Some Quick Thoughts on Eating Clean
I’ve made a couple of posts on Instagram recently about eating clean and healthy eating, here and here. It’s something that’s been on my mind a lot the past couple of years, as I learn more and more about food and how the quality of the food you eat impacts your body. Eating clean is something that can take work and attention, especially in this country, where it’s a fight against the Standard American Diet (SAD).
The Standard American Diet includes a lot of highly processed foods and ultra processed foods, which include added sugars, emulsifiers, dyes, and other additives. None of those things are good for us, but they do make food taste delicious. They make us crave more. (When was the last time you ate just one Cheeto or had just one bite of Papa John’s pizza?) The whole point of ultra-processed foods is to make us eat more. They won’t get us full or give us any of the nutrients we need, but we still want more. That’s the tragedy of the Standard American Diet.
The term “ultra-processed foods” (sometimes called UPFs) doesn’t have a set definition, but it typically includes foods that contain ingredients that aren’t found in nature and that you probably don’t recognize. If a food (using that term loosely) includes one or more ingredients you can’t pronounce, it’s probably a UPF. (It’s important to note the difference between “processed” and “ultra-processed” or “highly-processed” foods. Almost every food we eat has been processed in some way. Even things like rice or a steak, which have only one ingredient, have been processed to remove the husk (rice) or cut it off the cow and turn it into something you can (and want to) cook and eat (steak). Here’s a general overview of the categories.)
So where do local vendors come into this? Well, the next time you’re at a farmers market, take a look at a loaf of bread. Look at the ingredients. There are 3 or 4, maybe 5, right? Then take a look at the list of ingredients on a store bought loaf of bread. 10 or 15 ingredients, or even more. That’s what lets us keep the store bought loaf on the shelf for so long without it going bad. That’s the trade off for convenience. And that’s not always a bad thing — we all lead busy lives and need convenience at least part of time. We just need to be aware of the trade off… and make those healthier, cleaner choices when and as we can. Your local farmers market is a great place to start! (If you’re in the Nashville area, check out our list of markets here).
