Lose weight, eat real food

 Have we lost track of what food really is?

Ever since I can remember (I’m 44 now) food has been recommended to us or sold to us in advertising and on packaging, telling of its great benefit to our health and why we need to eat this particular food. The claims have been numerous; contains a particular vitamin, low in fat, high in carbs, low in carbs, lose weight eat this product, a good source of this mineral or that protein. This list could go on forever.

The result of all this is we are more worried and stressed about what we eat and whether it is doing us harm or good and whether we will lose weight eating it.

Since the introduction of this so called nutrition in to our western diets, we have suffered an obesity epidemic, and the incidence of food allergies has soared and the different ways to lose weight have sky rocketed.

Why should this be when all these miracle nutrients were only going to enrich our lives and our health and help us lose weight? Or so we were told.

What is real food?

Somewhere along the way we have lost track of what food really is. Scientists can break down a real food that may be good for us, like say an orange. The orange contains vitamin C so they squeeze out the juice and sell us this orange juice high in vitamin C that is good for us. Then the next scientist extracts the vitamin C from the orange juice and sells us these small tablets, each one packed with the same amount of health giving vitamin C as an orange, and we buy it. Now we are a bit dehydrated so we have some bottled mineral water, and a bit constipated so we may need some fibre gel. Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier (and cheaper) to have eaten an orange, the real food in the first place? Also when the scientist extracted the vitamin C from the orange that was only one of many compounds that make up that orange, who is to say that the health benefits don’t really come from any of those compounds or much more likely the exact combination of them as found the real food. It could be that the vitamin C really gives us the benefit when it is in combination with some other compound only found in pithy part or the orange, and the vitamin C is inert on its own or even harmful, who knows. Surely it’s better to have the real thing, to try where we can to eat real food.

Is an orange real food?

Still on orange juice, there is an energy cost to chewing and digesting an orange, far greater than that of orange juice.

Is orange juice the juice of an orange? If you squeeze it then drink it immediately yes of course, but if you get it from a carton there is a good chance that it’s not, it has been altered, heated to kill natural enzymes that would reduce its shelf life. This heating however can alter the natural sugars in the juice and you may be drinking the equivalent of sugar and water. If we don’t know exactly what we are eating how can we plan to lose weight?

Getting back to real food

The real point I am trying to make here is, if we can get back to eating real food for its value as a whole food, avoid processed food and get to know the food we are eating, we can lose the worry of not getting enough of this nutrient or that nutrient, and be free to enjoy the more important things in life.

If we choose to eat real food we can plan with certainty what to eat. We know we are getting the required nutrients and we can concentrate on lifestyle and the energy we take in and the energy we expend to lose weight and control our weight for the future.

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