Food Gossip
Food Gossip. So much food Gossip.
I’m calling food gossip the talk you hear about food that may or may not be true, but spreads like wild fire.
Heresay. Loose Lips. Idle Talk
Faulty information, untruths, half-the story.
Carbs are bad, protein is good, juicing is healthy, detox regularly.
Food Porn.
Food Gossip
In a restaurant recently I heard a mother talking to her adolescent son:
The mother, “You’re not going to just get french fries and ice cream tonight.”
The son, “No, I’m getting a corn dog too!”
Well meaning mom, “Good. The more protein you eat the better.”
I thought about correcting her. Being THAT girl. That annoying person who must educate. You know, basically save their lives with protein facts and then, because I’m relatively sane I didn’t.
Then I thought of you. Please forgive me.
With so much conflicting nutrition information available to us, it’s hard to know what a healthy diet looks like. Recommendations for wheat-free, high-protein, and low-fat diets make it difficult to tell the sound advice from the fads. Add kid’s soccer games, long work weeks, family needs, and it just get’s overwhelming, who has time of figure it all out?
Not you.
So, here are two quick reality checks that may help you to clarify if a food choice makes sense. Ready?
First, a food can’t be considered healthy in one way if it’s going to make you sick in another.
[Tweet “First, a food can’t be considered healthy in one way if it’s going to make you sick in another.”]
For example, you need calcium, and ice cream has calcium. But it can also have a lot of sugar and saturated fat, making it a poor source for your calcium needs. Same goes for drinking a whole bottle of wine for cardiac benefits while ignoring alcohol’s toll on the liver—or eating a corn dog to get protein. If something is toxic in one way, it doesn’t really matter if it’s healthy in another.
Second, remember that you don’t get credit for what you don’t eat. Which totally sucks but there it is.
[Tweet “Remember that you don’t get credit for what you don’t eat.Which totally sucks but there it is”]
This gets right at the heart of the term “potato-chip vegetarian.” That’s someone who thinks that simply not eating meat makes them healthy, regardless of what they do eat. The truth is that NOT eating a certain food doesn’t impact you in any way; your body doesn’t even know you were being virtuous or choosy. It’s only the foods you actually consume that either make you sick or keep you healthy.
In review:
If the food can make you sick it isn’t healthy.
It’s what you eat that counts. So, Ann smarty pants, what should I eat then? Try this for breakfast and this post directs you to my free ebook on eating How to eat
And now we can be best friends.
