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Wednesday 7 November 2012

Healthy Food?

I feel I should warn you, I’m just going to have a bit of a rant but, before I do, here are a couple of questions for you:

What do the words ‘healthy food’ mean to you?
Which foods do you consider to be ‘unhealthy’?

The reason I ask is that I am fed up (notice the tenuous foodie terminology there!) to the back teeth with people talking about “healthy food”. Govt ministers, the media and even the medical profession bandy the ‘healthy’ word around at every possible opportunity without anyone knowing what the hell they mean by it. If the powers that be are trying to educate Joe Public about food and nutrition, they seem to be going the worst possible way about it. Don't even get me started about Traffic-Light Labelling...!

So, what is meant by healthy? Is it low in fat or low in cholesterol? Low in salt or low in sugar? High in fibre, maybe, or high in polyunsaturates? Who knows…? But that’s my point; some foods are being promoted as ‘good for you’ whilst others are being demonised as ‘unhealthy’ when they're actually nothing of the sort. The whole thing is a total distortion of the true situation, and the real message of "Moderation in all things" is being lost when, in reality, it's the very message which should be hammered home. It’s a mystery to me why people who ought to have some understanding of food can’t get it through their thick skulls that all food is healthy and no food is ‘bad’ for you!

An example: vegetables are ‘healthy’, apparently. OK, so let’s assume I live on steamed vegetables and nothing else; well, I’ll be really, really healthy, right? NO....wrong! I’ll be short on protein, calcium, fats, salt and sundry other vital vitamins and minerals. You see what I mean about promoting or demonising certain foods? Obviously, I’m not suggesting that living on ice-cream, chocolate and cake is a good idea but I feel we all need to keep a sense of proportion.

In a nutshell, some foods are better for you if they are only eaten occasionally in small portions and some foods are better for you if they are eaten more often in larger portions, but no foods are 'bad' and there is no need to cut any foods out of your diet in order to eat ‘healthily’.

Moderation is all!

Rant over – I am now going off to make some roasted butternut soup.

2 comments:

  1. That's not a rant Denise, that is stating the obvious to us mere mortals which is something politicians have no clue about. It's not what we eat, it's how much of it we eat. Everything in moderation never did anyone any harm. Eating chips with every meal is not good for anyone, the same as eating salad every meal isn't. The government, media and medical profession just banter the word healthy around as if it is some kind of miracle cure that we should all get involved with. The problem is that none of them know how to stop people eating ready meals or take-aways every day of the week. If they are so concerned about the nations diet they should lead by example..... I mean have any of these people actually taken a look in the mirror (and I don't mean the newspaper).
    I have yet to find one source of food that is healthy on it's own and the same goes for any unhealthy food.
    I hope your roasted butternut soup wasn't just nuts roasted in butter and then blitzed otherwise the powers that be will have to stick a red traffic light on it...Lol.

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    1. Hi Steve - it's the misinformation that gets spread around that really winds me up. Telling people there are 'good' foods and 'bad' foods is just so irresponsible *shakes head, sadly*. Thankfully, I stopped taking any notice of all that rubbish years ago!

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