It’s a new year, and I’d like to talk about why I write this blog. I want to make sure you understand how very big is the difference between real food and manufactured calories. Real food nourishes. At best, manufactured calories entertain. Manufactured calories also cause a great many serious medical problems. Like breast and colon cancer; diabetes, obesity, and arthritis; strokes and heart attacks. For starters. 

A few weeks ago my daughter and I went to a large community gathering, and we ran into someone we hadn’t seen in ages. She shook her head in joy and disbelief on hearing that my daughter is now a mother, and she had one question upon learning that I look after her little ones after school: She wanted to know if I was more lenient with feeding the grandchildren than I had been with my own children. I’m not sure what she was thinking about. Oreos? Cap’n Crunch? We all laughed; if anything it’s the opposite. I have much greater clarity about the differences between real food and manufactured calories than I did 20 years ago. I also have more time. 

My husband bakes the bread that our grandchildren eat, and he makes the applesauce that we eat for dessert. And there is no shortage of treats. Our grandchildren eat cookies, apple crisps, homemade fruit rollups, brownies, muffins, banana chocolate chip cake, and more. Our chickens lay the eggs that are used to make those goodies. But the difference is that most of the time we make the treats ourselves, from real ingredients. Unlike my husband and son’s ongoing 13-year-old Twinkies science experiment in the den, our treats have to be eaten within a few days, because if not they begin to get moldy. And then we have to give them to the chickens. 

How do I tell the difference between real food and manufactured calories? Imagine a great big box. On the outside of that box, written in big magic marker, is a sign that says “Real Food.” There are thousands of foodstuffs in the box, and they fall into eleven categories: fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains (only whole), eggs, dairy, nuts, seeds, meats, fish, and poultry. These are real food. 

Everything else that you can buy at a supermarket is outside the box. All kinds of products fall into the category of “manufactured calories.” These include items like non-dairy creamers, artificial sweeteners, margarine, candy, soda, fruit-rollups, fruity pebbles, Crisco, froot loops and boo-berry breakfast cereals. Not fruit, and not blueberry. The ingredient lists for these items are filled with products like high-fructose corn syrup, polysorbate 80, carrageenan, and synthetic food dyes. These are not food, and you will not find them in the average home kitchen.    

In addition to products like froot loops and boo-berry, the ultra-processed items industry (Big Food) capitalizes on the fact that we know we should eat more fruits and vegetables, so it creates products with names like vegetable oil, or vegetable shortening. These are not vegetables. 

Big Food also knows that humans have a biological imperative to eat color. This is why Skittles, M&Ms, Sour Patch Kids, Lucky Charms, and bright blue icing are so appealing. They are manufactured to be that way. But they are not the same as eating nourishing phytonutrients.

One aspect of being well nourished is eating the rainbow. This means covering your plate with foods like purple cabbage, radishes, apples, carrots, oranges, blueberries, rainbow chard, or spinach. Every color represents a different phytonutrient, a different building block for your good health. You never know which nutrient you’re going to need next. You could step off the curb wrong and sprain a tendon; you could scratch your cornea; you could catch a miserable virus that strips your gut and knocks you off your game for an entire weekend. But if you are well nourished, and your immune system is able to mount a strong defense against that virus, maybe you won’t even catch it. 

I want you to be a well nourished person who sometimes enjoys a little entertainment. I would never suggest denying yourself a brownie or a slice of key lime pie on Sunday afternoons, especially if that’s what makes your life worth living. But Americans are eating the equivalent of key lime pie three times a day. When you eat breakfast cereal in the morning, and then a sandwich with chips for lunch, and a bowl of pasta for dinner, all you ate all day was entertainment. 

If I had just ten seconds to offer nutritional advice, it would be this: eat more fruits and vegetables. There’s a reason we are drawn to color. Fruits and vegetables nourish us. That box of real food is filled with them.