My biology teacher said theres no such thing as “unhealthy” foods. Only eating in regulation, how true is this?
In: Biology
This is more so about fat loss but covers the idea pretty well
http://physiqonomics.com/fat-loss/
But yes, she’s right. I mean other than foods that can literally kill you nothing is really unhealthy. It’s more so just looking at the macronutrients and caloric content in a serving.
It’s easy to class something as unhealthy simply out of measure.
A Big Mac has 65% of your daily sodium intake, so eating a Big Mac every day would force you to not have much more salt from all the other food you eat, or cut out the Big Mac to re-balance your intake.
Of course, most people eating a Bic Mac a day aren’t too concerned about the other things they’re eating, so it’s simple to class the Big Mac as unhealthy
I vividly remember when my biology teacher told the class saturated fats were the best because the were the easiest to assimilate. Having grown up being told how devilish they were, it was quite a surprise to be frank.
Here’s a summary of a teacher that ate only McDonald’s. He lost weight and improved his health.
[McDonald’s diet](https://www.niashanks.com/teacher-lost-weight-eating-mcdonalds/)
Here’s another summary of a nutrition professor that ate mostly junk food. He lost weight and improved his health.
[Convenience store diet](http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html)
Surely that doesn’t count for things like transfats, nitrates and other additives in processed foods?
Let me guess: your teacher is fat?
This is, in most cases, technically true.
Some obvious exceptions: Spoiled food, or food contaminated with heavy metals, etc., are obviously bad for you.
Nutritionally speaking, however, what your teacher said is technically correct, BUT that doesn’t mean that it’s not a good idea to avoid certain kinds of food as a rule of thumb.
The reason I say this isn’t so much the impact some food has on you nutritionally, but rather the behavioural impact. Simply put, some foods are very difficult to eat a small amount of. Junk food, for example: Very hard to eat just a little. It’s essentially addictive. And there’s a good reason for that: Most junk food has been very carefully engineered to taste as good as possible and make you want more. Everything from its packaging, to the appearance of the food itself, to the size of the pieces, to the texture, the smell, the taste, the aftertaste, and the smell left over in the packaging after you’ve eaten it… ALL of it has been carefully tweaked to maximize the chances that you’ll want more.
Trans fats are known to cause coronary disease. Certain foods are higher in carcinogens than others.
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