Superfood is Superbad, Carbs are Good & Other Nutrition Pet Peeves

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Grilled veggies. Yum!

The food we eat (or don’t eat) is personal, pulling from our individual, social and cultural values. Our life experiences are often tied up with our eating experiences, and food can be an important and fulfilling part of our lives.

In short: Food is important to us. It’s yummy, and it makes us feel good.

But, there are other aspects of the relationship with food, which might not be so healthy and harmounious. Particularly in the fitness community, this relationship may confuse “skinny” or “thin” for “healthy” and “fit,” leading to a variety of approaches to food that don’t necessarily put good nutrition first.

While some aspects of nutrition are individual, there are a few current trends and assertions about food that I find problematic because they are promoted as “healthy” or “fit”, when the science just doesn’t support those claims.

Among those assertions, here the top 5 that have been bugging me lately.

#1. Carbs are bad for you. 

The claim that carbohydrates are “bad” is too simplistic and misses the important nuances of the role of carbohydrates, especially for endurance athletes.

Carbohydrates are an important fuel source. Even though long course athletes want to be more efficient with burning fat for fuel, we (and our glucose-loving brains) still need carbohydrates as well. And, when it comes time for recovery, nothing will restore those glycogen starved muscles except for carbohydrates.

Want to get up the next day and get after it again? Well, eat your carbs. Wonder why your recovery is lagging? Maybe it’s your sagging glycogen stores.

Fruit and berry spinach salad - chock full of nutrient-dense carbohydrates. I know what you are thinking: Aren’t some sources of carbohydrates problematic?

Yes!

The processed or refined carbs are problematic when they are a mainstay of the typical diet. It’s these types of foods that give whole food carbs a bad rap.

Luckily for our glucose loving brain and muscles, carbohydrates do come in a nutrient-dense, healthy and whole food variant.

Vegetables, which should be the focus of every meal we eat, have a nutrient dense supply of carbohydrates. And, many vegetables also come with grams of protein and sometimes fat. Yes, vegetables have protein. In fact, some vegetables have a higher percentage of protein per serving than meat-based sources of protein! Those poor vegetarians are saved. 😉

In comparison to vegetables, processed granola bars, breakfast cereals, bagels and the like are clearly examples of nutrient-deprived carbohydrates.

Let’s compare two different foods that have a high carb count: KASHI 7 Whole Grain Flakes and a sweet potato. One processed in an industrial factory, the other out of the ground.

Nutrition Facts
This is the nutrition information for Kashi’s 7 Whole Grain Flakes, marketed as “healthy,” “natural,” good for you. But, take a closer look at the micro-nutrients (vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals). Not so much going on there. Nutrition info is available from: http://nutritiondata.self.com/.

While this cereal has 6 grams of fiber, which is good, that’s about all it has going for it. There are only but a few nutrients (vitamin and minerals) packed into the 175 calories per serving.

Now, let’s check out the sweet potato. Same number of carbs, about the same number of calories per serving.

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The sweet potato and the serving of Kashi cereal have a comparable amount of calories and carbohydrates. Yet, look at the increased amounts of vitamins and minerals that you get with a serving of sweet potatoes. While there are more sugars in the sweet potatoes, it’s important to note that these are naturally occurring sugars, and the food has an overall LOWER glycemic load than the cereal. (The glycemic load is a measure of a food’s impact on your blood sugar. The lower the number the better. Foods with 10 or under GL are low, foods with 11-19 are medium, and foods 20+ are high.)

I offer this comparison to demonstrate the difference in carbohydrates between a processed version of carbs to a whole food, plant-based version. It’s worth noting, that sweet potatoes are one of the highest carbohydrate-containing vegetables. If you look at the nutrition facts for other vegetables, such as broccoli or zucchini, you’ll see they contain carbohydrates, but in significantly lower amounts.

#2. Superfoods cure what ails you. 

The “superfood” label is banned from use in the EU. Why? Because it’s a marketing gimmick, and the use of that term is frequently not supported by the science. It’s not that some foods aren’t really really really good for you – they are. But, no single food contains all of the nutrients the human body needs. Rather, a diverse diet of nutrient-dense foods is the key to healthy eating.

The use of the term “superfood” makes it seem as if there is a single food for what ails us. And, it also persuades us to buy over-priced foods that may be no better for us than the seemingly mundane vegetables and fruits that are regularly available.

I find the use of this term particularly offensive when it is slapped on to a supplement, which is highly processed and so far removed from the original food source that the benefit is largely negated. Am I saying all supplements are junk? Definitely not. But, I do think the claims of most supplements are overstated. By a lot. They are not super foods. Heck, supplements are even foods. 

Rather than a single super food, we should have a super diet, which includes a wide variety of nutrient-dense, whole foods.

IMG_1728#3. You don’t eat like a “normal” person. 

Especially since I stopped eating meat, I have noticed that social sabotage or pressure about food choices can be a problem.

John and I have been, more often than I would like, on the receiving end of critical judgment about the way we eat. No, we don’t eat the way most Americans eat. So, when we have meals with others, this can sometimes cause tension.

I’ve been told I have a “special diet,” that I “eat all of that healthy crap” (oxymoron?), and that I don’t eat “like a normal person.” All of this is said with the implication that I’m some how imposing on or threatening the other person. I’m not. Eat-and-and-let-eat! I ask that others do the same for me.

The peer pressure to conform to unhealthy choices is strong, and it appears in different ways across my various social circles. This social pressure works in tandem with marketing from the corporate food industry. Emotional connections to foods, social pressure, and persuasive and pervasive marketing claims make it challenging to make good food choices day in and day out.

If you’ve ever gone out to dinner with friends or had work place colleagues bring in donuts, you know what I’m talking about here. People might just give you the stink-eye if you order a salad while they are binging on subs and french fries. I’ve been called out at work on several occasions for eating salad, as if I’m infringing on ‘Murika’s freedom to eat crap and die of heart disease.

I think this pressure is especially hard when you first start making changes to how you eat. The nutritional lifestyle is still new, and the pressure to conform to old habits seems hard to resist. For John and I, gradual changes were the easiest to learn and then to sustain.

At times, this peer pressure is so strong it has made me feel guilty or as if eating “green” foods is somehow shameful. But, the pressure to conform isn’t as strong as how great I feel. So, I’m not willing to return to my formerly problematic eating lifestyle.

high-protein-vegetables-e1387391074604#4. Where will you get your protein? 

Part of this social pressure disguises itself as concern.

As plant-based eaters, the number 1 question that John and I are asked, “Where will you get your protein?”

Our answer? In everything we eat.

Most Americans eat too much protein, with some accounts saying we get as much as double the protein we need from the typical U.S. diet. Yet, there is a common misperception (fueled by industrial food producers in the meat and dairy industries) that we need to consume a lot of animal-based protein in order to be healthy, to build muscle, to lose weight.

But, according to the science, those claims aren’t true. Yes, we need protein, but we don’t need 35-40% of our diet to be protein; 10-15% works just fine for most of us (with 30% as an absolute upper range).

In addition to the scarcity myth, another persistent myth complicates our understanding of plant-based protein: only meat provides complete proteins (or amino acids). This myth was disproven by science quite a while ago, and we know now that vegetables can provide the same complete proteins that animal flesh does.

After all, I’m hardly wasting away over here. 😉

For more information on this subject, consider this article, which also provides additional sources. I also strongly recommend the documentary Forks Over Knives.

#5. This diet will make you skinny! 

Diets, in the sense of a highly structured plan for consuming certain foods, calorie counts and the like, are not a healthy approach to eating.

Trendy diets typically focus on deprivation, caloric starvation, or restriction and/or overemphasis of key macro-nutrient groups.

I prefer to think of my approach to eating as a nutritional lifestyle, with a certain philosophy that guides decision making about what to eat.

For John and I, that’s a plant-based philosophy. I much prefer the term plant-based to vegetarian, because it emphasizes the center of my philosophy: whole foods. There are plenty of unhealthy vegetarians and vegans, but it’s hard to eat unhealthy when you emphasize whole, plant-based foods.

If a particular diet is not sustainable, does not bring us enjoyment, and does not support the activities we engage in – it’s not healthy. I don’t care how much weight people lose on that diet. Losing weight is not synonymous with being healthy.

So, yeah, I’ve got some pet peeves when it comes to food, but I’m not so stubborn in my beliefs that I’m a purist, or as my friend Skibba refers to it: “a lifestyle nazi.” I can think of situations in which each of the five things I’ve listed above could be problematic for people I know. For example, too many carbohydrates (even “safe” ones) can be dangerous for people with certain conditions. For others, a structured diet may be the only solution to helping them get on a path of eating healthy.

I don’t believe the way we eat needs a fancy label or has to be perfect, causing us to police every morsel that drops in our mouths. Yeah, that’s not fun. Food should be enjoyable, AND it should be sustaining. I don’t think we don’t need to pick whether we live to eat or we eat to live. With the right nutritional philosophy, we can do both!

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What are your top nutritional pet peeves? Have I committed one in this post? What’s your nutritional philosophy?

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