We Need to Talk Differently About Food
Eat real food, not good food.
Eating Only for Pleasure
When talking about food, people often say things like:
“That store’s ice cream was awesome. I’m going back there tomorrow.”
We might live by Coca Cola’s slogans,1 saying regarding decidedly unhealthy foods and drinks:
Life Tastes Good
You Can't Beat the Real Thing
Taste the Feeling
Coke [or whatever] Is It!
Eating Only Perfect Nutrients
Or we’ll go to the other extreme:
“I’m set with vitamin K after those seaweed chips I had this morning for breakfast.”
Then we might refer to the mainstays of many people’s diets as:
junk food
garbage
dangerous stuff
bad
We’ll harp on nutrients and their proportions, hot in pursuit of the holy grail of eating that will keep us perfectly fit forever.
Tomatoes’ lycopene prevents cancer, and carrots’ beta-carotene will save your eyesight.
Low carb paleo is the healthiest diet around. (Or complex carbs are awesome.)
Don’t eat red meat because it has lots of cholesterol. (Or eat red meat because it has lots of iron.)
Eating Off Balance
Both approaches are unbalanced, and therefore unhealthy, because health means balance.
Neither extreme will foster lasting health: not ignoring food’s life-sustaining role, nor spending our days judging foods and their eaters.
Here’s why both extremes are unhealthy:
Eating Like Animals
We learned from the Rambam (Maimonides) that we become genuine people by using our minds to guide our bodies to healthy, balanced living.
Therefore, if we think and talk about food only in terms of pleasure, even if we’re the most religious folks on earth, we’re really human-like horses munching hay all day long. In truth, we’re worse than animals: their instinctive desires are far more balanced than ours.
Judging Food
On the other hand, if eating becomes a nutrient-calculating exercise, with every molecule lionized or villainized, we’re shaming everyone who ever eats something that doesn’t fit our scrupulous standards.
And when we too slip and make an unhealthy choice, we can easily slip into a perpetual cycle of shame and more unhealthy eating.
“I’m already doomed from that terrible donut. So why not another ten?”
This extreme is as unhealthy like the first, because it’s also not guiding our bodies to health and balance, but seeking perfection that isn’t possible nor necessary.
Even if we never let a potato chip cross our lips, we’ll still have plenty of threats to counter and toxins to excrete.
Our body is equipped with multiple organs that respond in real time to the imperfect conditions of life on earth - such as the occasional chocolate candy.
Eat Real Food
In truth, eating well means eating lots of Real Foods, some Almost-real Foods, and perhaps occasionally a Food-like Substance.
I’ve explained in previous posts what these 3 classes of foods are. It’s worth taking a look. I’ll also discuss this in our Healthy Jew workshop next Tuesday (March 5).
But even before you work through the details, you probably have an idea what I’m talking about when I contrast Real Foods (like apples) with Food-like Substances (like cotton candy) and acknowledge the existence of Almost-real Foods (like unflavored potato chips).
Real Food Builds Real People
I’m opening a new discussion about food, where we’re not ignoring food’s life-sustaining role, and not getting lost in lists of fancy terms and watching everyone else’s plates, but simply choosing Real Food because that’s makes us Real People. We’re as real as the food we eat.
Eating well isn’t about dosages and ratios of supposedly life-changing nutrients. Both science and human history show that most people in most situations do just fine with a wide variety of Real Food diets.
But the “other foods” aren’t evil and dangerous, and people who eat them aren’t necessarily morally bankrupt.
In fact, it’s possible to eat organic kale all day long and be a terrible person, and, whether we like it or not, many great people don’t eat the Real Foods they need.
How can that be?
Because in the Reality of God’s world (that I discussed last week), there are many aspects of living healthfully. An important one is eating Real Foods. But until every aspect of my life is perfectly aligned with reality (hint: that ain’t happening), how can I scoff at the guy who struggles with his food’s reality but in another hundred areas of life is far more healthy than I’ll ever be?
This perspective also allows us Healthy Jews to relax, because eating well doesn’t demand impossible perfection, that our every bite contain the best possible nutrients. Instead, we can just do our best to choose Real Foods, and then get on with life. Whatever we might lose in “food reality,” we’ll gain in extra focus and energy to connect with ourselves, our families, communities, and God.
You might be wondering what all this looks like practically. What is Real Food, and where can you find it? How can this new perspective change the way you eat? What Almost-real Foods (and maybe even Food-like Substances) should you eat?
In addition to the earlier posts I mentioned before, check out this Healthy Jew workshop.
This post also can be helpful:
https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/history/history-of-coca-cola-advertising-slogans