Do you know the game called, Whisper Down the Lane? This is where a group of kids sit in a circle and someone starts out by whispering, "Joe ate the apple at sunrise," to his neighbor, and the whispered message continues around the circle until the last person declares the sentence is, "Leo Tolstoy was born in 1492, rode in a car to church, and talked on his cell phone." I played it quite a bit in Sunday School as a kid when the teacher was trying to do an object lesson on gossip, lying, improving listening skills, or whatever else someone was caught doing that week.
The adult version of Whisper Down the Lane happens every day with nutrition. The first people are authorities in different nutrition areas who present some information about a food that science, history, and anecdotal evidence has deemed highly reliable information. They are able to talk at length about how the nutrition in the food affects the body, who should take greater care with the food, and who should eat a lot more. They give testimonials from a wide range of authorities from each end of the spectrum, or at least a substantial part of the spectrum if the folks on either end are busy hating each other. They also present why they might be wrong, and encourage folks to make their own decisions about this food. Then the chain begins via the Internet, magazines, TV talk shows, the trainer at the health club, healthcare professionals, and your neighbor. What started as a wise bit of information for an end user to critically think about implementing in his/her life becomes at best a rebuke from a well-meaning friend to a rigid mandate from Nutrition Nazis.
This is an unfortunate result that has caused many good foods to be left uneaten. Here's just a few from years of listening, with shameless exaggeration added:
White rice is evil and will send you into diabetic shock. This came about due to the focus on carbohydrates (carbs) and the role they play in daily consumption. Carbohydrates get broken down into sugars, starches, and fiber. How your body digests and absorbs the nutrients in carbs plays a part in how the other processes involved in digestion work. The thought behind this is that white rice breaks down too quickly in your digestive tract and saturates your system with dangerous levels of sugars all at once. I could go into the desirable and undesirable effects of white rice in different categories of people, but I won't. I will leave you to do your own research and discover what category of people you belong to and then to exercise relief or caution, depending on where you fall. And, I'll tell you there are 1.3 billion people in China who aren't currently lying in comas from what they ate at lunch.
You will die a tortured death if you eat a green potato. My mother had me cut out the green spots on potatoes that had been exposed to light, and thoroughly inspected each one as she put it in the pot to boil. I passed this along to my kids. The offending chemical is called solanine, and it is higher in green potatoes and green tomatoes than their non-green counterparts. Solanine is a toxin. So is furanocoumarin, a chemical found in grapefruit and celery leaves. So is oxalic acid, found in spinach, parsley and rhubarb. The fact is, there are many naturally occurring toxic chemical compounds found in food, but we just don't eat enough of them to be affected. Do your research about this topic so you can know what's acceptable to you and what is not. Ask your doctor, naturopath, pharmacist, chiropractor and other healthcare professionals. Know what contraindications exist with medicines you take.
Iceberg lettuce will be the downfall of western civilization. Poor, poor iceberg lettuce. What used to be hailed as a tremendously useful diet food has become the outcast of the daisy family. It wasn't long after the nutrient content of red leaf, romaine, and iceberg lettuce were being compared that these green balls started to be relegated to a smaller section of the produce section in favor if their counterparts. People everywhere became lettuce snobs, and now the thinking is, "Of course fast-food places have it on their burgers--junk on top of junk!" You should decide. Say you're watching what you eat for the purpose of weight loss or improved wellness. If your only choices for lunch are between a fresh iceberg lettuce salad, or a double hamburger with mayonnaise, which would you consider more nutrient-dense for your needs?
Anything made with white flour is nuclear waste. Sigh. While I was visiting Uganda, I stayed at a home with limited shopping access and on a tight budget. Every morning, we ate posho, which is a very fine corn meal that is sprinkled into water while it boiled. When it was stirred to a thick consistency, we dished it up and ate it. Without sugar. Without salt. Without anything else. I am not a martyr; I detested it. I bring it up because it was the nutrition available to us at that time. Whether it is white flour or corn meal, each of which was many steps away from how it started, it does contain nutrition. We preferred it over hunger. It is my experience that people who feel bad or guilty about the food they're eating tend to make much less desirable choices for nutrition.
Of these foods I listed, I have my own feelings about them. I researched them. I know what's best for my goals at the moment, and so I decide what to eat, what to limit, what to splurge on, and what to change based on those facts. I won't tell you what I eat, because you are not me. This is the approach to take, because that's what the first person in this Whisper Down the Lane game was intending to say.
But I will tell you that I don't eat rhubarb. It tastes icky.
Carolyn Schlicher is a Professional Nutrition Specialist who tries to take the legalism out of nutrition. She believes that the majority of people don't really believe what the Nutrition Nazis say, but don't know how to confirm that. Carolyn works alongside her husband Darryl operating http://www.LiquidWholeFood.com, a website dedicated to quick, easy, and nutrient dense food to use as supplements and homeopathy helps.
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