Eat Real Food

You are what you eat...

Literally!  Your physical body, and its tissues are made up of recycled, repurposed cells, and organic material that you consume. So if you are literally made up of what you eat, and drink, why wouldn't you want to be the healthiest version of yourself. You wouldn't let your car run out of gas, and even better if you want to be a top notch performance vehicle, you wouldn't put cheap gas in the tank, would you? This is a great analogy that simplifies things, some might say too much, but looking at your “diet” through this broader lens can help to put things into perspective as it paints a bigger picture. 

Yes, you can go down the rabbit hole that is the scientific study of nutrition, (and I have). With an immeasurable amount of information both true and false, differences of opinion and theories can be argued until the end of time on which nutrition program is “the best” . Every point has a counterpoint and everyone thinks they know best. A scientist may tell you that you need to consume 340.76876576 micrograms of omega-6 blah blah blah daily. How realistic is it for the average person to track micronutrients, and account for all the variables in our day to day lives, we are not lab rats being fed a perfectly concocted blend of macro & micronutrients and living perfectly balanced, stress free lives. Your nutrition choices should have this in mind. There is nothing wrong with trying to dial in your specific nutritional needs, but don't lose sight of the bigger picture, and remember that sometimes it is best to just keep it simple.

So our motto is “Eat real food” and what does that mean?

Michael Pollan puts it very well, in one of his books “Food Rules” he said, “eat real food, not too much, mostly plants'' As simple as that is, it is also very specific “real food” means that it has not been overly processed, and pumped full of unnatural preservatives or other chemicals. Mostly plants implies that eating more fruits and vegetables will generally provide most of the nutrients you need to thrive. “Not too much” means, control yourself, which is where alot of us need help. By the way did you ever notice that nobody ever binge eats a plate of broiled salmon, yet we can eat a whole carton of cookies in one sitting? That's because our brains and bodies are wired to become addicted to sugar. Having sugar in moderate amounts and in the right forms is completely fine, but of course as humans we have bio engineered ways to make things sweeter and more easily consumable. And we have no problem selling it as “healthy” or “nutritious”… I’ll digress further.

Let's look at the process of making apple juice for example. Let's take an apple, which is great all by itself, with a good amount of fiber to balance out the naturally occurring sugars within it, and a bunch of different micronutrients in the skin, and pulp of the fruit. Let's take that apple and extract just the sweet part, then let's pasteurize it and kill off all the nutrients that might be left, and because it's not sweet enough let's add some highly processed corn sugar, and replace those naturally occurring nutrients with some new ones we synthetically designed in a lab, then we will throw it in a plastic bottle which will inevitably wind up in the ocean, polluting our water supply and slowly poisoning us over time, but mark it up as being healthy and great for kids! Sound good? I don't think so. This happens not only to apple juice, but to pretty much every other natural food there is, in countless ways.  I feel its best to avoid these types of ultra-processed “food like substances” for too many reasons.

Eat the apple, eat the baked potato, don’t eat potato chips, and apple juice.

Have some berries, oats, and nuts, skip the fruit bar/pop tart.

Have a steak/chicken/fish, leave the frozen burger/chicken nugget/fish stick.

Get it? Got it? Good!

What is this long rant all about even? Well it's just a little information, or rather my opinion on why I think it's important to just eat real food. Very simply put, if you are what you eat then why would you want to fill yourself with highly processed garbage, that leaves you feeling like just that...garbage. Eating real food allows you to be in control of what you're eating, and combined with a practice of awareness of how that food makes you feel, YOU can design the nutrition plan that suits you the best. There is no one size fits all approach to nutrition, every individual responds differently to what they consume, and it is up to you to figure out what works for you. Generally though I will always recommend a whole (real)  food diet, with lots of water. It's really just that simple, and if your’e having trouble and you just want someone to do it for you, I know this really great meal prep company run by some really knowledgable, and talented chefs that can help you out!

You are what you eat, so eat real high quality foods, and you will be a real high quality person… physically anyway, still gotta work on mindset, but that's a whole other topic.

Thanks for reading, reach out to chat or ask questions!

By, Chef Stephen. 12/22/2020