Two years ago, when musing about various elective course options with a group of college friends, I was made aware of a class called ‘Nutrition and Health,’ which according to my sources made “everyone who took it anorexic.”
Paradoxical, right?
And since I spent too many formative years in the sicko fashion world, where anorexia is considered a necessary evil, like a fortuitous strand of the chicken pox, I was instinctively drawn to this idea. A class that made people loose weight? A class that didn’t involve annoyingly fit motivational teachers, weights, yoga mats or crunches? My friend assured me, “Yes. Once you learn what truly makes up the food we eat, you’ll never want to put anything in your mouth again.” I was simultaneously enamored and horrified by this concept.
Now, years later, I’m finally taking a nutrition class. And not in order to lose weight, but rather to make more informed choices about the food I put in my body on a daily basis. Eating right can save you from a lot of scary, deathly diseases down the line. And I’ve noticed that I truly feel better when adhering to a healthier diet. I posses more energy, I write more; I’m more inclined to workout. I’m also generally nicer to everyone I interact with, as I’m not experiencing the emotional pitfalls of ‘sugar high’ and ‘sugar low’ (a big plus as I’m a pretty emotional personal in general, without adding caffeine.) Besides, if we are what we eat, I definitely want to make sure I’m a sleek banana rather than a squishy Big Mac. And if eating right keeps me from snapping at my roommate or swearing at my alarm clock, all the better!
One of the first topics my professor addressed was the amount of mixed messages we receive about food over the course of our lifetime. Newspapers and magazines generate most of this food propaganda, and these sources usually don’t take into account ‘the big picture.’ One day Atkins and his diet are in, the next he’s out. One week Vitamin B supplements are the secret to clear skin; next week it’s fish oil capsules. Right now carbs are bad for us, in two years, they probably won’t be anymore. The media takes a subjective stance on food the same way it does on fashion. Only what we consume has serious long-term ramifications on our health (while the once-stylish orange halter top we wore can only really damage our egos). With the trends constantly changing, even conscious eaters with the best of intentions are being misled. How does the average Chipotle craving, Glamour reading, health conscious girl know who to trust? I really doubt health and beauty magazines are an authority. They’ve been publishing those failed ‘how to have an orgasm’ articles month after month for years.
Those of you interested in eating right read on. Here’s some of the fascinating stuff I learned. I was blown away on the first day!
1. Start thinking in terms of ‘nutrient density.’ Huh? What does that even mean? It means you’ve gotta start thinking proportionally. Choose foods that give you the most nutrients per calorie. Like skim milk instead of ice cream for calcium. An orange instead of orange juice for fiber. (Apparently, juices aren’t even that good for us. It’s way better just to eat the actual fruit and have a glass of water. Who knew?) A can of tuna instead of beef for protein. The goal is always to get more nutrients for the same amount of calories. For me, this way of thinking was revolutionary.
2. Get salad dressing on the side. I almost fell out of my chair when the professor announced that the number one source of fat in a woman’s diet was salad dressing. All the naïve women dieters think, ‘oh I’ll just have a salad,” without analyzing what actually goes into to that yummy mixture of mesculan greens.
3. Diet soda is baaaad. It can’t be rationalized. Diet soda drinkers had the same amount of diabetes as people who drank regular soda. The fake sweetness in diet soda messes with your palate, and your body reacts to it as if it were real sugar anyway. Diet sodas have also been proven to make you crave more sweets. They also limit you from getting good, healthy sugars. Like how many of us have ever downed a Diet Coke and then craved the nutritious sugary goodness of an apple? Yeah, it’s never happened. Instead, we crave salty chips or fries.
4. Fiber is fabulous, but not without water. I pop fiber pills and invest in whole-wheat products all the time. We all know fiber is invaluable to our digestive system. What I never knew though is that fiber can’t be digested by itself. You need to be super hydrated in order for it to work. So start downing water.
5. Dried fruit is not necessarily our friend. Grapes and raisins have the same amount of calories, but raisins contain no water, and therefore aren’t as filling. So you eat way more raisins than you would grapes, consuming perhaps twice the amount of calories, while grapes would have made you full ten minutes ago. Dried fruits also tend to be artificially sweetened (more bad news).
6. Occasionally indulge in the unhealthy things you like rather than eating the ‘low fat’ equivalent. I wanted to kiss my nutritionist professor on the mouth when she announced that if you’re obsessed with Ben and Jerry’s, it’s A-okay to enjoy a small portion every once in awhile. A large, low fat tub of frozen yogurt won’t be as satisfying, usually resulting in eating a lot more of it. And eating more of something that’s theoretically ‘low fat’ isn’t necessarily the best route. She pointed out many eaters view a ‘low fat’ label as an excuse to over-indulge. Most of these ‘low fat’ items aren’t that good for us either!
So I’m no health expert, but my professor is. And I think I’ll be a lot more informed by the time this course comes to a close. I now also understand how ‘Health and Nutrition’ got its anorexic reputation. It’s because as homework we’ll be calorie counting our own diet and writing a report on where we’re lacking nutrients. That means I’ll be literally dissecting all my favorite foods, nutrient-by-nutrient, calorie-by-calorie, and probably tissue-by-tissue as I imagine there will be a lot of farewell Snickers and Pepperidge Farm Cookies tears shed along the way. I’m quaking in my sneakers to dissect my guilty, hangover pleasure food, the Fajita Burrito with guacamole and extra sour cream at Chipotle. Rumor has it that those flour tortillas have more calories than a cup of chocolate mousse. So wish me luck, and happy eating!
