by Leigh Peele
Healthy
healthy - adjective, healthier, healthiest.
1. possessing or enjoying good health or a sound and vigorous mentality: a healthy body; a healthy mind.
2. pertaining to or characteristic of good health, or a sound and vigorous mind: a healthy appearance; healthy attitudes.
3. conducive to good health; healthful: healthy recreations.
4. prosperous or sound: a healthy business.
5. Informal. fairly large: I bought a healthy number of books.
So what in reality constitutes healthy food?
I think our best focus here would be definition option #3: “conducive to good health.”: Good eating habits are conducive to good health. That is what dictionary.com says anyways, but who decides what is healthy and what is not? What does an item of food have to have in order to be deemed a “healthy food?”
It would seem by the current standards it’s a bit objective. You could come up with a food rating system based on what is conducive to good health based upon each food item. Since our bodies are made up of things that need vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates it seems like making a list of foods that are healthy isn’t really that much of a challenge.
The reverse, “unhealthy,” would mean a detriment to good health. : Bad eating habits are detrimental to good health.
What goes into determining when a food is detrimental to your health? What really are unhealthy foods?
Common sense would tell us that unhealthy foods are foods that provide little to no nutrients, vitamins, or minerals.
Sugar Free Jello Pudding
Low Carb ice cream
100 calories snack packs
None of the above is real food. Low calorie perhaps, but it provide no nutritional content. Obviously, you can have a little of this stuff here and there but if your entire day’s meals were made up of this stuff you might not feel so well after a while.
A loaf of whole grain bread is full of…wait, that has nutrients.
Well a hearty granola and organic cereal full of all those vitamins and minerals is…wait, that isn’t bad for you either.
A hamburger! There you go a lean ground beef hamburger on a whole grain sesame seed bun is…. full of protein, grains, iron.
Potatoes
Carrots
Beans
Oats
Wait!
How come all these foods are becoming blacklisted? How come all these foods are in a category that is detrimental for your health all of a sudden? Is it because they carry those scary things called -gasp- carbohydrates? Is it possible that what is detrimental to your health is the continuing misunderstanding of the difference between what is healthy QUANTITY and what is excessive QUANTITY?
Is it possible that the government and our society of cutting corners in all aspect of life, movement, and activity are the problem? It isn’t carbohydrates, it never has been. It is society’s continuous movements towards laziness and technology. The only fix is in education in the aspect of energy need and usage for one’s body.
Instead of trying to worry about remaking a food pyramid and giving a call to low carbohydrate arms, we need to come up with a solution to save our society from evolving into a couch cushion.
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