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Got Wellness?

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Foods

February 16, 2007

by Erin Shea

Basically the best nutrition advice in the world comes down to two words: eat food. That may seem to make no sense – if you’re not already eating food, what the hell are you consuming? My guess is (if you’re like any normal American), you’re eating food-like items. Think along the line of Cheetos, margarine, french fries, doughnuts, and Diet Coke.

Sometime during the last century, it became socially acceptable to eat artificially-enhanced things that are drenched in chemicals and added sugar. These culprits, while tasty to our modern taste buds, are horrible for our bodies. It’s not realistic to expect everyone to drop that box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and trade it in for a bag of raw spinach to munch on instead. But consider for a moment how the CDC reports that 60%-90% of chronic, degenerative disease can be prevented by diet and lifestyle. That’s huge guys. You actually can reduce your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Huh. Maybe whole, real foods (instead of highly-processed food-like items) are sounding a bit more appealing now.

So the first cardinal rule of healthy nutrition is to eat real food. If you’re unsure about whether it’s food, ask yourself if it would have been recognizable in the year 1800. Popcorn soaked in fluorescent-yellow buttery flavoring? Strike one. Rice cakes plastered with a sugary apple-cinnamon coating? Strike two. Frozen yogurt? You’re out. (Damn.)

Now moving to rule number two: eat good food not bad food. “Bad carbs,” “good fat,” “good protein” . . . what do these even mean? Carbohydrates, fat, and protein—the three macronutrients that humans need to live—come in healthier “good” forms and less healthy “bad” versions. Each macronutrient is necessary for your body, so any nutrition advice that encourages you to exclude any of these should be avoided like the plague.

Carbohydrates—the recently mislabeled enemy of humankind—are what Harvard Medical School names as the base for a healthy diet. Harvard’s 2006 remake of the USDA’s food pyramid suggests you get about 45%-65% of your daily calories from carbs. But which kinds of carbs you pick are key.

Good carbs, says Harvard, are those with low glycemic loads (glycemic load is the scale used to determine how fast a food will cause blood sugar to spike). Good carbs—like oatmeal, brown rice, whole-grain cereals, whole fruits, barley, bran, and lentils—are digested slowly. These kinds of carbs cause a gradual rise in blood sugar and therefore do a fantastic job at warding off hunger.

“Bad carbs,” or those with a high glycemic load, (sugar, honey, french fries, crackers, refined cereals like Special K and Rice Crispies, white rice, soft drinks, and potatoes) are digested rapidly. Your body releases a surge of insulin to combat all of the sugar these kinds of carbs dump into your bloodstream. This is problematic because the gush of insulin leaves your blood sugar low, causing you to be hungry just a couple of hours after that bagel. Years of eating “bad carbs” can impair your body’s ability to unleash the flood of insulin needed to process so much sugar. This scary side effect of too many bad carbs, called insulin resistance, causes type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer. White bread, stay back!

And now for the big fat truth about fat. Back in the early 90’s, fat was the seen as the villain of the American diet and was purged from many food-like items. But thankfully we’ve started to leave that no-fat nonsense behind. Our bodies need fat for energy as well as to aid the absorption of certain vitamins and minerals. While all fats are made from a carbon chain with hydrogen atoms attached, the difference in configuration and number of these atoms spells out “good” unsaturated fat, or “bad” saturated or trans fats.

Good fats have the fewest hydrogen atoms on their carbon chains. These kinds of fats include polyunsaturated (your best choice, and found in fish, walnuts, and flaxseed) and monounsaturated (still a good choice and found in olive, peanut, and canola oils, avocados, and most nuts). Bad fats, or trans fat (partially or fully hydrogenated oils found in most packaged baked goods like cookies, crackers, and some breads) and saturated fat (found in red meat and full fat dairy) are responsible for raising LDL (bad) cholesterol and leading to heart disease. The Harvard version of the pyramid recommends you eat 20%-35% of your daily calories from fat, but be sure to limit saturated fats to less than 10%, and try to get rid of trans fats altogether.

In terms of protein, Americans are mesmerized with the stuff. While protein is a crucial nutrient—it builds enzymes needed to trigger many importance chemical reactions in your body—protein overloads can cause detrimental health issues like kidney failure and osteoporosis. So try to keep your protein intake between 10%-35% of your daily caloric intake. While there hasn’t been as much research on “good” vs. “bad” proteins, a good rule of thumb is to get a lot of your protein from plant sources (beans, nuts, lentils, and soy) instead of mostly animal sources. Recent research at Oxford and Harvard indicates people who eat plant proteins instead of animal sources have lower cholesterol and are at much lower risk for heart disease. However, if a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle appalls you, try to select lean proteins with lower saturated fat contents. Good choices are fish, skim milk, yogurt, and skinless poultry. Poorer choices include meats from cows and pigs, because the levels of saturated fat in these are dangerously high.

Check out this helpful chart, and best of luck making “good” choices by reducing your “bad” food intake today!

Disclaimer: while you should not live solely on the aforementioned food-like items, it is absolutely 100% fine to indulge occasionally. If Jelly Beans were out permanently, I don’t know what I’d do.