5/16/10

Is this cookie good for me? Ask the... nutritionist?

I recently offered a guest a chocolate chip whole-wheat cookie that I had just baked. He asked me if the cookie was good for his cholesterol. That was an interesting question.
You can't look at one cookie, or vegetable, fruit, pill, or diet, and say that particular single food is ''good'' for the cholesterol. You can't just pick one food and say that food is ''good'' or ''bad'' for you. Everything is good for you, and at the same time, everything can be bad for you as well. It all depends on how much you eat of it, and what the quality of the food is. You put bad gas in the car, the car doesn't run well. You put poor quality food in your body, your body breaks down just like your car. We need all the types of food that are in nature. We need it for nourishment, for enjoyment, for variety, for life! All of it is good, as long as it is real, quality food.
Nutritionists have made everything so complicated. Everything is about what little molecule in a particular food is ''good for you'', and how many calories, and how much fat, amino acids, vitamins etc that food has.
I am sorry, but I simply don't have the time to count calories and try to make the right protein and vitamin combination ratios. First of all, I am terrible at math. Second, I'd rather spend the precious time I have cooking a good, tasty meal, than counting the calories and vitamins of a packaged food. Third, when you buy fresh food, it doesn't come with calories, vitamin and fiber charts, so that makes the counting effort virtually impossible.
I am sure that tomorrow they will come up with yet another ''new'' super food that is ''good for you''. I am sure that food will be whatever is produced in excess of what was predicted to be consumed, and then rushed to the lab for ''studies'' so that new ''magical'' properties can be found, and then sold for more than it is really worth.
Aren't collards, mustard greens, beet greens, turnip greens, and all other types of greens just as good for you as spinach? And aren't apples, peaches, pears, grapes, oranges and kiwis just as amazing fruits as blueberries??? Or pomegranates? And isn't an all-natural, pesticide-free little loquat better for you than that expensive, chockfull of pesticide (and anti-oxidant) blueberry?
Don't you think that when nutritionists and their (paid for by which company?) studies tell you that spinach is the wonder vegetable, all you will be able to find in the supermarket will be... spinach? And will the nutritionists tell you what kinds of nutrients you will be missing by eating just spinach, forgetting about the zillion other greens (all of them with their own set of unique nutrients) that were created in nature, and that our ancestors ate without the help of any nutritionist?
When thinking about food and what is good for you, just use common sense. You will end up eating much more varied, healthy and tasty meals than what any nutritionist could ever ''recommend'' for you from their studies. After all, aren't those studies always being ''updated'', ''corrected'' and/or ''invalidated''? Just remember margarine, ''the'' alternative to the ''awful'' butter, which now is again supposed to be ''great''. I also remember when eggs were the evil-doers, before they turned into the good guys again... and soy... and chocolate... coffee... green tea... wine... blueberries... avocados... greek yogurt... the list will (always) go on...
It's up to us to listen to our senses, look around us, and eat what grows all around us... or try to endlessly keep up with that ever-changing list of ''super-wonder'' foods that come from God-knows where, picked and produced no-one knows when, and grown and ''cooked'' with who knows what. But that are neatly presented with nutritionist labels to satisfy everything else that it is missing: the nutrition.
So, is that cookie good for your cholesterol? We will only know when they do a study on its properties, and put a nutrition label on it... Or... we look to see what the ingredients, and the quality of the ingredients in this cookie are. Not the nutritional ''properties''- the wholesome, plain and simple ingredients. 

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