Today I have a special treat from a guest blogger! I think it is great how this is a place where we can share others ideas as well as our own. Enjoy!
How Good Food Makes Us Healthy and
Happy
By Leslie Vandever
What is good food?
Quick answers: It’s food that nourishes. Food that doesn’t
make you fat. It’s food that tastes good and feels good in your mouth and in
your belly. It’s food that generates smiles.
Hippocrates, that famous old physician/philosopher once
said, way back in 430 BC, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
Even all those centuries ago, people knew that eating good food had a
beneficial effect on their health.
But not just physical health. Good food effects mental
health, too. Protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals are essential
parts of a good diet. The lack of any of them can have profound physical
consequences, including the way the brain functions. But what, exactly, is good
food?
Michael Pollan, the author of In Defense of Food, wrote that we should, “Eat food. Not too much.
Mostly plants.” Sounds like “good food” to Mr. Pollan, from all his research
and experience, is mostly vegetarian, eaten sparingly. The result of that
particular diet would result in, for most of us, a slender body and a sharp
mind.
Good food makes us happy by helping us feel nourished, full
of energy, and light on our feet. It has to taste good, too, or we won’t want
to eat it. But we’ve got to be careful. A drive-through hamburger and french
fries taste good, but they’re also clogged with ingredients that cause plaque
in our arteries and makes our blood sugar spike. That burger and fries also
contain two-thirds of a full day’s calories for most people.
That doesn’t mean we should never eat fast food. We just
need to make it the exception rather than the rule.
To be healthy and happy, we should eat a tasty diet of vegetables
and fruit, whole grain breads, pasta and cereals, low-fat dairy foods, and lean
meat, fish and eggs. MyPlate.gov, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
nutrition webpage, suggests that when we fill our dinner plate, half of it
should be full of vegetables and fruit. A quarter should be filled with grains
(half of them whole grains), and the last quarter of the plate should be
proteins in the form of lean meat, fish, nuts, beans or legumes. Low-fat dairy
foods—1 percent milk, low-fat cheeses and yogurt—can be a portion of the meal.
Good fats, like canola oil and olive oil, are OK in small amounts.
Another way to
eat healthy is to eat, as much as possible, fresh foods rather than processed
and packaged foods. Grocery shopping becomes really easy when you eat fresh:
you shop mostly the perimeters of the store, making only a brief forays toward
the middle for low-fat dairy foods, nuts and beans.
Cooking fresh is simplified, too. Most vegetables taste best
raw or very lightly steamed, but for a treat, roasting them with a light
brushing of olive oil is a delicious way to go. Meats and fish should be baked
or grilled rather than fried, and whole grain breads and pastas are filling and
satisfying. Desert can be as simple as low-fat yogurt topped with blueberries
or as complex as an apple pie with a whole grain crust and a blob of homemade
whipped cream.
By sticking to fresh foods, simply seasoned and prepared
with a minimum of fat, meals can be naturally low in calories but rich in all
the good things that make us healthy. Choosing a wide variety of foods makes a
“good” diet worth eating.
Some
foods
can make us feel better than others. Sugary foods and foods that are made with
a lot of fat and refined flour, like cakes and cookies, and high-carbohydrate
and salty foods like potato chips might taste good, but in large quantities or
as a routine snack, they’re a health—and happiness—no-no.
“One cannot think well, love well or sleep well if one has
not dined well,” wrote Virginia Woolf in A
Room of One’s Own. How right she was.
For more information about eating a healthy diet,
click here.
Leslie Vandever is a
professional journalist and freelance writer. Under the pen-name “Wren,” she
also writes a blog about living well with rheumatoid arthritis called
RheumaBlog (www.rheumablog.wordpress.com). In her spare time, Vandever enjoys cooking,
reading and working on the Great American Novel.
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