If You’re Worried About Which Vegetables Are “healthier”, You’re Thinking Too Much About It.
Do you have an image of “healthy” eating in your head? Does it include fruits and vegetables? You’re doing great.
Now go and eat – wait, what are you doing? Are you worried that some vegetables are not the healthiest? What is wrong with you? This is the reaction I had when I saw the New York Times run a quiz titled “Is This Vegetable Healthier Raw or Cooked?” – a nearby website seems to have published. Vegetables are good for health here. Pickiness to certain vegetables is a child’s brain.
Every time we see two alternatives pitted against each other in the name of health, the implication is that we must choose the “better” of the two and avoid the one that is “worse.” But even more harmful is that these comparisons send a signal that whatever factor we judge matters . In most cases, this is not the case.
False dichotomies are not healthy
Remember The Dirty Dozen? The organization, which considers itself an environmentalist, produces two lists of “dirty” and “clean” fruits and vegetables each year, “so that consumers can make the best decisions for their families.” Doesn’t this mean that you should avoid “dirty” foods in favor of “clean” ones? But , as we said earlier , fruits and vegetables on both lists contain pesticide residues that are considered safe. The EWG doesn’t say, “Hey, we found something suspicious in the following vegetables,” they just take a bunch of vegetables that meet safety standards and rank them according to questionable methodology. (They also advocate buying organic, despite the lack of data on pesticide levels in organic products.)
If certain fruits and vegetables were really bad for you, the logical answer would be to avoid the “bad” ones. And here things take a darker turn: there are recommendations to only buy “dirty” foods if they’re organic, which sometimes leads to people not buying “dirty” foods at all.
To name a few more false dichotomies, if you believe the rumor that microwaving vegetables “destroys nutrients,” you may not worry about vegetarian food at all if you have to reheat it in the microwave. Or, if you’ve heard that fruits are high in sugar, you may not want to eat the fruit.
Healthy eating becomes easier when you stop thinking about it.
The harm in seeing certain vegetables as “healthier” than others is that they create a mythology in our minds. We imagine that there are people who are perfectly healthy . They don’t just eat vegetables, they eat the healthiest vegetables. They get the ideal, optimal amount and type of exercise. They do everything right, and most of us will never reach that level of greatness. But healthy eating is not some distant fantasy. This does not mean that you should dedicate your life to finding and buying the perfect products. It can be as simple as putting a few bags of frozen veggies in your basket every week and then getting busy cooking and eating them at some point. Most of us can make some approximation of this.
Just because celery is considered “healthier” cooked doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with raw celery. Or even, for that matter, never eat celery at all. Maybe you don’t like celery. You are not doomed to a life of ill health; You can just eat the vegetables you like.
What should I really be eating?
Before chasing some mythically optimal diet, take care of, shall we say, low-hanging fruit. The first step is pretty simple. Most adults should get 1.5 to 2 cups of fruit per day and 2 to 3 cups of vegetables. According to the latest CDC poll , only about 12% of Americans actually qualify. So if you’re not in that 12%, your first task is simply to make sure you’re eating fruits and vegetables and then find ways to add a few more. The next priority will be to ensure the variety of fruits and vegetables you choose. “Eating the rainbow” is one easy way to remember: if all your vegetables are green, branch out into things like tomatoes, carrots, and blueberries.
After you do that, I still won’t worry about whether your vegetables are optimally cooked or what lists they are on. I would go further and look at other aspects of your diet (do you eat whole grains?) and your life (do you get regular sleep at night? Do you include both cardio and strength training in your daily routine?). , eating vegetables is a success when it comes to personal care. Don’t look for a way to turn this into some kind of failure.