All Foods Are NOT Part Of A Healthy Diet!

All Foods are NOT Part of a Healthy Diet!

When I was at The Ohio State University studying to become a registered dietitian, one of the catchphrases that almost all dietitians used was “all foods can be a part of a healthy diet.” I think some of the older profs in the medical dietetics department actually believed that. I know that many of the program’s younger students did not but were too intimidated to question that idea publicly. I was 43 at the time and fresh off my initial lifestyle modification experience. I never let a phrase like that go by without shooting my hand up and forcing the person that said it to try and defend how exactly deep-fried ice cream or even just a candy bar or a full-sugar soda could be a part of a healthy diet. More than one time, the conversation ended with, “why don’t we finish this conversation later privately in my office?” After a while, the profs stopped making comments like that when I was in the room because they knew I wouldn’t let them get away with it.

The medical dietetics department at OSU in 2003 had a heavy emphasis on two things; preparing clinical dietitians for work in intensive care units in critical care facilities and training future RDs in the particular communication skills required to effectively counsel people about nutrition. Regarding the latter, I was told privately that the “all foods can be a part of a healthy diet” idea was a way not to condemn absolutely everything that people were eating. Nobody wants to be the food police! I get that, but my argument then and seventeen years later, my argument still is that people need to be told the truth and then be allowed to make decisions for themselves. If people are not armed with the truth, they can’t make informed decisions. Right now, 62% of Americans are overweight with a body mass index over 24, and a whopping 43% of Americans are obese with a body mass index over 30, and it’s even worse for people in Kansas! If there was ever a time to be very clear about what foods fit into a healthy diet, it is right now! I view it like the disclaimer you get on your credit card. When you enter a payment, it tells you how long it will take to pay the entire amount off and how much interest you will be paying overall. The warning says, “sure, you can pay $50 on this balance of $5,000, but it will take you 37.8 years to pay off, and you will pay $18,000 in interest. It’s hard enough to pay the $5,000 back, but if you just pay just $50 a month, it’s going to hurt a lot! The same warning can be applied to drinking full-sugar soda and eating candy bars if you are trying to lose weight and get healthy. Sure, you can lose the weight; eventually, I am not saying you can’t, but it might take 30 years, and you will not lose the weight in time to avoid diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and kidney disease along the way! You might be able to do it eventually, but it will hurt!

One of my hobbies is the study of nutritional anthropology. I took all of my elective courses at OSU in anthropology, and if I was even 15 years younger at the time, I might have pursued a Ph.D. in nutritional anthropology. I learned that one of the things that made Homo sapiens extremely successful as a species is something called “dietary elasticity.” We can eat a whole lot of different things and still survive. We may not thrive, and our lives may be shorter and not so pleasant because we eat certain things, but not many things will kill us immediately. Some other animals on the planet have very well-defined habitats and specific foods that they eat, and when those are depleted, the species disappears or it at least threatened. Not us, we adapted well to almost any environment and can live on a wide range of different foods. In 2020, a bad thing about that is with so many new processed foods available, it is hard to tell what is the best food for us. There is always a 90-year-old person that eats krispy kreme donuts and drinks beer to point at. That is the benefit of dietary elasticity; it allows the species to survive, even on a diet of krispy kreme donuts and beer! That one 90-year-old person is called an “outlier” and represents the exception, not the rule.

The word “healthy” is also 100% relative. If you weigh 300 pounds and eat a diet consisting of pizza and beer, potato chips, ice cream and candy bars, then having a fast-food hamburger and some French fries wouldn’t be all that bad. It would even be an improvement, and you might even be able to stretch that into saying that it was healthier or part of a healthy diet It is not for most of us, and if you are trying to lose weight and improve health, you have no business eating a fast-food hamburger and some French fries!

Some things should not be considered part of a healthy diet, and some things should be considered part of a healthy diet. Here’s a list of things you can do today to move towards eating a healthy diet.

  1. Eliminate trans fats from your diet.
    Most trans-fat is formed through an industrial process that adds hydrogen to vegetable oil, which causes the oil to become solid at room temperature. Common sources are baked goods, such as cakes, cookies and pies, shortening, microwave popcorn, frozen pizza, refrigerated dough, such as biscuits and rolls, fried foods, including French fries, doughnuts, fried chicken, non-dairy coffee creamer and stick margarine. Doctors worry about trans-fat because it increases the risk of heart attacks, stroke and type 2 diabetes. Trans-fat lowers the “good” HDL cholesterol and raises the “bad” LDL cholesterol.
  2. Eliminate high-fructose corn syrup from your diet.
    There is some controversy about what high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) does in the body to disrupt communication between your brain and receptors that indicate that you have eaten enough food. Even if you ignore the controversial aspects of what HFCS syrup does in your body, there are plenty of reasons to avoid it. HFCS is a concentrated sugar that is absorbed quickly and does not promote an insulin response like sugar does, thus leading to increased triglycerides in the blood, greater fat production, and eventually nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The very cautious words of researchers warn that even though the role of HFCS in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is evolving, that evidence is “sufficient to support decreasing consumption as a clinical recommendation.” HFCS is used in soda, sweetened drinks, and even “healthy” fruit juices, peanut and other nut butters, many “healthy” granola and nutrition bars, processed desserts like candies, muffins, ice creams, canned fruit products like cranberry sauce, applesauce and salad dressings.
  3. Don’t drink your calories.
    Soft drinks are the leading source of added sugar and have been linked to metabolic syndrome and all of the associated diseases like diabetes and heart disease. The consumption of soft drinks can increase the prevalence of NAFLD independently of metabolic syndrome, meaning that although nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is associated with metabolic syndrome, those that consume large amounts of soft drinks can develop the disease even if they don’t have metabolic syndrome. Staying away from calorically dense and nutritionally deficient foods like soft drinks is a lifesaving rule to follow! You should also consider fruit juice as something to avoid as well. It is also a calorically dense food item completely void of fiber, which is an essential element of any healthy diet.
  4. Stop eating out of a deep-fryer.
    There are many mouthwatering foods and ways to cook out there besides deep frying. Deep-fried foods add unnecessary fat to your diet, and many commercial fryers are filled with trans-fat laden oils that reduce the cost of operation for the restaurant without consideration for your health. A study published in the British Medical Journal in 2019 uses more than 100,000 women followed for over 20 years for the Women’s Health Initiative to link those that ate fried foods with a higher percentage of premature death than those that did not eat fried foods.
  5. Reduce simple sugars or refined carbohydrates.
    Simple sugars or refined carbohydrates are the ones that enter your bloodstream quickly and raise blood sugar immediately. The is nothing wrong with carbohydrates, but choose complex carbohydrates with fiber. The DASH diet suggests 55 percent of calories come from carbohydrates.
  6. Reduce processed food.
    Fiber is what all processing removes, and it is essential for the proper functioning of your body in hundreds of ways. Stay away from the frozen food aisle as much as you can. Frozen packaged meals of all kinds are higher in salt, fat and sugar than whole foods that you make yourself. Remember that if it has a nutrition facts label on it, then it is processed! The DASH diet suggests that we consume no more than 1,500-2,300 mg of sodium a day and some frozen meals have 800 mg or more! The DASH diet recommends that we get a minimum of 30 grams of fiber every day and some frozen meals have no fiber in them at all!
  7. Reduce fat, especially saturated fat.
    Oil is a highly processed food; there is no way around that. So, if you are going to follow one of the fundamental pillars of health to reduce processed food, you should reduce your consumption of oil. Peanut oil is the essence of the peanut minus the protein, fiber, some of the nutrients and everything else that makes up a peanut. Those plant-based proteins, fiber and all of the nutrients in the peanut are what makes up a healthy diet. The oil alone is not part of a healthy diet. Get your fat from whole foods with all of the associated goodness along with it! Saturated fat is the fat associated with high cholesterol. The DASH diet limits fat to around 55-63 grams and saturated fat to about 10-15 grams a day, depending on your size. Plant sources are mainly limited to coconut, palm and cocoa. All meat and dairy have some amount of saturated fat. It is the fat that is solid at room temperature.
  8. Increase fruits and vegetables.
    Fruits and vegetables should be the central part of your diet. Sadly, in the United States and even more so in Kansas, fruits and vegetables do not figure prominently in the diets of most people. On the hospital floor at Smith County Memorial Hospital, many people eat only frozen corn and peas and no other vegetables. The fiber, nutrients, phytochemicals and antioxidants in fruits and vegetables make up the backbone of a healthy diet.
  9. Increase beans, legumes and whole grains.
    The best way to get beans, legumes and whole grains in your diet is to cook them yourself. Eat the whole, unprocessed food. Dried lentils and beans are easy to cook. Some canned beans are low in sodium and fat, and all are very high in fiber and are a great source of non-meat protein. Eat only whole wheat or whole grain bread and cereals with no less than 3 grams of fiber per serving. Start the day with a high fiber breakfast and get a head start on the 30 grams that the DASH wants you to get a day. My suggestion is either the whole grain oatmeal we serve to staff and patients out of the Hometown Café or steel-cut oats available at Gene’s. Some cold cereal like Grape Nuts is also a good source of fiber. Try to stay away from breakfast cereals that have a lot of fiber but also a lot of refined sugar or fat in them.

Every healthy diet is built on the general macronutrient principles of health; eat less salt, fat and sugar, reduce fat–especially saturated fat and cholesterol, reduce all processed food and increase “whole foods” like fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes and whole grains. All effective diets on the healthy diet spectrum, from the moderate DASH diet on one side to the more rigorous plant-based whole foods diet on the other side of the spectrum, all follow those same general guidelines.

Remember that all foods are not part of a healthy diet!

Here is the reference for today’s Healthy Eating Tip:

Mayo Clinic. Diseases and Conditions. High Cholesterol. Trans Fat. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-cholesterol/in-depth/trans-fat/art-20046114. (Accessed 2/15/2020.)

Vos MB, Lavine JE. Dietary fructose in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Hepatology. 2013;57:2525–31.

Basaranoglu M, Basaranoglu G, Bugianesi E. Carbohydrate intake and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease: fructose as a weapon of mass destruction. Hepatobiliary Surgery and Nutrition. 2015;4(2):109–116.

Kmietowicz Zosia. Fried food linked to increased risk of death among older US women British Medical Journal 2019;364:l362