I think I’m like most people….in that I have a feeling about most of the foods I eat. What I mean by that is not….oh, this is tasty….but rather that I have a feeling about whether I’m eating healthy or not. If I eat a burger….I feel like ‘that’s not good for me’, while if I eat some oatmeal….I feel…”I’m being healthy.”
Our relationship with food is a curious one, and to be honest, I suspect most people in the U.S. have issues with their food choices much of the time.
With this in mind, the latest research that is returning fat and meat to the diet, as healthy choices, is both reassuring and a bit concerning.
Reassuring, for me, as a meat-eater…..giving me cover and making me feel ‘not so bad’ about the choices I make, but disconcerting in that it calls into question all of what we have been told by ‘the experts’ over the past few decades.
Books like Salt, Sugar, Fat....which was popular last summer, and which I commented on previously here in my blog, showed the issues with processed food. Now, the upcoming book that looks at meat and fat…. “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet,” and reasserts that these are healthy and good to resume in our diets.
Why we have changed our minds on these topics, is elucidated in this article from the Wall Street Journal, but I think that the best advice for your diet, came from Aristotle, the great Greek Philosophy. To shoot for ‘the golden mean’ and to find balance in all things, diet included.
See more on diet, here in my video about Ancel Keys and the Mediteranean Diet.