies have more energy for cleaning and repair.
Nutritious Shopping Tips
1. Choose mostly fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains and pseudograins (see below).
2. Avoid prepackaged items such as microwave dinners, canned foods, crackers, most cereals and granola bars.
3. Make a prepackaged exception for frozen whole fruits and vegetables, whole grain or gluten-free (better) pastas, wild brown basmati rice and psuedograins like quinoa, buckwheat groats, oat groats, millet, amaranth, and whole or sprouted flax and chia seed.
3. Focus shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store. Avoid going down most aisles which tend to be stocked with low in nutritional value items.
4. Read each label carefully, keeping in mind the serving size located at its top.
5. If you don't know what it is, don't put it in your mouth! Products which feature lengthy chemicals you can't even pronounce are best avoided.
6. Items that boast low calorie, zero calorie or diet such as sodas and sweeteners are filled with chemical replacements. There is no such thing as a healthier soda.
7. Eat your calories. Don't drink them! Unless you are making homemade smoothies or vegetable juices, stick to filtered water and herbals teas whenever possible. Fruit also has a high water content which will satisfy your sweet tooth.
Healthy is a lifestyle and nutrition is your yellow brick road. Tell the Wiz I say hi!
Sarah
*As we all know, to achieve optimal health, a nutrious diet should be accompanied by a fitness program*
1. wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritious
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