Making Better Food Choices

Better choices made more often is an enjoyable and sustainable approach to feeding yourself well.

Information becomes available to us at a rate infinitely faster than we can ever hope to process it, so it’s easy to become overwhelmed if you want to stay well-informed on any particular subject. But nowhere have I felt more confused or conflicted than in the trend-happy, mythology-obsessed world of food. So much so that I’ve been working on a book on the subject, specifically: we overcomplicate feeding ourselves, and eating well is not as difficult as we think it is.

In the next few posts, I’ll be exploring some of the concepts I plan to include in the book as a way of ‘thinking out loud’ about them; your feedback is much appreciated. I’d like to start by looking at how we make choices about what we buy and what we eat.

“White "FOOD" sign outside a grocery store” by Nick Hillier on Unsplash

There are approximately one million food documentaries on Netflix, and you’ve probably had a friend recommend one, telling you that it changed the way they thought in some way or another. I might actually be that friend, having watched several of these documentaries and then attempting to proselytize whoever was unwise enough to ask me if I’d ‘seen anything good lately.’ Watching these documentaries is a good way to learn, but if you watch all the documentaries or read all the latest studies, my bet is that you’ll become quite confused. A few examples of conclusions that one could draw from documentaries, books, or studies I’ve read:

• Stop eating animals.
• Stop eating red meat.
• Eat more fish.
• Eat less fish, you’re ruining the ocean.
• Only buy grass-fed or vegetarian-fed meat.
• Grass-fed meat isn’t as delicious; buy pasture-raised meat that is grain-finished.
• Only buy cage-free eggs from the happy chickens.
• Cage-free isn’t good enough anymore; now you need “Certified Humane” eggs.
• Eat primarily raw foods.
• The raw food diet doesn’t work.
• Eat like the cave men.
• Avoid gluten.
• Avoid nitrates.
• Follow an autoimmune protocol.
• Everything must be organic and non-GMO.
• Avoid all fast food.
• Be vegetarian.
• Don’t be vegetarian.
• Carbs are the problem.
• Fats are the problem.
• Specific carbs and specific fats are the problem.
• The way Americans produce and eat food is the problem.
• Carbs are not the problem.
• Fats are not the problem.
• The way Americans produce and eat food is still the problem.

What to do? That’s a lot of noise, and it’s difficult to know where to begin. Documentaries present information in a dramatic, easily-digestible format but often come across as preachy or whiny (“change your ways or the world will burn” or “everything is broken whaaa”). Food labels add to the confusion and are unhelpful at best, straight-up misleading at worst. So I’d like to suggest that we cut out all the noise for a moment–ignore all of it–so that we can think: Don’t forget, you can buy and eat whatever you like.

What I’m saying is that you have real power here, and the real power you have is the power of choice, and what’s most important is figuring out how to choose better. When you’re learning about food, consider the source; whether it is a documentary, government agency, cookbook or blog, there is an agenda: they want you to choose a way of consuming that is in line with their beliefs about food. Or, in the case of the government agency, they don’t care what you do, they just need you to drink a glass of milk with dinner every night so that the lobbyists are happy. It’s up to you whether or not to pick up what they’re putting down.

I think it’s helpful to distinguish between “right” choices and “better” choices. If you’ve tried a diet before, you know that most diets are obsessed with “right” choices and promise to help you make them more often. If you consistently make right choices, they say, you’ll achieve the goals you set for yourself and the diet will work. Not only do I think making right choices all the time is impossible, it’s also exhausting to attempt. And when you make a “wrong” choice, you feel like garbage. I don’t think placing endless restrictions on what you will and will not eat is a sustainable way of going about living your life; I think that’s a big part of why diets don’t work.

“Better” choices are different than right choices because they allow for gray areas. Here’s a personal example: I don’t digest dairy very well anymore, but cheese is amazing and I refuse to remove it from my life. Some would say the right choice would be to avoid cheese altogether, but I think the better choice for me is to reduce the amount of dairy I eat so that I can feel OK and still enjoy the cheeses.

If you strive for better choices rather than “right” choices, you’ll find that good habits are easier to form and maintain. If you push information about health and food trends through the filter of better choices, you’ll be able to build a sustainable lifestyle of eating well by comparing options to your goals.

Say you have a goal of becoming a more environmentally-responsible consumer. Instead of trying to “clean up” every item on your weekly grocery list, start with one item at a time. Learn about where that food comes from, what the labels mean, and what options you have at your store. For me, the best place to start was with eggs, because we eat them almost every morning. After a little research, I learned that the better choice at my grocery store was a brand that had gone to the trouble of becoming Certified Humane, and that that label actually meant something. Does this mean that I refuse to eat eggs that aren’t Certified Humane? Well, no. That would mean that I couldn’t have fast-food breakfast sandwiches (or some my favorite diner meals), and that isn’t the way I want to go about life. But if I’m in charge of buying eggs for my family or for a trip with friends, you best believe I’m going to grab the Certified Humane eggs if they’re available, because it’s the better choice.

In case you’d like to give this a try yourself, here’s a short list of things you can start making better choices about when it comes to food. Remember, just pick one at a time and work on it until you feel like you’re ready to try another one.

Portion control

Work on eating less calories than you burn a few days a week. But please don’t count calories, that’s the worst, and you’ll get close enough if you just estimate. And in case you didn’t know, calorie counts on your food packages are already estimates anyway, so why bother?

Practicing portion control is the only diet that actually works long-term. It isn’t easy, but at least it’s simple.

Eat something you cook once a day

If you’d like to make strides towards a healthier lifestyle, or if you’d just like to save some money, try to cook for yourself at least once a day. I’m not talking about a big, complicated dinner; scrambled eggs in the morning totally counts. Make a sandwich for workday lunch, and go eat it outside somewhere. Eating food that you prepare puts you in charge of every ingredient, and therefore allows you to be more intentional about what you’re eating (and how much).

Meatless Mondays

Americans consume too much meat. That’s not like a weirdo hippie health thing, it’s just a fact. And our obsession with meat is problematic in so many ways environmentally that I can’t even fathom writing about it. So I’ll leave it at that and you can go do your own Googling on the topic.

As a very tiny way of becoming less reliant on having a big hunk of meat with every meal, try going vegetarian–not like actual vegetarian, there are too many rules–for one day each week. A sample menu could be: oatmeal with fruit and buttered whole wheat toast for breakfast, trail mix for a snack, salad for lunch, and pesto pasta for dinner.

Reduce exposure to intolerances

I dislike the word ‘intolerance’, partly because it’s a mean-sounding word and partly because it’s overused. Everyone has an intolerance to some obscure ingredient now, and there’s surely a dedicated Facebook group you can join where everyone else encourages one another in their efforts to save the world from this heinous ingredient.

Despite my intolerance for intolerances, I know that everyone reacts to food differently, and (actual allergies not included) you will probably come across a food that doesn’t ‘sit well’ with you when you eat it. I already talked about my contentious relationship with dairy. My proposed solution is to try to eat less of the things that make your tummy sad. Sound too basic? It’s not. Especially when the thing you know you should eat less often is something that you love eating. Reducing the frequency that you eat these foods might help your body handle them better, and it will definitely make you feel better more often.

Research a ‘dirty food’ and try to clean it up

I mentioned my choice to start buying Certified Humane eggs earlier; that was a choice I made as part of a bigger effort to clean up my family’s food sourcing. In case you’re looking to make better choices about what food you buy, I would start with meat.

I’ll probably share the writing I’ve done about various food sources at a later date, but for now let’s just say that, in the US, you can pick basically any meat industry and read volumes on the despicable things that happen to animals before you eat them. So, where to start? Pick a meat. Do some research. Find better options. Go buy the better option. Congrats! You just used your dollar to vote for more sustainable practices in that industry. Now do it again.

If you’ve already tried any of the suggestions I made, I’d love to know how it went. And if you have other examples of “better choices” you’re making when it comes to food eating or food buying, be sure to let me know.