FOOD for THOUGHT: Don’t Put All of Your Eggs in One Basket

(Dietary changes should be discussed with a health care provider.)

Maybe I should, instead, say “don’t put one or more eggs in all of your baskets”; also, don’t fill every basket with chicken or soy or coconut.  Here’s what I mean.  No matter how healthy a food truly is – or is currently thought to be – it’s not healthy to live on one food group let alone on one food.  For example, I have known people who, in an effort to be healthier eaters, have (in some cases purposely & in some inadvertently) replaced cow’s milk with soy milk, cheese with soy cheese, sausage with soysage, burgers with textured soy protein patties, taco filling with soy crumbles, bacon bits with soy crisps, chicken with tofu, ice cream with tufutti, and breakfast with a soy protein powder shake.  Even if all of these alternative products existed in a “spinach” version, I would not recommend such a blanket substitution – and you know how pro-vegetable I am.

Along similar lines, we can’t just replace the meat in every beef, pork and lamb recipe with chicken and call ourselves healthy.  Substitutions must maintain variety.  (Plus, it’s not the kind of meat that is a problem; it’s mostly the quality and volume that’s a problem.  Newsflash: Too much chicken is as bad for you as regular red meat.)

Instead, try something that looks more like this: replace cow’s milk with almond milk, cheese with tapioca cheese, sausage filling with an herbed grain filling, burgers with actual vegetable burgers (which are comprised of finely diced vegetables, as opposed to most “veggie” burgers which are just vegetarian -- containing no meat as well as no vegetables) or with whole mushroom “burgers”, taco filling with beans, bacon bits with sunflower, sesame or chia seeds, chicken with tofu (fermented soy is perfectly healthy), ice cream with rice cream, and breakfast with a whole vegetable-fruit smoothie (optionally with nuts, nut butters -- or even egg – mixed in).  Now we’ve actually increased both the number of food groups and the variety of foods from the original list instead of decreased them.

Better yet, instead of trying to modify not-so-healthy food to be healthier, try to eat not-so-healthy foods less often and to choose new healthy-to-begin-with foods in their place.

CHALLENGE #27 of 50:

Changes don’t need to be drastic, but sometimes change needs to be tangible and noticeable in order to facilitate a realization as to the true nature of why the change is necessary.

Rather than go for the faux versions of foods with which we are familiar, we need to branch out and try some new textures, flavors and ingredients, and even allow for a new view of what a meal can “look” like.

Be bold with your change!  Don’t be confined by accepted food standards (or lack there of), demand better even if it is initially socially uncomfortable. 

QUOTE of the WEEK:

(Note: My father was born in the early 1920s; so, this sage advice should not be applied to regularly eating a bit of hydrogenated fat, corn syrup, weed killer, industrially raised animal meat etc.  It applies to actual food and covers things like avocados, nuts, potatoes, coconut, soy, eggs, etc.)

“Eat some of everything.  Don’t eat too much of any one thing.  That way you’ll have eaten everything that is good for you, and when it turns out that some of it was actually bad for you, well, you won’t have too much to worry about.”

Papa