What is Health Food?

So the lovely folks at OurDeer have asked me to write a post about Health Food. This is both a breeze and a tall order. It’s a tall order because there are so many ways to interpret the phrase “health food” – everything from allergen-aware cooking to raw food diets, from organic and free-range animals and produce to unprocessed whole foods.

There’s such a broad spectrum of definitions to work with, not to mention the challenge of dealing with health food related stereotypes like “health food is bland and tasteless” or “health food proponents are preachy and self-righteous“. It’s a breeze, though, because eating “health food” really just means eating the food that’s best for your body.

Yes you, specifically.

Everyone’s different and what makes one person feel energized and satisfied may leave another person feeling spacey and undernourished and stick a third person with a terrible, allergy-related stomach ache.

Now, I’m no doctor, but when trying to figure out what “eating healthy” meant for my body, I asked myself questions like:

• What makes me feel satisfied, but not bloated or over-full?
• What kinds of meals give me energy that lasts through the day as opposed to spiking my energy and then crashing out midway through the morning or afternoon?
• What foods leave a funny, unpleasant taste in my mouth hours after eating, no matter how much water I drink or how many times I brush my teeth?
• Does anything I eat regularly leave me feeling sick or weak within a couple of hours of eating it?

These simple questions, which probably sound like no-brainers, were an easy, personalized way to get an idea of what kinds of fruits, vegetables, proteins and carbohydrates work best for my body.

Check out the video version of this article on YouTube