Let's Stop Pretending All Foods Are Equal

Have you ever heard people say that there's no such thing as a good food versus a bad food? I have an opinion about this—quite a strong one. I think to say that there are no such thing as good foods versus bad foods is delusional, when it’s clear, based on how a food feels in our body, that there are good foods and bad foods.

Bad foods range from things we call “food” that are not actually real food—not made by Mother Nature, and are not meant to be put in our bodies—to foods that simply don’t agree with us and make us feel bad when we eat them. 

I think it's really important to make this distinction and a disservice to our health to say that it's wrong to say a food is good or bad.

It was easily apharent to me as a young child, with no knowledge of nutrition science at all that some foods were not good for me. 

I would have regular sleepovers at a friends house where we would binge on junk food. We’d go to 7-Eleven, pick up all the candy we could get and binge until we felt sick. We called that food “crap” because of what it did to our bodies and how it made us feel.

I think that this idea that we shouldn’t call a food good or bad comes from a societal desire to avoid making anyone feel guilty. I don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with feeling guilty. Guilt is an inherent emotion designed to tell us that we should not or shouldn’t do something. It’s a very useful emotion designed to keep ourselves and other safe. To say that an inherent emotion we experience is “wrong” simply doesn’t make sense.

I’m not saying that people should feel guilty about what they eat or ate. I’m saying that if something inside you makes you feel bad after you’ve eaten something that doesn’t work for your body, then that feeling is a sign from your body that the food is not good for you.

I think where people get confused is by not distinguishing the difference between shame and guilt. Guilt can be a useful transitory emotion that guides us to make better choices. Shame, on the other hand, is usually tied to something outside of ourselves—like worrying about what others think, or being actively judged by someone. Calling certain foods good and others bad is not shaming people. It’s not about the person—it’s about the food itself.

So yes, there are good foods and there are bad foods. Good foods are meant for the human species to eat. They’re natural, found in nature, grown on trees, or pulled from the ground. Sometimes we forget that we're just like every other animal—we have a natural diet meant for us!

Bad foods are foods that aren’t real foods; they’re food products.

There’s essentially a scale between artificial and natural when it comes to food, and where a food sits on that scale determines how good or bad it is for us. No, we shouldn’t shame people for what they eat, but that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge reality: some things are simply better for us than others. That applies to food just like it applies to any other part of life.

When I felt guilty as a child, after eating certain things, it wasn’t because I thought I was a bad person. It was guilt toward my body—like I had done something to harm myself yet again. That guilt helped me recognize that those foods weren’t good for me. But guilt should be temporary. When we sit in guilt too long, that’s when it turns into shame.

So what do we do once we’ve recognized that a certain food makes us feel bad? We simply decide not to repeat it. We don’t need to sit in guilt, because that doesn't change anything. It won’t make us eat healthier. We have to dig deeper—why are we choosing to eat foods that make us feel bad?

In my experience, eating poor-quality “crap,” made me feel “negative”. Not just physically, but emotionally. Processed and refined foods affect our mood. We get an instant rush and feel good for a moment, but then crash and feel terrible after. 

So if we pretend that all foods are equal and make blanket statements, like “it’s not okay to call a food good or bad”, then we never get to the heart of the conversation. Why are we eating food that isn’t real anyway? Why are we choosing processed foods over the natural human diet the we were deigned to eat? Why are we using food as a drug, to sedate ourselves or to stimulate ourselves? 

Not to mention that these foods don’t just impact our moods, but they are anything but nourishing—they’re depleting.

Every time you eat a processed food that is stripped of its natural nutrients, your body has to use its own nutrient stores just to digest it. So processed foods can actually leave you more nutritionally depleted than before you ate them.

To truly understand why, as a society, we aren’t eating real food, we have to go deep. We have to look at the environment we were raised in—not just physically, but emotionally. Food is sometimes used to soothe, sometimes as a weapon, sometimes as control. There are countless reasons behind our eating habits.

But the truth sets us free. And the truth is that there are good foods and bad foods. Just like there is night and day, this world is made of opposites. The first step is acknowledging that good and bad foods exist, and then looking honestly at where what we’re eating fits on that spectrum.

We have everything from freshly picked organic whole foods to completely artificial processed foods. What matters is not what we did yesterday. What matters is what we do now. We don’t need to sit in guilt until it becomes shame. We just need to make a better choice today. It doesn’t have to be an overnight transformation either. It can be as simple as asking, “How can I eat the same things that I like, but in a healthier, less processed version?” There is a healthy home made version of almost everything that people enjoy eating.

But if we don’t acknowledge that some foods are good and some are bad, then we stay stuck. We stay in excuses. We stay in an illusion about what we’re putting in our bodies and the effects it will have—not just today, but on our long-term health.

The first thing I do with all my clients is a kitchen makeover. Nothing else matters if we don’t have a foundation of natural, whole foods. You can have perfect macros, but if they’re not based on whole foods, then you’re not getting nutrient-dense meals. Without nutrient-dense meals, you develop nutritional deficits, which lead to cravings and low energy. And when you’re low on energy and full of cravings, it’s incredibly difficult to eat healthy, because your body pushes you toward carbs and junk food. Refined carbohydrates and junk food are crap foods. They’re bad foods. The more we eat them, the more we crave them. It’s a terrible cycle, that is very difficult to get off.

Am I saying a person should never eat anything refined or processed ever again? No. If you saw me eating at a restaurant or a friend’s place, I’d be eating like everyone else for the most part. I wouldn’t feel guilty, because I know the context. Those foods are only for special occasions—not because the occasion “deserves” junk food - but because that what the rest of  society is putting on the table. If I was the host then, everything would be delicious *and* whole-food based - even the treats and desserts.

My rule is simple: I bring only natural, whole foods into my kitchen. That means whatever I cook is automatically healthy. But many people try to apply the 80/20 rule to their kitchen too.  However, if 20% of our kitchen ingredients are processed—plus we are getting takeout, eating out, and going to gatherings—it’s not 80/20 anymore. It’s more like 40/60. And when we don’t have good health to start with, that difference really matters.

Healthy people can get away with more processed food without immediate negative effects. Unhealthy people can’t. We even have to be moderate about moderation. Sometimes people say, “everything in moderation”, but then even moderation should be in moderation. Sometimes we NEED to do something extreme to being balance back to our body.  

The people that are the most shamed in society about what they eat are the ones who are actively making the best choices for their health. If they choose not to partake of processed food and junk food, they are labelled a health nut, made fun of and people often try to thwart their efforts using peer pressure to make them partake of unhealthy habits.

In some people’s situations, there are even healthy foods that they can’t eat. For people with allergiess, even whole foods can cause real inflammation and make people feel sick. Those people are often shamed as well when they share that they can’t eat a certain ingredient. People question or mock them and think of their needs and requests as an inconvenience. *That’s* real shaming—shaming someone for trying to protect their health.

So while we can generally say that artificial foods are bad and natural foods are good, certain whole foods can still be bad for certain people because of their current health condition. What’s good or bad is individualized.

At the end of the day, the most important aspect of what I am saying is that we need to acknowledge that natural food is what is meant for us as human beings, and we need to stop defending processed foods. There’s no need to defend them. Calling them what they are is simply acknowledging the reality of the harm they can cause. Let’s get real about our food and stock our kitchens with real food.

Those of us who have the money to vote with our dollars have a responsibility to do so. We do that by supporting companies that make good-quality food. Every time we give money to processed food companies, that’s money is *not* going to real-food producers— local farmers, people at the farmers market, and others produce natural, clean and nutritious food. Their food is real, and their food is good.

For those with limited money, learning to cook from scratch with whole-food ingredients actually saves money. It’s a matter of building the skills and getting comfortable in the kitchen. Bad food is easy because it’s instant. You just pull it out of a box. That’s part of the temptation—along with the fact that processed foods act like a drug. They sedate us when we feel bad, or stimulate us when we’re tired and depleted. But the energy they give isn’t real, and at the end of the day, they leave us worse off.

I didn’t write this article to make anyone feel guilt or shame. I made it to challenge the idea that there are no good or bad foods. That idea suggests that all foods are equal—but they’re not. One can nourish us, and the other can lead to sickness, disease, and even death.

We have to be real about it. We start where we are and make improvements.

When I became health-conscious, it was because I had to. I was sick. I changed everything in about a week. I went from the standard North American diet to a whole-foods diet almost overnight, and it completely changed my life. When I ate crappy, bad food, I felt horrible—my immune system crashed and I developed mono. Before that, I had PMS, paranoia, yeast infections, acne, and more. Within six months on whole foods, all of those problems were gone and I didn’t even miss a day of work with mono.

If I hadn’t acknowledged the impact food had on my health, I don’t know where I’d be now. It was a gift to learn this so young. I stopped eating processed foods early in life because I acknowledged they were bad for me. And once I acknowledged that, I could change.

That’s why acknowledgement is the first step. 

The next step is giving your kitchen a makeover. Go through your cupboards and fridge and replace processed and refined foods with whole-food alternatives. If there’s something processed you want to keep, upgrade it—choose an organic version with fewer additives, or find a whole-food recipe to make at home. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but people do run into questions while transforming their kitchen.

Unfortunately, grocery stores are full of marketing hype. Even organic stores aren’t immune. Just because something is sold in an organic market doesn’t make it healthy—though it’s often better quality than what is stocked at conventional stores. 

One simple rule is to shop the perimeter of the store where the meat, vegetables, eggs, dairy, and fresh foods are. Real food is the food - without - a long shelf life. The aisles are where all the boxes and packages are, and that’s where you have to read labels.

If you’re used to relying on marketing on the front of the box—words like “natural,” “heart healthy,” or “high in vitamins”—you need to shift to reading ingredient lists. If the ingredients are unrecognizable as food, it’s probably not something nature made for humans to eat.

I hope I’ve given you enough tips to start incorporating more good foods into your diet. If you want more help or guidance, join my Kitchen Makeover challenge, where I walk you through your entire kitchen step-by-step.