Good foods and bad foods… or what?

As regular readers of my blog know, I am constantly doing research on food. At this point, I feel like I have done research on almost every category of food, and I have come to realize that every food has it’s good points and bad points. There is no ideal food. I know, I know- maybe that’s obvious, and that’s why the nutritionists always say that we need to eat a wide variety of foods.

To illustrate, however, let’s consider some of the propertes that are often associated with food these days, and then figure out how this fits in with various types of foods:

• high calorie vs low calorie
• high fat/high saturated fat/high transfat vs low (various categories of) fat
• high glycemic index/glycemic load vs low glycemic index/glyecemic load
• high nutrient density vs low nutrient density
• inhibits absorption of nutrients vs doesn’t inhibit absorption of nutrients/promotes absorption of nutrients
• causes digestive upset/gas vs easy to digest
• generates feelings of fullness vs not filling

Now- any food I pick is going to fit somewhere on each of these categories. Let’s take beans as an example to illustrate this. Beans are a medium calorie, low fat food, with a low to medium glycemic load. They are somewhat high in certain nutrients (like folacin), but they inhibit the absorption by the body of various other nutrients (like iron). They might be considered filling, but they also can be hard on the digestive system and on their own they aren’t that tasty. So would I only want to eat beans? No. Would I want to include them in my diet? Yes.

posted at 13:28 on Fri, 21 Apr, 2006 | path: /living

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