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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #175:

What I eat and the rules I (try to) follow

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Find all previously published Food and Health Facts here

“So . . . what do you eat?”  

This question has been tossed my way occasionally in the two years since I launched Food and Health Facts – often with a mildly accusatory tone and a sideways glance. It’s a fair inquiry, given how much I write about America’s toxic food culture and how it’s contributing to massive rates of disease and death throughout the country.

But I’ve tried to stay away from extended discourses on precisely what to eat to get healthy. I recognize that food choices can be very personal – and that many people don’t want unsolicited advice about the relative health of specific foods (or dietary habits). I also recognize that dietary advice about can easily be found elsewhere – with the caveat that there’s so much advice (and so much conflicting advice) that it’s easy to become overwhelmed.

Ok, with that aside, what would a typical day of my eating look like?

Breakfast

1 cup of Bob’s Red Mill Quick Cooking Rolled Oats, with added blueberries, walnuts, chia seeds, ground flax, cinnamon, and one cup of water

OR

1 bowl of Ezekiel sprouted whole grain cereal with added blueberries, ground ginger, goji berries, and unsweetened Silk soy milk 

Lunch

Lundberg brown rice crackers with oil-free hummus, Cleveland Kitchen roasted garlic sauerkraut, and arugula

Dinner

Whole Foods garbanzo beans with Italian barley, mushrooms, arugula and diced tomatoes 

Snacks

Hummus with carrots, peanut butter on bananas

Beverages

Tulsi green tea, with lemon and ginger

Potentially more interesting (and hopefully more useful) than seeing the specifics of what I eat may be the general rules I do my best to follow. These rules reflect that I, like virtually everyone else in the United States (and much of the developed world), am surrounded by food that meets the definition of CRAP: calorie rich and processed. It’s not impossible to avoid consuming CRAP foods (and beverages), but it takes effort and planning. So here are my rules, in no particular order.

Eating out is a recipe for trouble. Most restaurants are dietary disasters. The portions are larger than they need to be – to make the patrons feel like they’re getting a good deal – and much of what’s on the menu is likely going to be larded with salt, sugar, butter, or oil to make it taste good. Nutritional value is low on the list of a restaurant’s concerns – and may not factor into the equation at all. As a healthy food sage explained to me once about restaurants, “It’s the Wild West out there. You really have no idea what you’re getting or how it was prepared.”

In your house, in your mouth. I heard this at a food conference a few years ago. It’s a reminder that if you have junk food in your house, it’s going to get consumed sooner or later (and probably sooner). The best way to ensure you don’t eat such foods? Don’t have them in the house.

Have lots of simple and healthy staples at home. Cooking can be a chore, particularly if you don’t derive any great pleasure from eating (yup, I’m in this category). And when you have limited time, it’s easy to default to what’s high in convenience and satiation – which is probably not going to be good for you. Find healthy alternatives and stock your pantry with them. For me, it’s pre-cooked beans – garbanzo beans, specifically. The dinner option listed above is nothing fancy, but it's quick, healthy, and yes, inexpensive.

Frozen food – fruit in particular – is your friend. I love blueberries. But I don’t love that they can get soggy after a few days in the refrigerator. Now I buy them frozen – in bulk. I do the same with mangos. I end up eating them almost every day. And there are “no significant differences” in the vitamin profile of fruits and vegetables that are frozen or fresh, according to a 2014 study. Focus on natural sweeteners. Those frozen blueberries and mangos go great over oatmeal or cereal – and eliminate the need to add sugar. Other fruits can serve the same purpose – so can spices like ginger and cinammon.

Drink tea not coffee. Tea can be consumed with lemon and ginger. Unless you’re drinking coffee black, you’re much more likely to add sugar, milk, whip cream, and countless other calorie-rich “toppings” offered by Starbucks and other coffee establishments.

Take control of what you eat. Attending an event where food is going to be served in mass quantities? You can be sure that the food is prepared to maximize convenience and reduce cost, while the nutritional value will be ignored. Try to eat at home before you depart so you’re not as tempted by what’s being offered.

Read nutrition labels. Food and drinks tend to be marketed in ways that make them sound much healthier than they are. This highlights the need to read nutrition labels and understand them (here’s a handy guide). A few tips in particular: Check out serving sizes (what looks like one serving size may be three or four). Focus more on the “added sugars” than the total sugar. And look for products where the number given for the sodium level is lower than the number given for calories.

Focus on fiber, not protein. Roughly 95 percent of Americans do not meet the recommended daily intake of fiber – depriving themselves of the health benefits it brings. (Some foods without fiber? Red meat, chicken, fish, eggs, and cheese.) By contrast, Americans get much more protein daily than what’s recommended. The misguided obsession with protein is a subject for another time, but keep in mind that it’s extremely rare to become protein deficient and that plant foods – fruits, vegetables, beans, grains, seeds, mushrooms, etc. – all contain protein.

Eat whole fruits instead of drinking fruit juice. Juices strip out the healthy part of fruit – the fiber – and mostly leave behind concentrated sugars and calories. A group of doctors from Harvard and Indiana University have pointed out that “one 12-ounce glass of orange juice contains 10 teaspoons of sugar, which is roughly what’s in a can of Coke.”

Sneak in healthy foods. Leafy greens like kale, arugula, and broccoli are very good for you, but I don’t love eating them. So I drop them into meals in ways that I don’t really notice them.

Rethink milk. Milk from cows (and other animals) has benefited from very slick and effective marketing. But a review of more than 100 studies by two Harvard professors led them to conclude that “there is no human requirement to drink the milk of other animals.” They pointed out that “all the nutrients in milk can be obtained in necessary amounts from other dietary sources,” such as kale, broccoli, nuts, seeds, and beans. Healthy alternatives include unsweetened almond milk and soy milk.

Travel with food. The most challenging food environments are often ones that are unfamiliar – more specifically, those you’re thrust into when you’re traveling. So you rely on what’s available at your hotel or at a restaurant – most of which is going to be CRAP. I try to counter this by staying at hotels with kitchens, such as Homewood Suites (part of Hilton). I will go to a local grocery store when I arrive – or have groceries delivered to the hotel. And I often travel with products that are easy to prepare in just about any environment with at least a microwave oven – oats, garbanzo beans, and Korean sweet potatoes. (The latter two items routinely get flagged by overzealous TSA agents – Korean sweet potatoes can look like hand grenades – and the beans often confiscated.)

You can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet. Exercise has a wide range of benefits, which include strengthening muscles, reducing blood pressure, and improving mental health. Alas, losing weight isn’t really one of those benefits. And numerous studies have shown that extensive exercise is not going to offset an unhealthy diet.

Read. As I noted above, there’s so much advice about what to eat (and so much conflicting advice), that coming to any conclusions can be overwhelming. There are no simple answers, but your body will give you feedback as to whether your diet is good for you. That feedback may come dribs and drabs though, so it’s worth taking the time to read up on different dimensions of food and health. Doing so will give you more awareness of what you’re ingesting and can hopefully shape your decision-making in a healthier direction. The Food and Health Facts website includes a section listing several food-focused books that I’ve read and found to be worthwhile.