Another thought about healthy eating

February 13, 2008 by admin.

To healthcare professionals:

We ask our clients and patients to eat more healthfully, reducing their fat and sugar intake, and increasing their intake of fiber by eating grains, fruits and vegetables.  Is that really the whole message of healthy eating?  If so, why are we getting the backlash of such books as “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan and “The Gospel of Food” by Barry Glassner?

Are we too “nutrient-focused,” telling people to eat more tomatoes because of the lycopene in it or eat more spinach because of the iron?  And with this focus, have we taken the joy and pleasure out of eating as Glassner proposes in his book?  Do you think if our message was to have pleasure in the eating process that we would have even more obesity in our country?  Obesity has increased under our watch.  What is the healthcare industry doing wrong?

Are we actually being too negative when we tell people what not to eat?  Being told the negative of something gets one to focus that much more on it.  Maybe we’re fostering food obsessions by pointing out what shouldn’t be done. 

Many studies today pull out particular nutrients of interest to study and then draw conclusions from the results.  We then stray away from the concept of whole foods and emphasize the concept of individual nutrients.  In so doing, we encourage people to take supplements of individual nutrients instead of just seeing the value of eating a variety of foods.  Do consumers lack confidence that our food supply can provide us with all we need?

I wonder if we’re presenting the consumer with too much information.  Do consumers have to know what happens to individual nutrients in the body (e.g., saturated fat can lead to the production of plaque)?  Or would we get more followers if we just talked about good food choices and not give the reason why they’re good for you?   In some ways, we’ve opened pandora’s box by giving some information but not all of it.  Most consumers couldn’t absorb all the information we in the heatlhcare industry know about physiology, metabolism, etc.   I think we’ve created a population becoming obsessed with individual nutrients and forgetting the big picture.  While the food guide pyramid provides a list of good foods, it also tells us what to avoid.  And even with the government’s efforts, it seems that there is still a large portion of the population that is in the dark about what healthy eating is all about.

So, if you were to create the “big picture” of healthy eating, what would it look like and how would you market it to the general population?

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