Food is an essential part of life. It provides the necessary nutrients to maintain our health and bodily functions. Beyond survival, we derive pleasure from our meals, reinforce our relational bonds when we sit together at dinner time, and deepen our connections through our love for food.
Food is a big part of our lives, and eating is something we do habitually. This means discussing the foods on our plates and, ultimately, inside our bodies is essential. If your foods are to sustain your bodily functions, then you must eat the right foods to promote health and well-being.
Like some things, food falls on a spectrum. On one end, you have the healthiest options; on the other, you have the least healthy ones. To eat more healthily, you need to understand the nature and origin of food sources. A quick and straightforward way is to classify foods into different categories. On the healthy side of the spectrum are whole foods. These are foods in their natural states. Unprocessed and nutrient-dense foods filled with vitamins, minerals, fiber and don’t have added sugar, sodium or unhealthy fats such as trans-fat.
Whole foods include all fruits & vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains, meat, fish and eggs. Think of foods you look at and immediately recognize that it exists in nature, like ugu, a piece of Titus fish or a sweet potato. To further this conversation of whole foods, some people may eat a whole-foods, plant-based diet, which excludes animal foods, like meat, fish, dairy and eggs—also known as veganism.
At the other end of the spectrum are highly processed foods. Highly processed foods are far from their natural state and usually have added sugar, unhealthy fats, sodium, and preservatives added. They have been substantially modified and transformed into foods with extended shelf life. They are energy-dense (lots of calories) but not nutrient-dense and can lead to obesity and chronic disease over time. An easy way to recognize highly processed packaged foods is a hard-to-pronounce long list of ingredients.
Highly processed foods include 2min noodles, refined pasta, white rice, some cereals, sodas, and biscuits. Think of foods you look at but can’t immediately recognize their existence in nature. Like most highly processed foods, they might be tasty, but they are packed with empty calories and deliver little nutritional value to your body. They taste so good because of all that added sugar, unhealthy fats and trans-fat.
Right in the middle are minimally processed foods. These foods have undergone some processing, mainly for preservation but still don’t deviate far from their original state. Some examples are frozen fruits, yoghurt, and pre-packed salads. This distinction is essential so you can knowledgeably navigate the world of food and make conscious decisions about how and what to eat.
Here are some Health Facts to Consider
A huge concern with highly processed foods is the stripping of their nutritional components. While processed foods may be convenient and tasty, they often lack essential nutrients such as fiber, vitamins, and minerals, making them nutritionally deficient.
A diet high in processed foods is akin to investing in a company with full knowledge of little or no return on your investment.
The downside of stripping the nutritional components is that it can contribute to poor overall health, increased risk of chronic diseases, and deficiencies in essential nutrients. For example, a diet high in processed foods is linked to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and certain types of cancer.
Removing nutrients can also cause overconsumption of calories, often leading to weight gain. For example, the removal of bran and germ in flour also removes fiber. Removal of bran is aimed at producing a flour with a white rather than a brown color, and eliminating fiber, which reduces nutrition. Without fiber to slow digestion, food is digested quickly, you feel hungry shortly after a meal, trigger higher fat storage, and can potentially overeat.
On the healthy side of the spectrum with whole foods is an abundance of vitamins and minerals. These foods contain the necessary raw materials that our bodies depend on daily, with the added benefits of fiber and phytonutrients, which protect against chronic diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease. A nutrient-dense profile delivers major nutrients to your body beyond calories, while processed foods contain high calories without much else.
Food is meant to provide our bodies with energy, but it should also provide nutrients. You trade nutrients for taste when you consume high amounts of highly processed foods.
Altogether avoiding highly processed foods isn’t typically necessary except if you have been strongly advised by your doctor, and incorporating some minimally processed foods isn’t a terrible idea. However, it is beneficial to consume more whole foods. If there were a number to recommend, it would be a 70/30 formula, with 70% being whole foods.
Three questions to ask to identify whole foods.
1) Can you identify the original state of the food?
2) Is it one or two ingredients rather than a long list of hard-to-pronounce ingredients?
3) Is it perishable, without an extended shelf life?
If you answer YES to all these questions, you have whole foods on your plate. Go ahead and enjoy your meal.
You can reach out to me if you would like me to create a whole food meal plan to improve your gut health, digestion or help you with lose weight.
