I must confess, I am a health nut. I believe I mentioned health in almost every post I wrote here. Today, it is time for a post about healthy food, because we all need to eat and student food is not known to be the healthiest.
The first question might be: what is healthy food? It might sound stupid to ask this, as everybody knows that they must eat two pieces of fruit every day, two portions of vegetables, that skipping meat a few times per week does not hurt you when you replace it by soy products or fish, and that you need to drink 1.5 litres each day. There is, however, more to eating healthy. As a matter of fact, one can eat healthy and one can eat healthy. The first healthy is where you, for example, get your vegetables from microwave meals, which might indeed contain enough vitamins and minerals in the veggies, but that also contain a lot of salt and probably artificial additives. The second healthy is where you make everything by yourself with fresh and pure ingredients. Of course, it would be best to make all food by yourself from scratch, to the point where you plant your own vegetables and fruit trees in your garden and raise your own cattle, but most of us won't have the time for that.
The second question to be answered is: how do you recognize fresh and pure ingredients? Fresh ingredients are fairly easy: look for the expiration date and use your common sense if something looks or smells funny. Pure ingredients are more difficult, but after a few years of reading various articles, books, watching documentaries and TV shows, and trying things out, I have gathered some knowledge about what pure food means.
An easy way to find out how healthy your food is, is to look at the length of the ingredient list of the products you buy. Don't look for 'healthy choice' labels! These are often misleading, already put on a product as soon as there is less sugar or fat in it than the equivalent of another brand. A general, very rough rule of thumb without any nuance to it is that the longer the list of ingredients, the more likely it is that there is something bad, processed, or artificial in it. As stated above, it is a general and rough rule without any nuance: some pure products list 10 ingredients while some 'artificial' products contain only 3 or 4 ingredients.
In the European Union (EU), some 'artificial' products are easily recognizable. The EU has a list of approved artificial and natural additives that are added to food to make it look better, tastier, more smelly, or simply to be able to preserve it longer without it rotting away. These additives have gotten numerical codes, all starting with an E, also called E-numbers. Although the EU has approved these, some additives from the 'European' list are forbidden in some individual EU-countries or in the USA, so just because a supranational institution has approved of it, doesn't necessarily make it good!
Also, producers of food replace the E-number codes by the names of the additives today, resulting in packages almost as easily readable as the table of elements we had to learn in Chemistry during high school. In order to read and understand these lists, you really need to be into chemistry. Again, as a very general rule of thumb: the harder an ingredient is to pronounce, the more likely it is that it is unhealthy. This again a very general rule of thumb, because ascorbic acid sounds quite scary, but actually it just vitamin C.
Another reason to be wary of packages is that they sometimes scream 'no preservatives!' or 'does not contain colorants!' Some additives serve several functions and they usually are added for their primary function. The second function is just a side effect, and therefore, the producers tend to derive the claim of 'no whatever type of additives' from the primary and initial reason why the stuff was added to the product.
So, what should you avoid at all costs?
First, diet / light products, and products that claim to contain no sugar / no fat. The sugar that ought to be in the product is most often replaced by sweeteners, such as sucrose, aspartame (E951), sucralose (E955), and acesulfame-K (E950). While your teeth might be happy and shiny with the sugar being replaced by these sweeteners, the rest of your body may disagree with your teeth. And after all, your teeth prefer water and milk above everything.
Second, microwave meals / ready-to-eat salads with dressing and basically ALL ready-to-use dressings / sauces / whatever. I have come across a few microwave meals that contain no additives, but make up for this by using excessive amounts of salt. Most of these ready-to-eat meals / salads / dressings / sauces contain preservatives, flavour modifiers, emulsifiers and other things that make me personally feel sick and loose all appetite. Especially the flavour modifier monosodium glutamate (E621) is a well-known one and even referred to as 'Chinese restaurant syndrome', because Chinese restaurants often use it in their food. If you are allergic to this flavour modifier, you can actually feel very unwell after consuming it. It is present in most ready-to-use sauces, dressings, bouillon preparations, but also in potato chips with additional flavours and many other well-seasoned food products. I would also categorize cakes, cookies, pop tarts and almost anything sweet you can get at the supermarket.
Third, meat and meat products, especially when they are flavoured with spices and marinades. It is not secret that many cattle farmers feed their animals with growth hormones (which may lead to hormonal disturbances in your body) and antibiotics (which has already resulted in the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria), but once in the meat factory, additives are added for taste and preservation on top of the hormones and antibiotics.
Fourth, so-called healthy and / or tasty dairy variations, such as chocolate milk from cans (emulsifiers) and strawberry yoghurt drink without sugar (sweeteners). Yes, I know these are tasty, but it really is better to drink a cup of milk and eat the strawberries separately and it also really is better to mix some pure and dark cocoa powder with milk (and maybe some sugar).
As a last word of advice, ingredients differ per brand, per company, and per shop. The examples of products containing (artificial) additives are generalizations and there are also many more products containing these additives. This article provides you with some guidelines that help you choose when you are busy and do not have so much time for grocery shopping. I will, however, recommend you to really take the time once and look at the ingredient lists on all products you wish to buy / eat. I also want to recommend you, if this topic has your interest, to just look up things on the internet.
Wikipedia has a list of sub-categories and pages on which you can find plenty of information about additives. While Wikipedia may not be the most academic or scientific source, it is always a good starting point for extending your web search.
Last but not least: why the heck would you bother? Simple: because it has significant health benefits. Today, people are becoming more conscious of the additives, but they still are not knowledgeable enough to really make a decision on what is healthy and what is not. That makes perfect sense, as it took me years to find out what really is good for me, after extensive searches on the internet and in other sources. It is, however, a fact that some kids who were diagnosed with ADHD got rid of their disorder by following a diet based on avoiding unhealthy food as defined above. These kids never needed Ritalin / Concerta / Adderall, just a simple and healthy diet. Some additives have also been related to increased risk of getting cancer and other unpleasant diseases, but there is still much research going on and the results sometimes contradict each other. Some diets for people with severe and headstrong fungal infections strongly suggest eating pure food, without additives. My own experiences are: I'm feeling mentally and physically stronger, I've overcome the chronic winter colds that I had back during adolescence, I can focus better, and I have more energy than ever. While my life was pretty good before leaving the (in most cases) unnecessary additives aside, it is now so much better.
What are your thoughts? Did you already try to eat healthy or are you going to change your eating pattern after reading this? Do you think that the food industry should be legally forced to reduce their additives to an absolute minimum or do you think it is unstoppable no matter what? Do you think it is worthwhile spending hours on the internet looking up more specific information and preparing all your food by yourself? Maybe you happen to be a formerly ADHD kid who was cured by a diet? Let me know!
