Last year (2017), the ‘Clean Eating’ movement was clubbed over the head partly because it’s very name suggested some other foods must be ‘dirty’ – and with that comes guilt and fear – seemingly imposed by a food-loving elite on the less fortunate.
Despite that attack, and despite some people moving away from the term, the whole wellness movement seems very much still with us. Nothing wrong with ‘wellness’ you may say, but if you think about it, doesn’t the concept of ‘healthy food’ face the same problem?
Healthy food implies there must be ‘unhealthy food’. But is there? Or is it just simply a matter of moderation and diversity.
I am going to stick my neck out and propose that food is neither good, nor bad – it just is.
Food just ‘is’
Sugar isn’t evil, Carbohydrates aren’t bad, Fat isn’t harmful, Salt won’t kill you. Actually, in themselves these are all very important nutrients. However, when you read some newspaper headlines, you’d think each on it’s own might shorten your life.
I think the reality is that it is the excess of certain foods that can be harmful.
For example, a hamburger only becomes ‘bad for you’ (not bad) if you eat one everyday. If you have MacDonald’s everyday, you don’t get the range of nutrients you need, you eat too much added sugar, your food is not diverse, and so your gut microbes are limited. I discuss more about the impact of microbes on our health in another piece here.
I would argue every kind of food, in moderation, has something important to give us; whether it be nutrition, joy, comfort, family bonding or socialising. So maybe there really is no such thing as ‘unhealthy food’ (or healthy food, for that matter). It may be the excess that makes something unhealthy.
How we see food
Maybe the reason we see food as healthy or not, is to do with our frame of reference. This is where I think we need to turn the idea of ‘healthy food’, or rather ‘health and food’, upside down.
What do I mean by that? Well, nowadays, there is a huge focus in society on health, and healthy food is seen as an important part of that. When we consider improving our health, we tend to think about doing some of the following,
- losing weight
- eating less
- exercising more
- reducing stress
And the like.
Health is at the top of the pyramid, and the rest are underneath.
Health on Top
But what if we re-frame this and turn the pyramid upside down?
We could put food at the top and health becomes one factor of food, as I mention above. This way, our focus is on the multiple functions of food, not just the ‘health’ function.
So, we get something like this
Food on Top
