Trick or Treat? Do You Have Something Good To Eat?

Chief Wellness Hero, Laurie Erdman, writes a monthly column for FemCentral. If you have a question for Laurie, simply leave it as a comment to this post, or email jennifer@jenniferlshelton.com, with the subject, “Ask Laurie.”

Tomorrow the madness begins.  It begins with the sugar of Halloween and ends with the champagne of New Year’s.  Before we know it, we’ll soon be talking about resolutions to lose weight, exercise, and eat healthy.

[insert big sigh]

Why do we do this to ourselves every year?

Could it be that hard to find something good to eat?  And why is the food that is good to eat isn’t good for us and the food that is good for us isn’t good to eat?  Or is this just a myth?  And if so, where did this myth come from?

I know that eating healthy or trying to lose weight can seem really confusing.  The research is all over the place. Eat meat. Don’t eat meat.  Carbs are good. Carbs are bad. It all seems like a bad horror flick full of more tricks than treats.

So what do you eat in this confusing world? How do you avoid getting tricked with the latest treat of the day?

Trick or Treat?

Figuring out what to eat really doesn’t have to be hard.  As journalist and author Michael Pollan says, we are the only species on earth that doesn’t know what to eat.  Unfortunately our large brains have a way of making this simple subject complex.

It turns out the problem stems from a question of what is food.

Are Tootsie Rolls food?  Is Cheese Whiz food?  Is Red Bull food?  Hint: No. No. No.

But what about Wonder Bread?  Or Dannon fat-free yogurt?  Well, in my book of rules, the answer is no and no.

Why? Like Cheese Whiz, these products contain tricks.  Tricks are ingredients that you can’t pronounce or find anywhere else in the store.  Tricks are chemicals, fillers, additives and other things to make you want to buy more of it.  See the work of David Kessler if you don’t believe me.

These tricky additives are what make them food products.  And anytime you have a product, you have something backed by a team of marketers trying to convince you why this is the latest and greatest product for your body.  Trick Alert: any time a “food” comes with health claim, it’s probably not a food.

Treats, on the other hand, are food.  Food doesn’t come with an ingredient list. For example, apples, carrots, a New York Strip (depending on your source), rice, potatoes, and kale are all food.  Food doesn’t have to be explained.  Nor does it have to be marketed.  When there is marketing and lobbying budgets behind something, it’s usually an indication it has lost its food status.

Laurie’s Food Rules

If you don’t want to be tricked, follow these simple rules.

•  If you can buy it directly from a farmer, it’s food.

The best way to assure you are getting real food is to buy it in its whole state as if you were stopping by the farm. This means whole fresh fruit and vegetables (and frozen if your produce section is not so fresh).  This means whole grains, not bleached and processed flours.  This means a steak versus some steak like, overly prepared product with a secrete sauce of additives.

•  If it comes with its own marketing budget, it’s not food and you should keep moving your cart down the aisle.

Food companies spent $7.3 billion spent on food advertising in 1999 (a number that grows every year).  And 19,000 new food products were introduced in 2009.  When you eat food products, you eat from a billion dollar business.  It a business designed to have you eat more.  Stop and think.  Is that really in your best interest?

• If it comes in packaging, check the ingredient list. If there are more than 5 ingredients, and any that you can’t pronounce, keep walking.

All those additives, chemicals and fillers are made in a laboratory. That means they are chemicals; chemicals our body wasn’t designed to process. They alter the way we think and act. They get stored in our fat cells, including our brain. It might be helpful to know that many of additives used in the U.S. have been banned in Europe because of their ill-effect on children.  Stop and think.  Can this really be food?

• If it hasn’t been altered in any way, and that means having some or all of its fat removed, it’s a food.

Let’s stop being fearful of fat.  I’m not advocating having a slab of butter on your toast, but let’s realize that to make a food product you would want to eat that also has no fat means the manufacturers (not the farmers) added a bunch of stuff – usually sugar – to make it appealing.

• Trust your gut.

Ok, there are two meanings here.  First.  Before you put that Twinkie in your mouth, ask your gut “is this what you really want and need?”  Place your hands on your belly, and seriously ask the question. Oh, don’t listen to your head or your emotions.  Only listen to your gut.  Because here is the thing – our gut knows exactly what our body needs to rock this world.  Our emotions, cravings and addictions, do not.

On the other hand, how did you feel the last time you ate that Twinkie? Was it really as satisfying as you were hoping?  Did you feel sick afterwards or crash 2 hours later?  These are all signs your gut and your body aren’t happy with your Twinkie habit (or pizza habit or cheese habit, or whatever happens to be your weakness). To decipher trick from treat, your stomach really does have all the answers.

Share with us some of your favorite food rules and/or an experience where your body told you something wasn’t food.

Happy Halloween,

Laurie Erdman

Check out Laurie’s new free teleclass series 30 Minutes With Laurie and learn about creating an anti-inflammatory diet and life that will give you more energy and help you lose weight without dieting.