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What's
left to eat?
June 10, 04
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
No
cheese. No meat. No chips. No ice cream. No butter. No soft
drinks. No doughnuts. No fun.
Dietary advice often leaves people feeling that way.
An e-mail I received from a reader after my column concerning
the need for many of us to cut back on cheese says it well:
“When I saw Thursday’s screed against cheese,
I thought, “What next?” Is my diet to be reduced
to steamed rutabagas and tofu? It seems that each week a different
(and yummy) food hits the “limited,” “very
limited,” or “no no” list. The end result
is I no longer listen.”
While there is rarely an absolute “yes” or “no”
to recommendations for intakes of any single food, it’s
fair to say that some foods – especially in the amounts
typically eaten by most Americans – are clearly better
for you than others.
Orange juice is better than a soft drink. Bananas are better
than a candy bar. Olive oil is better than butter.
And cheese is something most of us should cut back on.
Information about the relative merits of foods often focuses
on what to limit and what to eat in greater quantities. Trouble
is, people most often hear the negative message – what
not to eat – and have a harder time envisioning what
they can eat. One of the hurdles of understanding dietary
advice is integrating the “do’s and don’ts”
into a mental vision of the total diet.
Actually putting dietary advice into practice is yet another
challenge.
We are daily bombarded with so much diet information –
both positive and negative, with much of it conflicting –
that trying to make sense of it can be overwhelming.
And nutritionists debate the best approach to helping people
improve their diets.
One school of thought says it’s best to couch advice
in positive terms. The thinking goes that “Eat more
fruits and vegetables” is a message likely to be received
more favorably than “Eat less fast food.” The
idea is to never say anything bad about any particular food
for fear of alienating people. The hope is that the good foods
will displace some of the poorer choices.
This is an approach pushed by the food industry so that over
the past 20 years it has become entrenched as a mantra in
nutrition professional associations where food industry representatives
increasingly populate the leadership ranks. One value of this
approach is that it heads off policies that might finger certain
foods for restriction, to the detriment of the food industry.
My own preference is for an approach that is more direct.
Many people are concerned about how to preserve or improve
their health, and they understand that their choice of diet
bears a direct relationship to their health. So if you are
serious about maintaining a healthful lifestyle, you’ve
got to know which foods support health and which don’t.
With that knowledge, you can make informed food choices.
For example, we haven’t banned cheese in my house, but
we are acutely aware that it is the leading source of saturated
fat in the American diet. So we use it very sparingly, as
a condiment, and not daily. Most of us have a sizable amount
of room for improvement in our diets. There’s no getting
around the need to cut back – often radically –
on some types of foods. In their place, however, there is
also a sizable number of delicious foods that can take their
place.
And the list goes well beyond rutabagas and tofu.
Do you remember Jack LaLanne’s
advice for establishing a health-supporting diet? “Figure
out what’s good for you, then create a liking for it.
You’ve got to work at living,” he said.
It’s good advice.
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