9 Words to Eat By

If I had to boil down all my nutrition knowledge into under 10 words, I would borrow 7 of them from Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food. 

“Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.”

And then I would add 2 more

Drink Water. 

I highly recommend In Defense of Food for anyone – no matter your level of food and nutrition knowledge. If we could all follow Michael Pollan’s seven words of advice most of the time (…having a healthy relationship with food means we need to allow room to deviate some of the time) – we could avoid many of the diet related diseases plaguing countries worldwide.

Eat Food 

• Put your food through the grandma diet test. Ask yourself before eating something if your grandma would recognize it as food (I definitely never saw either of my grandma’s eat marshmallow fluff).
• Choose foods from the land or foods from a farm over foods from a factory when possible.
• Look at ingredient lists to see if you know what is in your food. Are they common ingredients you would find in a home kitchen or ingredients like carrageenan, high-fructose corn syrup and sodium nitrite?
• Be aware of food marketing. The majority of whole unprocessed foods do not have health claims (think of the produce section) while highly processed foods often use health claims to persuade us to buy them. Just because an item has a health claim does not mean it is healthy…I’m looking at you Sunny D with your 100% Vitamin C marketing.

Mostly Plants

• The research is clear. To promote health, the bulk of our diet should be mostly plants.
• Nutrition is a fairly new science and although there has been changing advice over the years (check out this video which sums it up well) – the advice around eating more vegetables, fruits and legumes for good health has stood the test of time.
• Do not confuse plants (vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes) with the intense marketing of highly processed ‘plant based’ products at present which would not pass a few of the Eat Food bullet points.
• Time and time again, diets like the Mediterranean diet which focus on a diet rich in plant foods with lean proteins and limited processed foods are shown to promote health while not being too restrictive to follow long term.

Not Too Much

• The 2019 Canada Food Guide finally recognized that healthy eating is more than the foods that we eat – it is also how we eat them that is important.
• Being mindful of our food (eating away from screens, making time for meals, eating with others, slowing down to enjoy our food, and checking in with our hunger signals) can help us to avoid eating too much.
• Portions when we eat out are often much larger than if we had cooked at home. Filling half your plate with vegetables or fruit first before other items can help with overeating when at home or at buffet/potluck settings.
• Tune into your hunger and fullness cues. Young children are great at honouring these cues but we often stop listening to our body as we age. Remember it takes some time for your stomach to send signals to your brain to let it know when you are full – check in with your hunger before grabbing seconds.

Drink Water

• Up to 60% of the human body is water – choose nature’s beverage whenever possible.
• If you routinely drink beverages other than water – I encourage you to look at the label and do some math to determine how many calories and how much sugar you are drinking on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.