To think there is a poor understanding of a healthy diet?

[LivelyLemonQuoter]

I think most people think they know what a healthy diet looks like, but in reality they do not. I see so many comments on MN that demonstrate this.

The most common one is that fruit should be limited because of its sugar content. This is very bad advice. Sugar in fruit has little impact on our blood sugar levels. And most people in the UK do not eat enough fruit.

The other is concern over eating any carbs. Wholemeal bread and pasta is fine, carbs in pastry and doughnuts is not great though.

And most people need to eat more nuts. Nuts are very good for you and should be part of your regular diet.

Sugar is natural? I suppose it was at its source, not added to your drinks by the spoonful though. Tobacco is natural, too. And opium. And being mauled by a bear in the woods.

The flour used in doughnuts is bleached white flour

Bleached flour is illegal in the UK (and EU).

But do keep telling everyone how knowledgeable you are.

Sure lots of people don't know what to eat, but part of the problem is just a fixation on the idea there is some magic answer.

Humans are adapted to live in all kinds of different environments with differernt diets.

The most important thing IMO is to limit processed foods. It's not just that they are directly healthier, people don't tend to over-eat them to the same degree because it takes more effort.

@GarlicSmile ah you are right, it was banned by the EU.
But it is fairly ridiculous to be arguing that doughnuts are equal to wholemeal bread nutritionally.
Even at the flour level, wholemeal bread has more fibre than an ordinary white loaf of bread.
This uncontroversial and widely accepted, and yet there have been claims that white and wholemeal flour are the same. They are not.

@TempestTost Yes humans can eat a very wide variety of food. We can survive for many years on strange diets. But surviving is different to what is best for our health and longevity.

Thanks, OP, and at least I agree with you on the fibre/bread/doughnut question!

You may have some idea how much I WISH doughnuts were nutritionally identical to wholemeal bread ...

You sound very much like you could have orthorexia, have you considered this

Trust me I do not.

Minimum three portions of fruit? Never heard of that. I thought seven (up from the old five) portions of fruit and veg with fruit being NO MORE than three. And variety is key. Eat the rainbow.
Many people can’t tolerate seeds.
Wholefoods is important - the less processed the better.
I think most people DO know what constitutes a healthy diet, it’s just cake is infinitely more yummy than a salad.

Funny this comes up now.

Yesterday we had a health lecture on work facilitated by an actual medical doctor with a Fellowship in Endocrinology and Diabetes from the UK. She did not say that eating fruit was bad but she did say that it does have the same impact on your blood sugar as any other sugar. Of course, the fibre in fruit does somewhat mitigate the spike and can lower its glycemic load but when it comes to things like mangoes, bananas and pineapples, for instance, they are simply too sweet to be consumed in large amounts to be considered healthy.

I like nuts but am trying to lose weight and find it hard to stop at one small portion.

I have spent the last 15 years trying to lose two stone + and eat a nutritious diet, and I've always done lots of exercise - unfortunately it's purely quantity not quality when it comes to weight loss and I simply couldn't just eat the tiny amounts required to lose weight for long enough. I'm now takjng mounjaro and can actually manage to eat fewer calories.

Hi, sorry if I'm misunderstanding but is it something else that you're referring to and not HbA1C? Because a normal A1C is 6.5 and below.

I think you'll find that people across the world, in very different climates, thrive with differernt diets.

Not convinced,
Posting lengthy posts about nutrition at almost 2am iis hardly normal behaviour, I think you need to think a bit more about your behaviour as you do seem to have an unhealthy obsession

"Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much." This is really all anyone needs to know. Food in this advice means what you great grandparents would recognise as food, so not ultra processed.

I agree most people do know, @mondaytosunday, but I don't know what 'most' constitutes. A surprisingly high number of people think stuff like low-fat, flavoured yoghurts and (industrial) coleslaw are healthy foods. I don't quite get how they've remained stuck in the 1980s, given half of 'em weren't even born then. I can only surmise it's the result of advertising - but manufacturers are no longer allowed to claim foods made of additives are 'healthy'.

It feels rather cruel to shoot them down when they've made an effort. We could probably do with some mass-coverage PSA advertising on diet - and many other things, come to think of it. But that kind of expenditure isn't compatible with the current state of our economy 😢

There are tons of blogs, videos and books, etc, talking basic common sense. There are even more talking bullshit, unfortunately. I'd count OP's strangely prescriptive announcements among the latter. At least it forms part of an ongoing conversation, I guess!

michaelpollan.com/reviews/how-to-eat/

I think most people DO know what constitutes a healthy diet, it’s just cake is infinitely more yummy than a salad.

I agree, but based on the OPs diet and her apparent strong focus (obsession) on nutrition, I doubt she would allow herself to indulge in cake unless of course she had carried out a thorough analysis of it first and she was absolutely sure it passed nutritional requirements / standards

I agree with you (and the majority in the poll) OP. Similar to the advice here
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/diet-and-cancer/what-is-a-healthy-diet

I think there are a lot of mixed messages around food, not just in terms of diet advice, plus a lot of lifestyle pressures.

In terms of pressures, many people just don't have much time. People no longer go to bed with the sun, and stay up late snacking, people live in their cars and eat on the road, people don't get enough sleep.They make so many decisions in the day they have no energy for more. All contribute to cutting corners.

And then, we treat cooking real food like it's complex. We expect a ton of variety in meals, for example. Our ancestors ate less processed food, but realistically, their diets were often pretty similar every day with changes relating mainly to food availability. You didn't cook the same food ten differernt ways, you had one or two methods. if you were taking a lunch in your pocket, it was probably the same thing every day. People didn't expect food to be exciting or exotic or creative for the most part.

Cooking real food is a lot more intimidating and takes more energy when you think you need it to be those things.

Nuts make me sick so l cannot eat them. The non-nuts, peanuts and coconuts will make me nauseous by their smell alone - l am very intolerant to them. They may be very healthy but not for me. In my family, we tend not to eat as much fruit as we should but we eat lots of vegetables. Surely this is enough.

Personally I’d say your pulse and veg quota is low.
Other countries recommend 10 portions min with no minimum or maximum on pulses.

Seeds also can be all types
Other things like using olive oil ( tbsp min a day etc )

Lots of people know all this but many ( most ) people chose to eat what they enjoy which often is not the above.

Oh, not ANOTHER thread about food and eating! So tedious!

Sorry OP, but you are coming across as preachy and holier than thou.

I prefer to eat simple foods, much like my parents and grandparents did, with treats to add some joy, rather than stick to a restrictive - and often expensive - diet. They lived to their mid/late 80s with minimal health issues, at the same time enjoying what they ate and not obsessing over everything being "healthy"

Absolutely great article and in terms of cancer lots of research on the benefits particularly of
broccoli and
heated tomatoes

but thats an aside. It’s worth noting that an obsession with everything that goes into our mouths creates exactly that…..an obsession
this in itself can cause stress
which
can support the growth of cancer
So really it’s about doing what we can but eating a piece of cake or a donut is not always the big deal that articles sometimes suggest when obsessing about it can do more harm