Fed Up With Food: A Simplified Look at What You Should Be Eating

It seems to me that over the years eating has somehow become an over-complicated and analyzed thing. You would think that more information on a subject would be better, but it almost seems as if all this information is inhibiting what we humans were supposed to do – enjoy and eat food.

Now it does not help that most of the foods we call foods are actually highly processed food, full of things our body was not meant to handle. Such foods as the high fructose corn syrups and refined white flours for example.

On top of this there are so many different views of food and how it should be eaten and how much of what. Over just the past few years the thinking has done a full 180. It was eat lots of carbs and little fats, now it is eat lots of fats and proteins and little carbs. You also have the, eat only veggies and fruits people, the vegetarians, pescetarian, and many other tarian groups. I guess your safest bet is to just not eat, and stick to water (don’t do this you will die).

The question is what should I eat? Are fats evil? How about carbs (Legend has it that the devil created carbs. Sounds plausible), and what about proteins, why isn’t anyone talking about proteins?I guess they get a pass. How can three macronutrients get so over complicated?

Lots of questions

Here’s my attempt at simplifying what you should eat. This is my opinion, you can take it or leave it, but here it is.

Fats are good, proteins are good, and carbs, carbs are well, good. All three are good for you. You should be eating all three of them. Your body needs all three of them. None of them are inherently bad for you. All are good in the right quantities and from the right sources.

Picking the right foods is the problem  for most people. So what is food? Strange question right? Food is something that is ingested for its nutritious substance, which comes from plants and animals. So food is meat, fruits, vegetables, and unrefined grains. Food is not processed breads, pastas and meats.

There are 7 rules that Michael Pollan goes over in his book, In Defense of Food, which should help you make good

food choices.

1. Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
2. Don’t eat any thing with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce.
3. Stay out of the middle of the supermarkets; shop on the perimeter, and shop at farmers markets or grow your own food when possible.
4. Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot
5. Stop eating before you are full, leave the table a little hungry
6. Eat as a family, not in front of the TV, but at the dinner table
7. Don’t buy food where you buy your gasoline.

If you follow these simple rules you will be healthier for it. There is no, eat this much fat or this many carbs. If you are eating real foods, as your body was designed to do, you will be doing just fine. And, have some control and don’t pig out every meal.

Closing

Stop over-complicating eating. You know what you should be eating for the most part. Eat in moderation and eat real foods. It sounds too simple to work, but it works and has worked since the dawn of time.

Best

Josh Williams

Connect with me on Facebook and Twitter