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 had not seen in ages. I’ll call her Meghan. Meghan shook her head in joy and disbelief on hearing that my own daughter is now a mother herself, and she had just one question upon learning that I look after my grandchildren after school: She wanted to know if I was more lenient with feeding them than I had been with my children. I was initially a bit confused, not sure what she was talking about. Was she thinking that I provide Oreos? Captain Crunch? Twinkies? 

We all laughed, but my daughter and I both understood immediately that she doesn’t really understand what I stand for. For the truth is that, 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. And 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 we use to make those goodies. The main difference is that most of the time we make the treats ourselves, from real ingredients. As Michael Pollan said, you can eat anything you’d like as long, as you make it yourself.

And, unlike the ongoing science experiment that my son and husband have been conducting in the den with an unopened package of Twinkies for the past 13 years, our treats must all be frozen or 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 you 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 [not fruit] loops and boo-berry [not blueberry] breakfast cereals. 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.    

Why are products given names like froot loops, or boo-berry? The ultra-processed items industry (Big “Food”) is capitalizing on the fact that we know we should eat more fruits and vegetables, so it gives its products names like vegetable oil, or vegetable shortening. Of course these are not vegetables. 

Big Fake Food also knows that human beings have a biological imperative to eat color. This is why skittles, M&Ms, sour patch kids, lucky charms, and bright blue icing appear 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; your happy dog could jump up and 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. 

Your goal is to be a well-nourished person who sometimes enjoys a little entertainment. I would never suggest denying yourself a bakery-bought 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 drive-through fast “food” 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.