You might have heard of whole foods, but what are they, and why are they so important?
What is a whole food?
A whole food is one that has minimal or no processing. Examples include whole grains (for example, brown rice vs. white rice), fresh vegetables, and meats and eggs from a healthful source.
Foods don’t divide themselves neatly into whole foods and processed foods. There’s a lot of middle ground between whole organic foods at one end, and processed nonfoods filled with chemicals and little if any nutrition at the other.
We – and most nutritionists – strongly recommend that food be as whole as possible, and be processed as little as possible. There are some exceptions; for example, some foods such as grains and beans are more digestible cooked, and oils need to be extracted from their sources to be used.
Is whole the same as fresh?
Although whole food is often considered to be the same as fresh, in some cases canned or frozen food can actually be fresher than their “fresh” counterpart. Vegetables picked and canned at the peak of August ripeness might have more nutrition, as well as better taste, than the same vegetable grown off-season thousands of miles away, picked before it’s ripe, and shipped to your local grocery store.
If whole foods are so good, why don’t food manufacturers focus on these?
Food manufacturers don’t prioritize our health; their focus is on their profit. Whole foods cost more, which means that poor quality foods, food combined with chemicals, white flour, and corn syrup, and edible nonfoods are just plain cheaper to make and thus have a much higher profit margin. On top of that, a premium can be charged since these are often ready to eat. Combine this with a population that needs to keep a close watch on their food budgets, and you’ve got a situation where whole foods are the exception rather than the rule. You almost have to go out of your way and shop in special natural-foods stores to get them.
But health food tastes yucky and boring, doesn’t it?
You may want to eat more healthfully but envision a dreary vista of leaves and seeds and blandness. Actually, nothing could be further from the actual case.
Tastes follow what you eat as surely as the other way around, and tastes, amazingly, can change in just a few days. If you eat a lot of junk food and sweets, healthful food can sound and taste pretty blah. But if you change your diet even if it requires some initial willpower, or you have been eating relatively healthfully for a while, you will probably find that even brown rice and cabbage have delightful, complex flavors. A salad can be a yummy explosion of flavor. And if you then try junk food, you might well find it tasteless and cloyingly sweet or way too salty.
How can you recognize and choose whole foods?
Whole foods that are used in this country can be defined as those that would be available in a good natural foods store and that were available a hundred years ago. There would be on that list a good number of vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, grains, nuts, beans, legumes, herbs and seasonings, and oils. It’s a good idea to eat from the whole list, with individual exceptions made for personal allergies and sensitivities. Buy or grow organic food wherever possible.
Don’t eat anything that can’t rot or spoil. Rot and spoilage are due to the actions of microbes such as bacteria and fungus as well as bugs. If microbes and bugs won’t touch it, then your cells won’t find any food value in it either.
Avoid nonfoods, those products that are intended to be eaten yet are mostly or wholly made from chemicals and sugar rather than being actual foods from nature.
Avoid most food that’s packaged. Food in a package with health claims printed on it is still usually inferior to food that has or needs no packaging to begin with.
Read labels, if your food is packaged and has labels. Avoid chemicals that you wouldn’t have in your pantry by themselves, or anything that your great-grandmother wouldn’t have recognized as food. The fewer ingredients on the label, the better the food usually is.
How can you be sure you’re getting all the nutrients you need?
Simply put: If you eat a variety of healthy foods, and eat until you feel satisfied, you’ll often be getting the nutrients you need. Nutrient supplementation is sometimes recommended if you have limited access to high quality food, if you have health issues that affect the digestion and absorption of food, if you are quite nutritionally depleted, or if you would like the results that whole foods can bring, but faster.
But many people get all the nutrition they need from a healthful diet, and you don’t need to keep track of servings or how the food is combined. Your body will do that for you in the form of guiding you to what is most appealing, which you then eat.
But eating what’s most appealing is what got you into trouble in the first place!
It’s interesting how tastes and cravings reflect the kind of diet you’re eating. If you eat a lot of processed and sweetened foods, this is what you will crave, and this definitely isn’t in your best interest. But a person who has eaten healthy food almost exclusively for a while will find that their body will tell them what they need at any given time. They will then have a desire for meat, broccoli, olive oil, or quinoa. They eat what they need and they’re then satisfied.
On the other hand, let’s say you’ve been eating junk food for a while. At a particular time, your cells need some healthful fats. But the junk food has, in effect, hijacked your brain. Instead of being drawn to olive oil and lemon juice on a salad, you will crave fried foods or ice cream. Your body is really trying to get that healthful oil, but looks only at what it thinks it has to choose from. So you eat the chips or whatever, and soon your body is sending up the plaintive cry, “Hey, we still need some good oil down here!” And the cycle begins anew.
Another example is the craving for sweets. You may have an overgrowth of yeast in your body, and yeast love sugar. You eat sugar, the yeast cells grab it since it’s their favorite food, your cells – which make use of natural sugars – still don’t have enough, and the sweets craving and cycle begin again.
The bottom line
Ideally you would eat whole foods, although perhaps not all whole foods. Foods such as tomatoes, potatoes, bread, and dairy – although available in whole form – are not a good idea for many people, especially those with health challenges. The detox and maintenance diets in the book Detox or Disease list those foods that we at CAM recommend. Supplements can assist you in getting the nutrition you need, and should be recommended by a practitioner such as those at CAM based on your particular health concerns and nutritional deficiencies.
