Doesn't everyone want to know what a healthy food is? People ask me all the time whether a food is healthy, and I can't give them that yes or no answer that they want. Here's an example: I had some ice cream on Sunday. I'll tell you about it, and you can decide - is it a healthy food?
Per half cup: 110 calories, 25 calories from fat. Okay, not bad: some of the leading brands have up to 330 calories per half cup. I had 2 cups, or four half cups, or 440 calories. Oops.
It has probiotics, those healthy bacteria that live in your gut and help your digestive system stay regular. Good.
It has berries - real strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries. Good. They're listed in the ingredients somewhere after high fructose corn syrup. Not so good.
It's sweetened with sucralose, a non-caloric sweetener. Good. It's also sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, sugar, brown sugar, polydextrose, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, and corn syrup (did those last three look familiar? The ingredients list label mentioned them twice, too). Not so good.
It has two grams of fiber per serving. Hey, I ate four servings...that's 8 grams of fiber, almost a third of my daily amount. Good.
The first ingredient is skim milk, and each serving has 10% calcium. Good.
It has partially hydrogenated soybean oil, you know, the stuff that's famous for its artery clogging trans fats? Not so good.
Overall? I'd like to know what you think. Personally, I think it was a good choice for me. It was a treat I had planned for, and it was definitely a better choice than a thousand calorie hot fudge sundae. And I had a salad before it, so doesn't that make up for the six kinds of sugar?
gosh I'm just getting caught up with your blog - how did I not know you'd even started writing? I know we'd talked about it, but... Here it is!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm all for your geriatric ice cream (that is the kind you're talking about, right?). I think it's a *relatively* healthy food in that it's better than the other choices you could make to fill the particular craving that it satisfies. But I'm not sure exactly how to classify a food as healthy or as junky. Like my popcorn - I have those 94% fat free mini bags of popcorn and sure they are whole grain (good!) but they have palm oil (bad!) and chemicals (not so hot). Healthy or junky?
What I want to know in this thought experiment is where does taste come into play? So what if the ice cream isn't the healthiest thing on the planet - does it taste good and do you enjoy it?
I hadn’t considered taste when I was writing about the health qualities of the ice cream. I suppose you could say it was mentally healthy because it tasted good. On the other hand, maybe it’s a bad thing to humor my sweet tooth because maybe eating sweet ice cream makes me want to eat more sweet foods.
ReplyDeleteThe food you eat should taste good - and taste good to YOU (witness me and my egg roll/teryiaki/tropical fruit meals) - to keep you eating it, and refining your tastes towards healthy food is important, I totally agree with that. When I'm not eating well I do tend to get caught up in taste cycles - I overeat sweets and then crave sweets. I haven't had anything sweeter than fruit in 7 months now and no longer even THINK about food sweeter than fruit.
ReplyDeleteNow if I could only kick my craving for salt and vinegar. :)