There's a Better Way to Do This

Often when I write, I add a lot of qualifiers - "if", "perhaps", "maybe"... Not today. I'm just going to say it right out: there's a better way to do this.

By "this" I mean health. I've had some ups and downs with my health recently, as has the Raamonster. Doctors have a very one-eyed view of miscellaneous aches and pains and fatigue. They tend to do a lot of tests and then say something along the lines of: "eat less, exercise more, and take these drugs." Just to emphasis the point, Specialists like to send you a very large bill for the privelege of receiving this advice from a professional.

I'm all for plenty of exercise and a healthy diet. I'm troubled by what gets defined as a healthy diet (or, in fact, a healthy body) when you delve a little deeper. I'm particularly troubled that (supposedly) health-promoting organizations get paid for their endorsements of foods. Surely it is a conflict of interest for medical research to be funded by food companies??

So, I want to cut through all the confusion about what's healthy and what's not. I'm not completely unqualified to voice my opinion on this - I majored in Biochemistry not so many years ago.

It is really very, very simple. Real food and real life are good for you. Fake food and fake life are not. Seriously. Let me explain.

God put Adam and Eve in the garden and told them that every green thing was theirs for food. Yes, some plants are poisonous, but with very few exceptions if something tastes good, comes from a plant and is recognisable - it is good to eat. Sugar tastes good, it comes from a plant, and it looks nothing like the original product. (I'm not saying I don't eat sugar, but I'm really, really trying to cut down.) Sugar is not good for you.

Let me add another guideline - the amount you eat of any food should be inversely proportional to the effort (whether yours or someone else's) required to get it into your mouth. That sounds really complicated, but it's not. If we had to pick and shell our own macadamias, we wouldn't eat many, would we? If we had to pick, shell, blanch and grind by hand the almonds in a yummy cake (not to mention extract the sugar), we would probably make a slice last more than thirty seconds... And we would probably eat it approximately once a year.

And here's another suggestion - if I can't make a food easily at home myself, then it's probably not really edible. I'm not sure how the oil is extracted from canola, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't make my own press and then whip up a batch of margarine. If I could, the results would probably be so revolting that I would never ever eat it again.

Here's another principle: If God says it's good to eat, then it's good to eat. If God says it's not good to eat, then it's not. I'm not sure why we're so distrusting of God's guidance on this point, considering He made both us and our food. "A land flowing with milk and honey," was God's promise to Israel, ergo, milk and honey aren't inherently evil. Jesus Christ called Himself the Bread of Life - so it is downright insulting to God to insist that grain products are inherently evil unhealthy.

On the other hand, God said not to eat certain animals (He even used the word "abomination", which is also the word used for behaviours so vile they are unmentionable in a public blog.) So I don't eat them. I don't need scientific proof that pork or shark or squid are bad for me. God tells me not to eat them. Done.

OK, there is a problem here. The reality is that there are people with serious allergies or intolerances to real foods. Unfortunately a large proportion of our food supply has been seriously adulterated in the quest to "improve" yields, or flavour, or just to make a whole lot more money.
So sometimes even "real" foods aren't the best to eat, but we can at least use some common sense to choose the best alternative (e.g. soy milk loaded with canola and sugar is hardly the ideal dairy replacement).

My point is, we've placed far too much trust in professionals telling us what is good for us and stopped actually thinking for ourselves about what is going into our mouths. No matter how many ticks are on a box, or what claims a producer makes about something being "natural" or "organic", there is no substitute for listening to our better judgement. If a packaged food is "convenient" then there is a good chance that there is a big compromise on the quality of calories in the product.

The last thing I'm going to say for now - simple foods can be convenient (although I know this may not be true if you have the misfortune to have coeliac disease or another food sensitivity/intolerance/allergy or metabolic disorder). For example oats or porridge and milk (we drink the closest to "real" we can get - unhomogenised "organic" milk) is just as convenient as cornflakes, and a much healthier, more filling option. Add a piece of fruit and you have a complete breakfast.

Healthy is not just a way of eating, it's a way of thinking. More to come another time...