T
, “you
he problem with the expression
can’t have your cake and
eat it too”, is that it makes it seem
unreasonable to want to achieve more than one
goal at once. At a time when many of our tasks do at
least double duty, it seems antiquated to think that
our food need be either healthy, filling or delicious
but not all at the same time. Nutrition and
enjoyment does not need to be incompatible as this
statement suggests.
Although associated with certain connotations,
nutrition is not about satisfying one goal at a time.
A perfectly prescribed diet consists of more
components than just the ideal mix of nutrients, as
many of us intuitively know. If health was the sole
priority when eating, many of us Canadians would
likely be in a far better condition. However, eating
the way many of us perceive as healthy seems
boring and unsatisfying. Carefully counting
calories and snacking on salads appeals to our
higher brain functions, but many of us know it is
only time until our mental sirens ring, calling for a
more satisfying taste.
Concurrently, stuffing our faces (and bellies) with
our favourite foods may only satisfy our short-term
fulfillments in an animalistic sort of way. We revel
in the instant pleasure of gorging at the time, to
only be subsequently filled with shame and regret
over our over-indulgence. Having witnessed the
powerful exploitation that our body urges and
lower brain function have on personal choices, we
resolve to return to a better diet; one provided by
the government and proven by science to keep us
healthy. Sound familiar?
Another layer comes in when a chef ’s palette enters
the story. Although not quite healthy or substantial,
a chef understands that taste is the most appealing
factor of all. They use creative techniques to make
food entertain and spark our taste buds without
necessarily providing all the correct building blocks
for our bodies to thrive on. In essence, at the
expense of health and portion size, a chef makes
edible art that satisfies our acute senses.
Many of our real diets fluctuate between these three
competing desires, sometimes on a daily basis. That
dissonance though, is where modern nutrition
research is working.
We are not crazy for deviating from the “perfect diet”;
it is the reality of human instinctive decisions.
Nutrition researchers today understand this and even
account for it in current work. We do not shame
people for eating one standard deviation less than
the ‘recommended daily allowance’ of vegetables, or
for consuming greater or fewer kilocalories than the
‘daily requirement’. We study the interactions
between food, body, and mind in order to get a better
understanding of how health (or lack of ) can be
defined.
Nutrition is not just about a
diet. It is not about eating
only for health, as would
appeal to our body and
logical minds. It also is not
about eating as much as we
can whenever we can, as
would appeal to our more
basic instincts. It is not even
about elevating food into an
art form, so it appeals to our
creative minds as well as our
basic instincts. It is a way of
thinking about and
understanding food that
combines culture and
science so that all these
needs are met.
Issue 3 | Nutrition of Everything | 8