The title for an article “FDA label updates aim to make it easier to choose healthy foods” caught my eye the other day. My first thought was, well what do they call “healthy?” And I know, I know- Stephanie, you’re the dietitian. You should know what is healthy and what isn’t. But the term “healthy” is very subjective. Even the FDA, under their previous definition of healthy foods did not include eggs, salmon, frozen fruits and olive oil. Wait, what?! Exactly! Depending on what parameters you use to determine what’s healthy, we can have very different views of food.
And I see this in almost every single session I have with clients. At some point, some person in a client’s life gets described as a healthy eater and my first comeback question to that is, “What does that mean? What does healthy look like for them?” Often my client responds with, “You know” as though there is only one way to look at healthy eating.
But what people may not realize, is that what is healthy for one person, may not necessarily be healthy for another. Sure, there are some tenets to healthy eating which most people will agree with but there’s so much gray area! I have had several clients tell me healthy for them means avoiding fruit because it has sugar while another client may be eating 3-4 cups of fruit a day because fruits are high in fiber. I have had other clients describe healthy eating as low protein because proteins have fat while other clients place the protein component of the meal as the main event. For other clients, healthy means staying under a certain calorie level or a certain amount of grams of sodium.
I say all of this because we are flooded with healthy eating claims from social media to the magazine rack at the grocery store to conversations at school pick-up. Whether it’s a 250# body builder in a video or someone selling you the next greatest supplement, just ask yourself, who is defining the healthy here? And is their view of healthy the same as yours?
So what does your healthy look like?