Eating healthy foods is the first, and in many ways the most important step in becoming a healthy person. It's not a struggle or a hardship. It's not a moral imperative. It's not a sign of elitism. It's the simple reality that what you eat literally becomes you. You metabolize those carrots or that chicken, or that hot fudge Sunday with caramel and extra cool whip, and it becomes more of you one way or the other. Think about that the next time you reach for the bag of pork rinds.
With that in mind, it's time to take a look at what eating healthy foods entails, exactly. Because there are different standards and different thresholds for what different people consider eating healthy foods.
Take my father-in-law, for example. He's a doctor, a nephrologist. That means he works on people who have kidney problems, and from that perspective he has about thirty five years of seeing what an unhealthy diet can do to your vital organs. From his first-hand experience then, as well as the experience of his family (a family with a rich history of cancer, heart disease and diabetes) he came to the conclusion that the best thing he could do for his own diet is to cut out foods that have a high fat content.
And that's it. He'll snack on gummy bears, or load carbs morning noon and night. As long as he's not taking in high fat content, he's content. Of course, he runs six miles a day every day, so he's in better shape than most.
Me, I have a different approach. I'm not as concerned about fat content, but I'm much, much more concerned about eating stuff that's processed. Because stuff that's processed isn't actually foods; it's just chemicals combined with a few nutrients (if you're lucky) in New Jersey. I try not to touch that stuff.
So for me, eating healthy foods means eating fresh foods. If I'm having a salad I'm going to buy from a fruit stand or store that gets its produce locally, rather than getting some bagged salad that's been shipped halfway around the world. And I'll use olive oil for a dressing because olive oil actually has some beneficial fats rather than malignant fats.
But there's more. One of the keys to eating healthy foods is that too much of a good thing is still too much. Portion control and moderation are always important - obviously more so when talking about stuff that's not good for you, but still when you're talking about stuff that is good for you. If you're eating healthy foods, but you're eating 4000 calories a day of them, chances are you're not improving your overall health. If you're putting away about 2000 calories on the other hand, then you're likely on the right track.
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