As the Christmas season advances, so do the opportunities to eat, and sound nutrition is not always top of mind. Good intentions are easily pushed aside by the abundance of treats, to be resurrected post-holidays as remedial resolutions.
(Just assume that shortbread biscuit someone just handed you is organic and enjoy it without questioning its origins.)
Food can be a volatile topic, ranking with politics and religion in its ability to stir up polarized and heated arguments. And it doesn’t help that it’s a constantly shifting field — what was considered healthful yesterday can so easily be declared poison today.
Ah, for those simple days when the Canada Food Guide was the authority on good nutrition. Just eat the right number of servings each day from the appropriate food groups, and you would be healthy.
The first Canada Food Guide was issued in 1942 and listed six groups: milk; fruit; vegetables; cereals and breads; meat, fish, etc.; and eggs. In later forms of the guide, the six groups were consolidated into four.
It seemed so safe, sensible and comfortable. How could you go wrong? The government, after all, was motivated by concern for our nutritional welfare. Oh, and perhaps a little bit by the powerful meat, dairy and egg lobbies.
Over the years, some of those foods fell into disfavour. The value of milk was questioned. Red meat became unfashionable. Eggs? Don’t even go there. “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead!”
The debate grew. I heard someone at a party declaring that the worst poisons we ingested were on our tables in the salt shakers and sugar bowls. I thought there was some merit to that, but thought the speaker was going overboard when she said we were in danger from white flour and other highly processed foods.
It sounded wild-eyed and fanatical then; I firmly believe it now.
The pendulum swings. Sometimes it swings too far, but in doing so, widens the debate and presents opportunities to expand our knowledge.
But it’s good to be skeptical, especially with the advent of each new “superfood,” a berry from a remote jungle or an obscure grain with a hard-to-pronounce name that purports to boost your health and strengthen your immune system.
We should never stop looking for new foods that will benefit us, but in our searching we should not overlook the “superfoods” we have always had: blueberries, spinach, cabbage, beans, a wide variety of whole grains. We should heed science and common sense when it comes to food fads.
I’m not looking for a food fight here. There’s little point in argument over various food philosophies; those lines are generally firmly drawn, and science is often the first consideration to be tossed out of the debate.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to listen and learn new things.
I once interviewed a couple, Ronnie and Minh, who had won a raw video award. No, not that kind of raw video — they eat nothing but raw food and now share their knowledge.
Does that sound goofy? Not in the least. As Ronnie pointed out, raw foods already form a significant part of most people’s diets — salads, fruits, vegetable platters, nuts. As they were already vegetarians, it was not a huge step for them to adopt a completely raw diet.
During the interview, they gave me samples. A spring roll made from thin slices of raw zucchini wrapped around a filling of minced jicama, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh mint and a lemon-juice dressing was one of the best things I have ever eaten.
Good food should taste good.
Bad food also tastes good, and that’s the problem. Kids who have grown up with too much sugar, fats, salt and starches find it more difficult to develop a taste for healthful food, and so we have rampant obesity, diabetes, bad teeth and other problems in which diet is a factor.
We have few excuses on the Island — top-quality local produce is available year round. Never has a society had such a wide variety of foods available. And never have we had access to so much information about sound nutrition.
The gap is between the knowing and the doing.
